So long, and thanks for all the fish

#1

Post by ivankirigin » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 4:29 AM UTC

So long, and thanks for all the fish
tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#2

Post by icey » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 4:37 AM UTC

I'm sorry to hear it you guys; best of luck with your next venture!

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#3

Post by ojbyrne » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 4:43 AM UTC

Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#4

Post by ivankirigin » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 4:51 AM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #3

Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#5

Post by auston » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 4:56 AM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #4

ojbyrne wrote: post #3

Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.

I've been following you guys for a bit and wonder did you guys really spend over $1m since inception? (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/24/tipjoy-raises-1-million...)

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#6

Post by ivankirigin » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 5:00 AM UTC

auston wrote: post #5

ivankirigin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.

I've been following you guys for a bit and wonder did you guys really spend over $1m since inception? ( http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/24/tipjoy-raises-1-million... )

We were advised (in retrospect incorrectly) to be ambiguous and say "raised under $1M" when the amount we raised was actually much less. Our burn rate was slightly higher than most poor grad students, but not _that_ high.

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#7

Post by zhyder » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 5:04 AM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #4

ojbyrne wrote: post #3

Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.

Sorry to hear about the shutdown. FWIW, I'm impressed how open you're being, about profitability as well as money-raised (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777010).

Btw, apparently you have a decent amount of traffic (http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tipjoy.com/). Is the problem that very few of your visitors convert to tippers?

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#8

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 5:08 AM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #3

Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability. It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this article.

[deleted]

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#9

Post by drusenko » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 5:08 AM UTC

Sorry to hear the news -- wish you both the best of luck going forward!

Re: So long, and thanks for all the fish

#10

Post by ivankirigin » Fri, Aug 21, 2009, 5:12 AM UTC

zhyder wrote: post #7

ivankirigin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We weren't ramen profitable. We ran out of money and didn't have a good environment or case for raising more.

Sorry to hear about the shutdown. FWIW, I'm impressed how open you're being, about profitability as well as money-raised ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777010 ). Btw, apparently you have a decent amount of traffic ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/tipjoy.com/ ). Is the problem that very few of your visitors convert to tippers?

Compete measures iframe includes or javascript widgets - meaning our widgets on 3rd party sites. That traffic is roughly correct in direction, but totally wrong for the volume to tipjoy.com itself. But that doesn't really matter, because it is a service - one usable almost entirely without visiting tipjoy.com.

The twitter integration, for example, is completely unmeasured by compete.

Finally, traffic is a poor metric for a payments site. Transaction volume is what matters.

Ohh, and I'm not being that open. If we were profitable, we wouldn't be shutting down.