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Grove.io shutting down

grove.io

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Re: Grove.io shutting down

#161

Post by pbiggar »

heretohelp wrote: post #112
pbiggar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really meant my point to be a counter to its parent. But since we're on the topic, presenting social proof is also pretty useful. Show customers that people know, show the press that featured you, show them who you are, who your advisors/investors are, show them whose tweeted about you. (Maybe writing this will be a catalyst to take my own advice for CircleCi)

>I really meant my point to be a counter to its parent. I don't believe I've ever seen you do anything else on HN. I know you to be a reliable person, no reason to think you'd suddenly get fickle and take something I said seriously. Do you mean to tell me that if somebody rolled up with a check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire and run for the hills? Realistically the only people who a…

> check written out for your price you wouldn't light the servers on fire

> I'd rather just sit on a happy customer base

So everyone else is just in it for the money, but not you? If you can believe it about yourself, perhaps you'd be willing to extend some of that credulity to others?

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#163

Post by pbiggar »

mibbitier wrote: post #101
pbiggar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Campfire is made by a company with a massive and rabid following, and is cross-sold to the users of three other popular products, two books, and a massive blog. Hipchat is an amazing product which is steadily getting better under the steam of great developers. It is also owned by Atlassian, a company with great execution and a strong track record of successful cross-selling. So under these circumstances, no, I person…

You're stuck in a bubble. Campfire gets a fair bit of attention here, but is unheard of outside the 'startup'/B2B space. The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule. Hipchat fills a hole as well, but there are literally thousands of different ways to spin 'webchat' and carve a big following out.

> The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule

That is laughable - as in it can't possibly be right. Can you provide a link to this?

From campfirenow.com: "Over 100,000 people have used Campfire to send more than 60,000,000 chat messages"

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#164

Post by pbiggar »

akkartik wrote: post #100
pbiggar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet you just did. As a community we praise people for trying, then when it fails we pillory them? A dick move, sir.

pil·lo·ry [pil-uh-ree] noun a wooden framework erected on a post, with holes for securing the head and hands, formerly used to expose an offender to public derision. Is that really what grandparent did? I think it's an unfair characterization. It was a personal opinion stated weakly and with restraint, not some attempt to incite a mob. I have no opinion on this specific startup. Perhaps they've provided enough time t…

I agree there is a tension for customers. However, what I'm objecting to is the HN community's reaction. We're the people who are pro startups, who think failure is OK, who encourage pivoting from unsuccessful products to markets we discover along the way.

The grandparent is the opposite of what this community is about.

And attaching their name to it is worse. Saying "I'm starting to not trust this startup" would have been much more acceptable in my opinion.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#165

Post by pbiggar »

mh- wrote: post #120
dchuk wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said anything about building tools for programmers. I'm actually a major proponent of building apps and tools that scratch non-technical itches, or more specifically, intersecting your development skills with your hobbies or interests.

unfortunately for those of us who don't have any non-programming/tech interests that doesn't leave much left. :) (uber, taskrabbit notwithstanding..)

It seems that the companies coming out of YC now are scratching a very diversified set of itches, for example YourMechanic.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#166

Post by pbiggar »

heretohelp wrote: post #128
btipling wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leah is out there creating things, writing code and spending valuable time on new ventures, despite the risk and opportunity cost. I admire her courage and creativity and I can't imagine why you would say something like this. I'm sure she would have loved to have all of her projects succeed. Grove.io is a high quality service. We love using it at Leftronic and are very sad to read this news. I wish Leah and her team…

What's with the hagiography? Culver made things people came to depend on, then those things disappeared. I don't see how this is any different than picking up women and telling them you think they're serious girlfriend material in a context (business services) where that's the expected standard, then dropping them for the new hot thing. Why is it suddenly acceptable to do this just because they called themselves a st…

You're making statements which depend on information you don't have. How do you know grove.io was dropped for the new hot thing? Perhaps they weren't making money. Perhaps they were being destroyed by the two larger startups in the space?

Why do you assume the worst of this company? The rest of your statements in this thread are really aggressive, and rely on very negative assumptions, which do not seem to have a basis in fact.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#167

Post by pbiggar »

jdoss wrote: post #47

Here is why this failed... Anyone with half a brain is going to be able to: * run their own IRC server * run a XMPP server ( cough openfire) * Sign up for another service that has more features (Campfire or Hipchat) Not to be mean, but the pricing on grove.io is stupid for what they offer. I run a XMPP server at work and costs us nothing for the basics, which is group chat and private chat. They could have offered th…

> I run a XMPP server at work and costs us nothing for the basics

It sounds like it costs at least 1 server, plus your time. Those are not free.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#168

Post by kenn »

tijs wrote: post #104
kenn wrote: post #24

As a founder of http://lingr.com , I know firsthand how hard to build a chat app and make it sustainable. I've been working on it since 2006, first as a startup, then as my personal side project. I've learned to not invest too much on the project, staying with the minimum server cost, and that's the only sustainable way for me. In fact it costs me almost nothing and users have built trust on me for running it for 6 y…

Looks pretty good actually (from the screenshot), you even have an iPhone app and everything. Why not just charge a small something, even if it's only to get you a nice side income? Somebody mentioned $5/month as a reasonable price for something like this. For me personally that would make me less hesitant to sign up as currently it would seem you could pull the plug any moment. Unless you like the idea of being able…

Thank you. I think you made a good point - by not charging I may be actually making people skeptical. We even have a vibrant developer community on bots and extensions, but it's barely known (shit, I realized that it's not even mentioned on the top page). I'll have to come up with some turnaround ideas.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#169

Post by [deleted] »

tijs wrote: post #104
kenn wrote: post #24

As a founder of http://lingr.com , I know firsthand how hard to build a chat app and make it sustainable. I've been working on it since 2006, first as a startup, then as my personal side project. I've learned to not invest too much on the project, staying with the minimum server cost, and that's the only sustainable way for me. In fact it costs me almost nothing and users have built trust on me for running it for 6 y…

Looks pretty good actually (from the screenshot), you even have an iPhone app and everything. Why not just charge a small something, even if it's only to get you a nice side income? Somebody mentioned $5/month as a reasonable price for something like this. For me personally that would make me less hesitant to sign up as currently it would seem you could pull the plug any moment. Unless you like the idea of being able…

[deleted]

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#170

Post by mibbitier »

pbiggar wrote: post #163
mibbitier wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're stuck in a bubble. Campfire gets a fair bit of attention here, but is unheard of outside the 'startup'/B2B space. The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule. Hipchat fills a hole as well, but there are literally thousands of different ways to spin 'webchat' and carve a big following out.

> The stats they post are laughable - last time I checked it was a few thousand messages a day - which is pretty minuscule That is laughable - as in it can't possibly be right. Can you provide a link to this? From campfirenow.com: "Over 100,000 people have used Campfire to send more than 60,000,000 chat messages"

Campfire was released in 2006, 67 months ago.

60,000,000 messages, over 67 months, works out at 895,000 a month - approx 28,000 messages a day.

Or one message every 3 seconds. Campfire could be run from a single small VPS.

I think it's entirely believable that the usage of campfire is that low. All credit to them, they've managed to get people to pay for something people don't actually use very often.

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