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Imzy is shutting down

imzy.com

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Re: Imzy is shutting down

#21

Post by arkitaip »

kickme444 wrote: post #9
GuiA wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ~10 employees in SF + office rent + other various costs (lawyers, accountants, the odd office party, etc.) will easily burn through $4M a year. Edit: oh wait, that's $8M in October 2016, not 2015 - ie 8 months ago. Burning $1M a month does seem quite high. Maybe they're shutting down early to give some money back to investors?

We're in SLC and still have the majority of that money left.

Are you working on another startup? Will you use that money to finance the new startup?

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#22

Post by pavel_lishin »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It seems perverse that I only learn about a lot of products when news of their shutdown hits HN. I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for, but it seems in some ways similar to a concept I had for online communities built around discussion of content. Might have been right up my alley.

> seems in some ways similar to a concept I had for online communities built around discussion of content.

Like Reddit?

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#24

Post by geofft »

seibelj wrote: post #17
geofft wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty funny comment to make on Hacker News, which is regularly accused of being a hivemind and downvoting comments / censoring stories that challenge its ideologies.

Wasn't this a real-world, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is bet that people wanted a heavily moderated forum for communication?

Yes, but it's not at all clear to me that it failed because that bet failed. It's not at all clear to me why it failed, period -- the post says that they "were not able to find our place in the market", which could mean lots of things, e.g., that there were lots of users but no obvious monetization strategy.

In general, "Startup X failed" is extremely weak evidence for "People don't want the product that startup X was building." Take Rdio for example: given the success of Spotify, Amazon Music, and others, it would be absolutely incorrect to conclude from Rdio's failure that people didn't want on-demand music in their browser or a mobile app for a fixed fee.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#25

Post by munificent »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #18

It seems perverse that I only learn about a lot of products when news of their shutdown hits HN. I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for, but it seems in some ways similar to a concept I had for online communities built around discussion of content. Might have been right up my alley.

> I'm not exactly sure I'm sure what Imzy is for

If I recall, it got started right around the time there was a lot of shenanigans going on at Reddit around corporate drama, censorship, and the nastier subreddits. Imzy and Voat popped up to try to offer an alternative. (My impression is that Imzy was aiming for less awfulness and Voat aims for less censorship.)

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#26

Post by r721 »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Wait, what? They raised a $8M Series A less than a year ago! https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy-raises-8-million-seri... That was also the time it was opened to the public. This shutdown appears to be a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect.

>a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect

It looks like Voat is not in good financial shape too:

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053

https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#27

Post by kickme444 »

wehadfun wrote: post #19
kickme444 wrote: post #3

Hi, I'm the founder of Imzy. It's a hard day but I want to make myself available, especially to entrepreneurs who may have questions. This last 2 years has been fun, and hard and I've learned a lot. You can reply here or email me at dan@imzy.com I also have an amazing staff of developers, community minded folks, product people, executives, who are looking for work. Many of them mare open to moving (we are in Salt Lak…

Why did you shut it down?

We were unable to find growth in any cohort.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#28

Post by jmcgough »

arkitaip wrote: post #15

"The site will go dark on June 23rd." (1) Two years is too little time to create a Reddit alternative (2) shutting it down in less than 30 days is really bad.

Reddit took off within months of its launch. ~30 days to download data is pretty standard.

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#29

Post by minimaxir »

r721 wrote: post #26
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Wait, what? They raised a $8M Series A less than a year ago! https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/imzy-raises-8-million-seri... That was also the time it was opened to the public. This shutdown appears to be a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect.

>a strong counterpoint against Reddit alternatives becoming an inherently successful business prospect It looks like Voat is not in good financial shape too: https://voat.co/v/announcements/1866053 https://voat.co/v/announcements/1881376

Voat never raised millions in venture capital, though. (and can't given their content/userbase)

Re: Imzy is shutting down

#30

Post by ProAm »

arkitaip wrote: post #15

"The site will go dark on June 23rd." (1) Two years is too little time to create a Reddit alternative (2) shutting it down in less than 30 days is really bad.

Feel free to provide them another round of funding. 2 years is plenty of time.
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