Just Landed Is Shutting Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#51

Post by levemi » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

zippergz wrote: post #16

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #12

I'm always curious why companies like this one choose to charge for their app as a one time fee when, to support the app, they have to subscribe to data feeds which cost money per month. I feel like you have to have a subscription model for that unless the price per month is just so low that, with a small amount of volume, you can easily make up for it. Either way always an interesting write-up. I do find it odd that…

From a purely practical standpoint, it's easier to charge for the app and let Apple do the billing and payment processing, than to set up a system to handle recurring billing (and then you need to deal with cancelations, chargebacks, etc.). I've gone through this thought process for a few side projects, and unless I anticipate really large MRR, it's hard to convince myself to go through the hassle of setting up subsc…

> than to set up a system to handle recurring billing (and then you need to deal with cancelations, chargebacks, etc.).

You just plugin the Stripe SDK and set up a Stripe account and it's done. It's not hard. It takes like half a day. You don't have to do any of this manually. If you're a tiny team and you are doing this manually you're doing it wrong. I've never had to worry about chargebacks or cancelations being a problem.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#52

Post by theparanoid » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:09 PM UTC

cryptoz wrote: post #46

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the article, its clear that won't ever happen. The data sources are expensive.

I've been thinking recently about crowdsourcing our own dataset of airplane data. When you get on a plane, tap a button that says 'we're delayed 5 mins'. When you land, tap a button that says you've landed. In fact, you probably don't even need users to tap those buttons. The better way would be to use the accelerometer and barometer to automatically detect takeoff and landing. Airplane data sources are ALWAYS wrong…

Users will complain loudly about battery life. Using the GPS, accelerometer, barometer isn't free.

It should be possible to piggyback on the user texting or performing some other common action after landing. But probably isn't easy.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#53

Post by pbreit » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:10 PM UTC

Does something like this have any value to an acquirer even if just to keep the lights on and no cash is involved?

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#54

Post by pbreit » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

brianwawok wrote: post #37

Eridrus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding, this was the weirdest shutdown statement I've read in a while, "we found users who derive commercial benefit from using us... so we're shutting down"

Commercial people using your app vs commercial users willing to pay 500 times the current price are 2 very different things.

Why "500 times"?

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#55

Post by grandsham » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:12 PM UTC

Laaw wrote: post #36

Question about flight data and the middlemen: Do these middlemen have to strike deals with the various airlines, or are they simply accessing public APIs that generally stink? What order of magnitude, cost wise, do these airlines charge in the deals? Could I, $random_guy, make a deal with $random_airline, for an amount that is sustainable without any special kind of funding?

In what is probably the biggest case, FlightAware, a lot of the data comes from a fleet of users running ADS-B[1] receivers feeding data into their system. ADS-B data is what Air Traffic Control uses to track planes, and it's receivable using using a cheap TV tuner and a raspberry pi[2]. It ends up being probably the best way to track planes very precisely, as long as you can get enough coverage, which flightaware manages to do pretty well [3]. They then package this data and sell it via an API/tools for Fixed Base Operators or apps like Just Landed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillan... [2] http://flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build [3] http://flightaware.com/adsb/coverage

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#56

Post by IkmoIkmo » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

Eridrus wrote: post #18

polpo wrote: post #6

From the article: While the app was initially used primarily by individuals who made a few airport pickups per year, today Just Landed is increasingly used by professional limousine and taxi drivers, airline professionals, and travel companies. So they were seeing increasing use by commercial users. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to start charging for such access.

No kidding, this was the weirdest shutdown statement I've read in a while, "we found users who derive commercial benefit from using us... so we're shutting down"

I think he did touch on that though. Essentially he's selling bread, and he's got to buy scarce flower at high prices in a convoluted system from a small number of farmers, and be forever at the mercy of the flower selling farmers. Only it's data instead of flower.

Further, the data sometimes is bad and causes inaccuracy issues for customers without him knowing, this causes lots of complaints that he has no control over, something that isn't feasible when charging money to commercial users. Not just that, but the price of data is ever increasing, free data is becoming restricted and he needs to restructure as data suppliers go out of business or restructure their API.

I mean there are obviously solutions, like generate his own data etc. But it really looks like he's got other opportunities to earn a living and this isn't the lowest hanging fruit for him.

What I DO find strange is why he's not selling it. I just can't imagine not at least one of the company's he's buying data from wouldn't buy this at a discounted price if need be. Some money is better than nothing.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#57

Post by timClicks » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #2

I know there's a big push against Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome, but he makes a good point about how a lot of small apps and websites depend on services that drastically change or disappear over the course of a few years. I wonder if in some cases it's better to simply develop an in-house solution for a service — it may be more expensive and less refined, but at least you know that service will be there as long as your…

Whenever you build a service in someone else's garden, there's always the (fairly high) chance that you'll be booted out at some stage.

In a sense, platform APIs allow the platform owner to understand what customers want without needing to deploy product talent to deploy it. Twitter has perfected this strategy. As soon as a third party comes up with a neat idea with your API, you can build your own "official" version of their app, throttle their usage and hopefully their business model.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#58

Post by quadrature » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #56

Eridrus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No kidding, this was the weirdest shutdown statement I've read in a while, "we found users who derive commercial benefit from using us... so we're shutting down"

I think he did touch on that though. Essentially he's selling bread, and he's got to buy scarce flower at high prices in a convoluted system from a small number of farmers, and be forever at the mercy of the flower selling farmers. Only it's data instead of flower. Further, the data sometimes is bad and causes inaccuracy issues for customers without him knowing, this causes lots of complaints that he has no control o…

hate to nitpick, but you might appreciate that its called "flour". good analogy !.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#59

Post by manarth » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

aikah wrote: post #17

Xcelerate wrote: post #2

I know there's a big push against Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome, but he makes a good point about how a lot of small apps and websites depend on services that drastically change or disappear over the course of a few years. I wonder if in some cases it's better to simply develop an in-house solution for a service — it may be more expensive and less refined, but at least you know that service will be there as long as your…

Well StackMob shut down, and Bing Maps are getting more and more expensive... while it's not that difficult to replace a BaaS, it's another matter for map services. And it's going to get more expensive no question. The time of the freebies for web-development is going to be over soon . I wouldn't trust any service, from Github to google API A or B, to remain free for ever. Especially Github which is moving to "enterp…

> it's another matter for map services. And it's going to get more expensive no question

For companies that offer a "free" tier (e.g. Bing/Google maps), for sure, sooner or later, a switch to paid is very likely.

But there are organisations that have a completely different justification for existing: OpenStreetMap springs to mind, as does the UK's Ordnance Survey (which is essentially a Government body, albeit cloaked as a private company, 100% in public ownership). Although they'll always need some source of funding to keep operating, their goal isn't to maximise possible revenue, so as long as it's viable to offer free mapping, they're likely to carry on doing so.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#60

Post by _ak » Thu, Feb 25, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

markab21 wrote: post #24

wehadfun wrote: post #19

Do you plan to pivot to become one of these airline data brokers?

As much as it might feel like selling out to the founders of this product, providing the tech in white-label or licensing to travel groups such as Kayak for example could of been a way to at least keep the doors open.

You will typically find things like that in the product portfolio of a GDS.