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Just Landed Is Shutting Down

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Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#61

Post by jgrall »

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…

Creator of Just Landed here. Actually, I have been approached by a number of companies over the years about selling Just Landed, including some household names. The trouble is, almost none of them wanted the app – they just wanted me as an employee. These weren't companies I could get super excited about working for - especially since I love being an entrepreneur and working for myself. Of the few who did want the app or the tech, their quality bar/taste wasn't a good fit, and I worried about how they would treat my users. It was never about the money. Time is my most valuable scarce resource.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#62

Post by nemothekid »

Karunamon wrote: post #15

Tangential, but the flawed "android rampant piracy" article made an appearance here again. It's flawed because as an app developer, you don't have a way to tell if the app hitting your servers is legitimate or not. Just counting: (sold copies) - (unique hits on our server) = pirated copies ..is not even close to accuracy. What about reinstalls? What about developers/tinkerers who are probably flattening their devices…

>What about reinstalls? What about developers/tinkerers who are probably flattening their devices on a regular basis?

IIRC Google gives you access to all that information in the Google Play dashboard, and for my apps, "reinstalls"/device upgrades were very rare.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#63

Post by mst »

pbreit wrote: post #54
brianwawok wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why "500 times"?

Because that was how much more data they were using than the early users.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#66

Post by jgrall »

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.

You got it. To profitably support commercial power users I would have had to change the business model to a pay-as-you-go subscription model. I considered doing this in a way that wouldn't shut out my casual users (for whom I created the app in the first place, and who are still the majority), but I had serious doubts about the willingness of taxi and limo drivers to pay for Just Landed on an ongoing basis.

The proliferation of half-decent free flight trackers (albeit without the unique airport pickup focus), the other systemic problems mentioned in my post, and the increasingly common cannibalization of utility apps by Apple's iOS itself, led me to the conclusion that such an endeavor was likely doomed to fail.

Just because you can find passionate users doesn't mean you've found a good business, and that was the case here.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#67

Post by nostrademons »

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…

I think that what the other posters are touching on is: why sell bread at all? Why not sell beer? Or ethanol, to gasoline companies? You have a source of flour, and you also have access to customers who are deriving their livelihoods from your product. If the bread market is tapped out and too competitive to make a profit, why not turn around and seek other markets?

In my experience, consumer mobile is pretty much tapped out - it's very difficult to make a living as an independent app developer. But the enterprise market is still booming. Now that the giant consumer applications (WhatsApp, Instagram, Uber, Instacart, etc.) have been found, there's a long tail of smaller niches that'll pay good money for specialized services.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#69

Post by mikecarlton »

jgrall wrote: post #61
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Creator of Just Landed here. Actually, I have been approached by a number of companies over the years about selling Just Landed, including some household names. The trouble is, almost none of them wanted the app – they just wanted me as an employee. These weren't companies I could get super excited about working for - especially since I love being an entrepreneur and working for myself. Of the few who did want the ap…

Thanks for building this, I've been a low-volume user since sometime in 2013. I'll miss it, but completely understand your reasoning.

Re: Just Landed Is Shutting Down

#70

Post by jgrall »

nathancahill wrote: post #48
tomphoolery wrote: post #41

The #1 reason why this app failed is because people like me, and especially my mother, who would have been a power user...did not know it existed until this Medium post. Your problem has less to do with the app itself and more to do with how it was promoted and marketed.

I think that's his main point about the discovery process in the App Store. Even being features numerous times by Apple wasn't enough.

Correct. Features by Apple aren't a panacea – especially for paid apps. But without it, you're DOA.
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