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Grove.io shutting down

grove.io

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Re: Grove.io shutting down

#71
post #45
post #7

It's getting a little difficult to trust stuff by Leah Culver. Everything (that I know of) that she has done so far has either shut down or been acquired and shut down. That said, no hard feelings. It's hard out there. I've never tried to run a company, so I can't judge.

I wish I could create things that people might actually want but I can't think of anything that I could make that people would want.

The vast majority of the time, if you build something that scratches your own itch, there will be others out there that will also find it useful. The challenge is to find a big enough itch.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#72

Shocking.

"Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm" - Winston Churchill. If she keeps at it, she will do a successful product, too.

That only works if you learn from the failures. Hopefully the reasons grove.io failed are obvious enough.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#73
post #22
post #3

Back to campfire, I guess.

I'd recommend hipchat.

We're using Campfire currently, and had used hipchat before that for a few months. Hipchat was fine on desktop, but holy shit their mobile apps are terrible. They were so bad that we had to move away because we're a fairly mobile group.

Honestly, the group business chat niche is just riddled with "incomplete" products in my opinion. Some are great in the browser but have no native web apps (Flowdock), some have shitty mobile apps with mediocre web versions (campfire and hipchat).

I hope someone with a good set of developers, cash in their pockets, and an eye on simplicity would come in and build a full suite of desktop and mobile apps on the back of a good chat system one day. It's absolutely not a solved problem at this point.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#74
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a self-fulfilling prophesy. You can't get big without customers, but customers won't use you because you're small. How do we overcome this? (Edit: I was asking a rhetorical question to counter the parent. But great discussion below.)

You overcome it by offering something valuable for users that they can't easily setup themselves. As far as I can see, Grove.io didn't do this. They didn't have any easy means to grow quickly. Also perhaps they're paying a lot for hosting (At rackspace). I don't know, but there's no reason they shouldn't be making some profit if they have a few paying customers. Shame they can't build on that.

You overcome it by offering something valuable for users that they can't easily setup themselves.

Why can't traditional IRC services be used for this? I'll preemptively counter the end-user configuration side of this by saying it's increasingly easier in a managed workstation environment to deploy images with software required for that worker's tasks preconfigured. Even in a non-managed environment, an IT staff willing to build the packages and make the configuration edits can make accessible an installation candidate stored for access in an infrastructure library so users can save (after proper credentialing and auth checks have been satisfied), install and login.

Security, perhaps? That's always a valid concern to have, but if that's the case I would hope that an adequately planned and designed audit of any service not being managed internally gets the same look. Corollary: perhaps one should not be using anything not managed internally for sensitive matters to begin with; collaboration and non-secure communication where a failure of this system wont halt production or cause the company to incur significant loss however are par.

If I'm off base here, I'm willing to discuss it further. While I loved IT, I had to run for the door after getting burned on multiple opportunities to manage programs and create user friendly but secure policies. And by burned I mean hired to do exactly that, only to end up in hyper-glorified purchasing support roles. shudders

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#76
post #65
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what I said that was so terrible. I think Leah is great and I really hate hear news like this. I also agree that the service was good. My sole point is that companies that use this service also get hurt by this shutdown. When it happens several times as it unfortunately has in her case, you start to worry about new ventures disappearing too. It is in no way a shot at Leah or her work. It's just a recogni…

Your first sentence was the thing you said that was so terrible.

But every sentence afterwards put it in context.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#78
post #73
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend hipchat.

We're using Campfire currently, and had used hipchat before that for a few months. Hipchat was fine on desktop, but holy shit their mobile apps are terrible. They were so bad that we had to move away because we're a fairly mobile group. Honestly, the group business chat niche is just riddled with "incomplete" products in my opinion. Some are great in the browser but have no native web apps (Flowdock), some have shitt…

To be honest, I expect that team to be hipchat. They've got cash now since their acquisition, and they're making steady improvements to their desktop app.

Personally, I wouldn't enter this market, regardless of how good my devs or how much money I had. There are at least 3 polished and loved products. The problems you describe will probably be fixed before another team could come in with a good solution.

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#79
Can I ask a stupid question? What causes a message like this? How many people are involved in the team? Is this a 'startup' or just a few developers having fun? I just started http://pineapple.io and when I see messages like this it always makes me wonder. it's not the first time i've seen something like this.

It makes me nervours...

Re: Grove.io shutting down

#80
post #76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first sentence was the thing you said that was so terrible.

But every sentence afterwards put it in context.

I don't agree. You can't start with a statement like that and then backpeddle - your lede has the most impact and is what people remember.

He had a chance to edit his post to better reflect his position, but chose not to take it. I wish he had.

(And to complete this, lets not forget that Rayne is also a person who just made a mistake. It is the action which is bad, not the person).

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