Voicegem (YC S12) joins Palantir

dannyr wrote: post #4

"One of those tools was a voice based email service that quickly grew beyond our friends at the local senior houses" If the service is doing well, why is it being shut down?

    30 seconds/recording: presumed average recording length

    1,000,000 seconds: a bit higher than the total number of seconds of audio recorded

    8 months: Amount of time service was around

    1,000,000 seconds / 30 seconds/recording = 33,333 recordings

    33,333 recordings / 8 months = 4,166 recordings/month = 138 recordings/day.

Assuming that the average user tried it out once and then didn't use it again, VoiceGem was getting about 140 new users a day. If the average user used it more than once, they were getting even fewer new users. Startups are hard.

Edit: for some reason, Josh Constine at TechCrunch decided to reference my arithmetic. I just want to make sure it's clear that I'm happy for Arda and Alexander for finding an exit, and that startups are hard. I'm not trying to be snarky.

Re: Voicegem (YC S12) joins Palantir

#8

Post by rdl » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 8:27 PM UTC

Congratulations! Palantir has a lot of interesting technical challenges and great engineers, ops people, etc. -- I think you'll love it there.

Re: Voicegem (YC S12) joins Palantir

#9

Post by andrewcooke » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 8:38 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #7

dannyr wrote: post #4

"One of those tools was a voice based email service that quickly grew beyond our friends at the local senior houses" If the service is doing well, why is it being shut down?

30 seconds/recording: presumed average recording length 1,000,000 seconds: a bit higher than the total number of seconds of audio recorded 8 months: Amount of time service was around 1,000,000 seconds / 30 seconds/recording = 33,333 recordings 33,333 recordings / 8 months = 4,166 recordings/month = 138 recordings/day. Assuming that the average user tried it out once and then didn't use it again, VoiceGem was getting…

all you are going to deduce from this is whatever you put into your model. if they were getting exponential growth then most of the calls would have been recent. and they imply that they had viral growth because use was spreading...

on the other hand, presumably they didn't decide to fuck over a bunch of grannies for fun (even if they did go to palantir). so it was an acquihire. so maybe some part of the description was more positive than the unvarnished truth?

Re: Voicegem (YC S12) joins Palantir

#10

Post by jonpeda » Sat, Feb 16, 2013, 9:03 PM UTC

dannyr wrote: post #4

"One of those tools was a voice based email service that quickly grew beyond our friends at the local senior houses" If the service is doing well, why is it being shut down?

because it wasn't making enough money to merit a buyout, and the current operators got a better offer to work on Palantir projects.

Same reason my babysitting service was doing well before I got a job working on a web site, and then I shut down my babysitting service.