Oftentimes I see farewell posts like this, but the company website has already been mostly turned down. It would be helpful for folks like me who have never heard of Waffle to know what the service was. Having that tiny bit of context at the top of the article (or even just keeping the marketing site alive!) helps to put the shutdown in context.
And yes, I can search, but more often than not the first page of search results are news stories that the service is shutting down rather than resources that describes what it actually was.
waffle.io was github projects, built on top of the github api, a few years before github projects. basically a github-based kanban board. It was pretty great if you were a smallish startup.
When people ask me whether my self-funded (bootstrapped) business is viable, I point out that a self-funded long-term stable business is more viable than a VC-funded startup.
In discussions, I ask customers to imagine which of the possible outcomes of a VC-funded startup would be good for them as customers (hint: none of the possible outcomes are good for customers, with the possible exception of a rare unicorn IPO).
My problem is that VC-funded startups have money to burn, so they artificially lower subscription software pricing.
It's not just lower subscription software pricing.
It's also faster time to market, because they're able to field entire teams of engineers to deliver what your tiny team is working on much faster. And they can do a lot more content marketing and advertisement that you've no time or budget to get done.
And then when they run out of money they post a blog post on a Friday morning to announce that you need to get your data out of their system by the end of the day. (Edit: in this case 2 months.)
On an off topic note, your site's FAQ says:
> So is this a one-man operation?
> Yes, for the moment it is. Which is actually a good thing, if you're concerned about viability. This means that there are no investors, no burn rate to speak of, no need to shut the company down because the money ran out. It is a mature, long-term project.
FYI my own concern as a buyer would be what happens if you get hit by a bus. You really need to get some kind of partner, or an employee the moment you can afford one.
I specifically like that it gives us estimates and a Kanban board approach. I also like that they are thinking about the project management workflow as a whole and trying to educate:
ZenHub Co-founder here. On behalf of the ZenHub team we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all of the incredible work by the Waffle.io team (past and present) over the past four years. We have nothing but respect for the team and want to wish them all the best in their next adventures!
While Waffle and ZenHub are competing products in a way, we both share similar views on the importance of project management being developer-first. It's been a fun journey building in the space along side Waffle and we continue to remain excited about the future of project management in GitHub!
Man, I don't know if I'm going to regret posting this tomorrow, but if folks at ZenHub are going to pop into this thread and promote themselves as a product developers are encouraged to switch to, as a blind developer, I wish they'd at least pay lip service to web accessibility best practices. As a blind screen-reader-using developer, I tried to use ZenHub as a contractor at my last gig and it was impossible. As in, I'm on my desktop doing a screenshare to my coworker across the country viewing my screen on his iPhone, and he's trying to tell me milimeter by milimeter how to move my mouse so I can dismiss one of your onboarding popups which I couldn't dismiss via keyboard on several OS's screen readers, only to be presented immediately thereafter by another. I couldn't use your broduct at all on my own until a sighted coworker helped me to dismiss your onboarding popups, then I found it hard and unintuitive how to navigate the interface as a screen reader user.
Not upset, just frustrated that I couldn't do my job, and I wish you'd done some basic accessibility testing on your interface. If that's a gap in your development staff, I'm currently looking for work. Just sayin'. :)
In any case, kudos for creating a quality product that folks I respect enjoy using. I hope that one day I can be among them.
I think it is _extremely_ positive that they built an export function to GitHub projects, and wish more startups did a "clean" exit in terms of customer data.
Presumably when you hit the point of shutdown, most companies don't want to (or realistically, can't) spend the money on what is a new feature (and potentially a pretty significant one)
(though a simple export to CSV would be better than what most companies do)
Ditto. I used it, it looked good, but I never had any useful usecase for it other than pointing clueless managers or coworkers to it. But for them it was a great show, better and simplier than Jira. You will be missed and thanks for the converter. I never actually tried Github projects, will do soon.
I had the misfortune to use Rally for a few months about five years ago - I often laugh quietly to myself when I hear people complaining about Jira's UX.
I really appreciated the candidness in this post - really feels like fresh air compared to how such posts are usually worded (https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)!
Always sad to see good products shutting down. Also a bit frightening as I'm about to enter this same market, hehe.
I want to mention what we're building in case anyone looks for alternatives in this thread.
It's called GitSpeak and it's a project management tool which prioritizes developers first. Our goal is to create a PM tool that devs actually enjoy working with, and which saves them time rather than eat time.
Some of our features include multi-repo views, boards, a rich text editor and a neat screencasting option for code reviews, docs, and onboarding. Plus, we are going to be the fastest one out there (we're using Imba.io to build the tool btw).
Instructive when using SAAS.
>>In the summer of 2014, we accidentally deleted everyone’s “In Progress” column from their board. And not just the ones in English either…. After 2 feverish hours of scripting, MongoDB ninjary, and Google Translating, the columns were back and we decided we should not attempt to ship anything else that day.
The primary issue is the cost of switching, and Waffle was actually very good at this. It was basically just a front-end for GitHub Issues. I always knew that if at any point Waffle shut down, I'd be no worse off than before I started using them, and I'd still have all my data.
I'm actually much more concerned about GitHub itself. I still haven't found a good way to back up my Issues. They used to point to joeyh's Haskell program, which is neat but has many severe limitations (like: doesn't support private repos at all). Their current recommendation seems to be a third-party service called "BackHub", whose cheapest plan is more expensive than GitHub Pro.
I agree, and it creates a real chicken-and-egg problem.
I've also been on the other side of things, working for such companies. I've always felt a bit of unease knowing that prospective customers may be taking on more risk than our salespeople were letting on.
It would be a lot easier to invest in a small company if there was a guarantee that the project would be made open source if the company doesn't make it. Unfortunately, that rarely happens, and then you're stuck. (Doesn't even have to be a small company - people have been worried Evernote for years.)
what is the deal with these startup company names that have nothing to do with anything the company does? they are just random single words with a logo directly representing that random word in a “cute” way. why not name the company sensible? or is the mentality truly temporary?
[+] [-] bastawhiz|7 years ago|reply
And yes, I can search, but more often than not the first page of search results are news stories that the service is shutting down rather than resources that describes what it actually was.
[+] [-] davweb|7 years ago|reply
https://help.waffle.io/getting-started/what-is-waffle
[+] [-] corprew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cederfjard|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/waffleio/waffle.io
https://waffle.io/waffleio/waffle.io
[+] [-] cronix|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mch82|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tunnuz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gk1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevinyun|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwr|7 years ago|reply
In discussions, I ask customers to imagine which of the possible outcomes of a VC-funded startup would be good for them as customers (hint: none of the possible outcomes are good for customers, with the possible exception of a rare unicorn IPO).
My problem is that VC-funded startups have money to burn, so they artificially lower subscription software pricing.
[+] [-] ddebernardy|7 years ago|reply
It's also faster time to market, because they're able to field entire teams of engineers to deliver what your tiny team is working on much faster. And they can do a lot more content marketing and advertisement that you've no time or budget to get done.
And then when they run out of money they post a blog post on a Friday morning to announce that you need to get your data out of their system by the end of the day. (Edit: in this case 2 months.)
On an off topic note, your site's FAQ says:
> So is this a one-man operation?
> Yes, for the moment it is. Which is actually a good thing, if you're concerned about viability. This means that there are no investors, no burn rate to speak of, no need to shut the company down because the money ran out. It is a mature, long-term project.
FYI my own concern as a buyer would be what happens if you get hit by a bus. You really need to get some kind of partner, or an employee the moment you can afford one.
[+] [-] rsyring|7 years ago|reply
https://www.zenhub.com/
I specifically like that it gives us estimates and a Kanban board approach. I also like that they are thinking about the project management workflow as a whole and trying to educate:
- https://www.zenhub.com/book/github-project-management
- https://www.zenhub.com/github-project-management.pdf
It's not perfect, but it's been serving our needs better than Redmine used to and GitHub alone was doing.
No affiliation, just a mostly satisfied customer.
[+] [-] aupright|7 years ago|reply
While Waffle and ZenHub are competing products in a way, we both share similar views on the importance of project management being developer-first. It's been a fun journey building in the space along side Waffle and we continue to remain excited about the future of project management in GitHub!
If anyone is interested, you can check out ZenHub here: https://www.zenhub.com/
[+] [-] ndarilek|7 years ago|reply
Not upset, just frustrated that I couldn't do my job, and I wish you'd done some basic accessibility testing on your interface. If that's a gap in your development staff, I'm currently looking for work. Just sayin'. :)
In any case, kudos for creating a quality product that folks I respect enjoy using. I hope that one day I can be among them.
[+] [-] fouc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revskill|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blackrobot|7 years ago|reply
I would migrate to github projects, but last I'd checked some key features were missing from github projects:
1. New issues are added to the backlog column by default.
2. Epics, or anything that allows one issue to have multiple sub-issues.
3. The ability to label one issue as blocking another by using keywords, eg: blocks #123 or requires #321.
Is there a simple way of solving these with probot or github actions?
[probot]: https://probot.github.io
[github actions]: https://github.com/features/actions
[+] [-] sevilo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcarmo|7 years ago|reply
Kudos.
[+] [-] bdcravens|7 years ago|reply
(though a simple export to CSV would be better than what most companies do)
[+] [-] rurban|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corprew|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoofusOfDeath|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stblack|7 years ago|reply
We used one view that made issues from four repos appear as one.
This is a feature I'll really miss.
What other product does this? Looking for something.
[+] [-] aupright|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikAugust|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshimmin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Larrikin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaq|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsimms|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrborgen|7 years ago|reply
Always sad to see good products shutting down. Also a bit frightening as I'm about to enter this same market, hehe.
I want to mention what we're building in case anyone looks for alternatives in this thread.
It's called GitSpeak and it's a project management tool which prioritizes developers first. Our goal is to create a PM tool that devs actually enjoy working with, and which saves them time rather than eat time.
Some of our features include multi-repo views, boards, a rich text editor and a neat screencasting option for code reviews, docs, and onboarding. Plus, we are going to be the fastest one out there (we're using Imba.io to build the tool btw).
Check it out here if you're interested:
https://gitspeak.com/
[+] [-] mathrawka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3into10power5|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JMTQp8lwXL|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ken|7 years ago|reply
I'm actually much more concerned about GitHub itself. I still haven't found a good way to back up my Issues. They used to point to joeyh's Haskell program, which is neat but has many severe limitations (like: doesn't support private repos at all). Their current recommendation seems to be a third-party service called "BackHub", whose cheapest plan is more expensive than GitHub Pro.
[+] [-] DoofusOfDeath|7 years ago|reply
I've also been on the other side of things, working for such companies. I've always felt a bit of unease knowing that prospective customers may be taking on more risk than our salespeople were letting on.
[+] [-] bachmeier|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tedunangst|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forkLding|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikofeyn|7 years ago|reply