Success = F(#Iterations)
#Iterations = Runway / Speed of each iteration
Runway = Cash on hand / Burn rate
Then things are looking quite good for this team if they can continue to build, validate, and iterate this quickly with the new project they are pursuing (Assuming they didn't spend their Start Fund money on hookers and blow in the past 9 days).
I know people who, if they were for example taking a long cross-country trip, would split up gas, hotels, meals, etc., down to the penny. I even heard of somebody who hounded one of his friends for $1.72 after the trip was over. This app sounds perfect for them. Still, I can't believe there's much of a market for them, since anybody who's cheap enough to care about $1.72 from a friend would never pay for this sort of app in the first place.
Exactly my thoughts: nobody that cares enough about exactly splitting bills is going to pay for an app like this. There is the alternative, that has always served me well, called 'pen and paper' that is faster and easier to access. And as long as you don't care about a few $ up or down, sharing expenses is incredibly easy.
Even Microsoft started small. What PG likes to say is: YC is looking for startups building the next BASIC interpreter for the Altair (which was almost as obscure then as it is now.) Something minimally useful in or adjacent to a market that's going to explode, and started by determined/smart founders.
Pretty sure pg said somewhere that it's a fool's game searching for the next Microsoft, because to get that you need another company to bend over at the right time to be the next IBM. I doubt YC has ever been expecting that.
Not sure if private beta ever launched. I signed up for TestFlight and to try the app out, and still haven't, to this day, received an opportunity to try it.
I was looking forward to this though. Sad to see it go.
And I just recommended this to a family member about a week ago :(
This scenario happens on family vacations all the time. If you've ever gone on vacation and rented a big house for 3-4 families, you end up having to split the grocery bill, dinner bills, group activities; it's a huge pain, everyone has to always keep cash on them to divide the cost right away or people forget.
Protip: keep an envelope of pre-split money. Anytime money is added to it, every contributor adds an equal amount (or whatever agreed-upon proportion). Money can then be spent from the envelope without splitting.
Also useful on long road trips where gas money is being split.
The way to do this is to start a kitty upfront into which everyone places $X and all group spending comes from there, no-one pays for anything in common individually. Every time it runs low, everyone puts in the same again. Anything left over at the end you blow on booze and/or give to charity.
I've got all the parts of a good postmortem post floating around in my head. Unfortunately, it's probably going to have to wait a few weeks while we tackle our new product.
I, to this day, believe the whole thing was a test to garner interest. The screenshots on the website look like photoshop mockups of what the app could look like.
I've yet to see an actual video demo of the app working, and i've yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
When I've needed to do this, I've used a spreadsheet (with some sophisticated conditionals to get a net "you owe" matrix for each person in the group based on a list of shared expenses paid for by different people.
In other words, it isn't a startup IMHO - certainly not something I would pay money for.
I should put the spreadsheet on Google Docs Templates I guess.
"One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating."
"I like Paul Buchheit's suggestion of trying to make something that at least someone really loves. As long as you've made something that a few users are ecstatic about, you're on the right track. It will be good for your morale to have even a handful of users who really love you, and startups run on morale. But also it will tell you what to focus on. What is it about you that they love? Can you do more of that? Where can you find more people who love that sort of thing? As long as you have some core of users who love you, all you have to do is expand it. It may take a while, but as long as you keep plugging away, you'll win in the end. Both Blogger and Delicious did that. Both took years to succeed. But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all Evan and Joshua had to do was grow that core incrementally. Wufoo is on the same trajectory now."
Wow, that's remarkably similar to website I thinking of making... It was going to just keep track of who owed you what, and what you owed to who. The splitting app on top of it would make it even better.
I'm surprised this didn't take off at all.
(If anyone wants to steal my idea, don't feel bad. I rarely get around to them. And I want the app. lol)
I built it in mid 2008 to help the flat I was living in split bills. It worked well for us, as we were all geeks and were used to using web apps for everyday tasks.
I don't think anyone uses it, but it's been running for 3 years now.
[+] [-] dtran|14 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/03/cash-is-not-kin...
[+] [-] LargeWu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Confusion|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keeptrying|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dstein|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalvin|14 years ago|reply
See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934374
[+] [-] archangel_one|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keeran|14 years ago|reply
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2724933
So a great offer for the other project or a well thought out early fold?
[+] [-] Shenglong|14 years ago|reply
I was looking forward to this though. Sad to see it go.
[+] [-] swanson|14 years ago|reply
This scenario happens on family vacations all the time. If you've ever gone on vacation and rented a big house for 3-4 families, you end up having to split the grocery bill, dinner bills, group activities; it's a huge pain, everyone has to always keep cash on them to divide the cost right away or people forget.
[+] [-] blahedo|14 years ago|reply
Also useful on long road trips where gas money is being split.
[+] [-] ams6110|14 years ago|reply
A mistake you will make only once, believe me. Everyone paying his own way UP FRONT is the only way to make these sorts of things work.
[+] [-] gaius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angryasian|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sean_lynch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timerickson|14 years ago|reply
I've yet to see an actual video demo of the app working, and i've yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
[+] [-] dotBen|14 years ago|reply
In other words, it isn't a startup IMHO - certainly not something I would pay money for.
I should put the spreadsheet on Google Docs Templates I guess.
[+] [-] streptomycin|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shuttlebrad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tilt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkitaip|14 years ago|reply
Seems they recognized a better opportunity.
[+] [-] xyzzyz|14 years ago|reply
On a side note, the problem of shuffling debts among a group of people, so that the total amount of checks written is minimized, is NP-complete.
[+] [-] patrickmandia|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forgingahead|14 years ago|reply
http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
[+] [-] guildchatter|14 years ago|reply
I especially liked these two sections:
"One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and humiliating."
"I like Paul Buchheit's suggestion of trying to make something that at least someone really loves. As long as you've made something that a few users are ecstatic about, you're on the right track. It will be good for your morale to have even a handful of users who really love you, and startups run on morale. But also it will tell you what to focus on. What is it about you that they love? Can you do more of that? Where can you find more people who love that sort of thing? As long as you have some core of users who love you, all you have to do is expand it. It may take a while, but as long as you keep plugging away, you'll win in the end. Both Blogger and Delicious did that. Both took years to succeed. But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and all Evan and Joshua had to do was grow that core incrementally. Wufoo is on the same trajectory now."
=]
[+] [-] anilv|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|14 years ago|reply
I'm surprised this didn't take off at all.
(If anyone wants to steal my idea, don't feel bad. I rarely get around to them. And I want the app. lol)
[+] [-] shuttlebrad|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samdalton|14 years ago|reply
I built it in mid 2008 to help the flat I was living in split bills. It worked well for us, as we were all geeks and were used to using web apps for everyday tasks.
I don't think anyone uses it, but it's been running for 3 years now.