Is there any reason you can't just leave current the product as-is and keep running it on autopilot, with the only expenses being hosting and the occasional security vulnerability mitigations?
You mention you had 100K users - I'm assuming those are paying users. Could they not keep using the product (especially if they've already onboarded)? Or are there significant ongoing costs beyond hosting?
Products don't run themselves. Software must be upgraded because of security patches; if you don't keep up, after a while you can't because of skew. Customers require support when stuff goes wrong. Infrastructure changes from underneath you. SDKs change all the time. The law itself changes what is allowed or what is required.
> You mention you had 100K users - I'm assuming those are paying users
Definitely not. A company of that size with 100K paying users (so like $10M+ ARR) would be considered wildly successful. In their case it was probably a tiny tiny fraction of that.
One of the things I appreciated about Friday was the information you all provided about remote work, and the book you wrote named "The Anywhere Operating System"[0].
Would you be willing to keep the information you provided up as a statically hosted website so that the knowledge is not lost to the ether of the internet, accessible only via archive.org[1]?
I knew we needed to build a suite of tooling, as our goal was to be a "hub" for the most important stuff at work. In retrospect, we built too much product.
If I start another company, I will spend all my time focused on solving a very big pain-point with a few simple product.
With Friday, I wanted to keep the product simple, but the people we talked to always were talking about the "yet another tool problem" - so there was a desire to consolidate. How I interpreted this was that we needed to build the "suite" vs. spending all our time on one feature.
I could go on and on about what I would do differently, but I'm thankful for the opportunity and have learned a lot that will (hopefully) make me more effective in the future :)
You mentioned in your post that your primary reason for shutting down was that you didn't find sufficient evidence that your product/service was meeting the needs of your users. Was there also pressure from investors to shut down due to this lack of evidence, or was this a personal decision made based on your principles?
I made the decision after a lot of reflection. We still had ~6 months of runway so I could have spent more time "pivoting" around.
The issue was that what I was hearing from prospects, customers, users signaled a bigger issue that could not be solved with a product tweak or two.
At the end of the day, I felt like the story I would need to tell a future investor (and new/existing employees) would increasingly become disconnected from the reality I was experiencing talking to customers/users.
I didn't feel at peace about it at all. I considered it to be a form of lying.
Nextgrid|3 years ago
You mention you had 100K users - I'm assuming those are paying users. Could they not keep using the product (especially if they've already onboarded)? Or are there significant ongoing costs beyond hosting?
kansface|3 years ago
paxys|3 years ago
Definitely not. A company of that size with 100K paying users (so like $10M+ ARR) would be considered wildly successful. In their case it was probably a tiny tiny fraction of that.
eps|3 years ago
Not needing to tend to a project you no longer find interesting (or view as a failure) is very liberating.
Dangeranger|3 years ago
Would you be willing to keep the information you provided up as a statically hosted website so that the knowledge is not lost to the ether of the internet, accessible only via archive.org[1]?
[0] https://friday.app/anywhere
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220107125929/https://friday.ap...
lukethomas|3 years ago
newusertoday|3 years ago
trustfundbaby|3 years ago
mkmk|3 years ago
lukethomas|3 years ago
If I start another company, I will spend all my time focused on solving a very big pain-point with a few simple product.
With Friday, I wanted to keep the product simple, but the people we talked to always were talking about the "yet another tool problem" - so there was a desire to consolidate. How I interpreted this was that we needed to build the "suite" vs. spending all our time on one feature.
I could go on and on about what I would do differently, but I'm thankful for the opportunity and have learned a lot that will (hopefully) make me more effective in the future :)
Dangeranger|3 years ago
Thank you for your consideration.
lukethomas|3 years ago
The issue was that what I was hearing from prospects, customers, users signaled a bigger issue that could not be solved with a product tweak or two.
At the end of the day, I felt like the story I would need to tell a future investor (and new/existing employees) would increasingly become disconnected from the reality I was experiencing talking to customers/users.
I didn't feel at peace about it at all. I considered it to be a form of lying.
olah_1|3 years ago
Was it difficult to advertise specifically to this audience?
smt88|3 years ago
I've learned what Friday is at least 5 times and still can't remember.
victor_e|3 years ago
hiimshort|3 years ago
Is all of the code being thrown away?
altdataseller|3 years ago
nathancahill|3 years ago
dbbk|3 years ago
lukethomas|3 years ago
eatonphil|3 years ago