When you hear '90% of startups fail', failing usually means they wane.
It's like flying a kite (by someone bad at it). You can run with your kite and make it 'fly' but then you get tired and it falls to the ground. It can be a hundred reasons, it is either a bad/defective kite, it may not be windy enough, or you have to run faster for it to fly.
...and diagnosing the right problem is really hard. Then coming up with the "right"/"better" solution is even harder. Lastly, chances are it was a combination of reasons, and you had to fix more than a few to keep the kite going.
I knew I had heard the names before (I live in Seattle), and I have nothing but nice things to say about this team. It seems they shut down their other venture at the same time:
https://spokely.com/ (there is cert issure your browser will rightly complain about)
The write up does not address anything interesting. It doesn't even say why the company failed. Not enough users? Not enough revenue? Failures of technology? Not worth reading.
The problem here wasn't the premise really. I mean from a premise standpoint (when it launched) Twitter seemed pretty silly. They got over it by simply adapting from status updates to brain dumps and then it really took off.
The problem here was planning.
No one seems to have sat down there and thought it through with: What are we doing? How do we do it? Do we have the means? Do we have the capability? Are we going about this the right way?
"The landing page didn’t work in IE. It was buggy." Did no one open up the page in IE before launch? See what I mean about planning. It's unfortunate because these guys seemed to have cared about their product.
...chef Anthony Bourdain, who wrote our epitaph in Kitchen Confidential: "The most dangerous species of owner ... is the one who gets into the business for love."
Follow up question: Could it be the exact opposite of what you're saying that did us in? Could it be that we spent TOO much time planning, and not enough time actually DOING (which leads to learning?)
This is really interesting. I would love to see what my Co-Founder Chris would say about this. He was a perennial planner, scores through the roof on conscientiousness.
The most interesting question you ask is: "Are we going about this the right way"
That's a question we asked ourselves...A LOT. We never quite found the answer.
How cool would it be if I could recommend a new friend for you to go skiing or golfing with, based on how much overlap you had in common (Friends, Schools, Hobbies, etc). Pretty cool, right?
Doesn't sound cool to me. The most interesting relationships I have are the ones where there is not a huge overlap. They are more interesting.
Really? I lose interest with those I have nothing in common with. For me, there is nothing quite as exhilarating like meeting someone whom you feel is wired the same way you are, whether they are a friend or romantic partner.
I was a Meeteor user, albeit an inactive one -- I don't remember receiving emails engaging me or asking me to come back, so I forgot about it over time. That said, I signed up in the first place because this is indeed a pain point for me and many others I know. At the time, I had just moved to a new city and was having a hard time making friends (basically, I didn't have the balls to attend classes, meetups, etc. by myself) so I saw products like Meeteor as providing a great solution. Even now, I would love to expand my circle of girlfriends but in an industry filled with men, it's been hard to find like-minded females who happen to share similar interests.
I actually relate to you - but when meeting a stranger online, I'd rather have inroads to use to introduce myself than have none and say "we have nothing in common, but would love to chat."
Not trying to be douchy, but am I the only one that doesn't understand why there are so many people trying to redefine social networking and the next big photo sharing app?
Not douchy at all - I sometimes very much feel the same way you do. The vision, as I saw it in 2008, was this:
Social Networkin 1.0 was about connecting with people online, that you had already met in real life. (You added a friend on Facebook, because you already knew them).
The next evolution of Social Networking was about people discovery. IT was about leveraging all that data we had online about ourselves, and our friend graph, to connect with new people based on our needs. Need to connect with someone at Amazon? Need to find a date for next week? Need a new cycling buddy?
Chances are that your new professional contact/date/cycling partner are just a friend away. Manufacturing the serendipity to make you connect with them is what we envisioned.
It's really powerful if you think about it - life comes down to relationships (and I don't mean that in a pure network-y sense).
It's also extremely monetizeable. Dating websites and LinkedIn make their money off of being the gatekeeprs to new relationships. If you can build the platform that is used for all of those contexts - you have the next big thing. (And Facebook just rolled out their attempt at this, which is stumbling with problems of identity and intent, but they'll figure it out hopefully)
Social networking is just an inane buzzword for "communications tool". It's not a solved problem so it's not unreasonable that people are trying to solve it.
The "meeting people" problem is asymmetrical. You have a bunch of people who want to meet new people. Unfortunately the type of people they want to meet already know so many people they are not looking to meet new people. Lots of people want to meet Katy Perry; She's probably a bit tired of people wanting to talk to her. How did you go about addressing this issue?
I met Phil at a chance encounter at Think Coffee in NYC and Mark Cuban happened to be there. In an awkward situation in which everyone was trying to impress Cuban, Phil came off as a genuine and nice guy. Good luck to you on the next thing.
Thanks for the kind words. It was great meeting you!
That was a lot fun - don't get to do that often in your life. Learned a lot from Mark that day, his composure and fluidity in conversation (holding court against three overly eager entrepreneurs) was unbelievable.
Stats were horrible, and happy to share them (vanity metrics, and not):
8,000 Registered Users (Growth was horrible)
+1M people in our database total (after importing friends/connections)
Peak Engagement:
30% MAU
10% WAU
Around 0.5% DAU (I think, this last one I'm less sure about)
Our SXSW Service was the most successful, but still not good enough
:
Signed up 3% of conference goers (As much as Glancee, Highlight signed up 5% of SXSW)
25% of our SXSW users logged in 3 or more times
20% of our users reached out to their matches.
I'll keep thinking through what other stats I can share.
When working on new concepts of human interactions, may be we need to rely more on social science than technology.
Having a ton of information on people, may not be enough to predict with whom they want to hangout.
I wonder if big companies like Google and Facebook, used focus group and social science before launching g+ and “Graph Search”. I hope they did.
I think branding an idea as '2.0' was your first mistake. Pretty much meeteor was ambitious to innovate a new feature to social networking, but since that ideology is more in my opinion a 'soft' science, I think funding would have been difficult to make it sustainable.
[+] [-] raverbashing|13 years ago|reply
Here's a lesson, (learned personally BTW).
When you hear '90% of startups fail', failing usually means they wane.
It's like flying a kite (by someone bad at it). You can run with your kite and make it 'fly' but then you get tired and it falls to the ground. It can be a hundred reasons, it is either a bad/defective kite, it may not be windy enough, or you have to run faster for it to fly.
[+] [-] andreasklinger|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yajoe|13 years ago|reply
https://spokely.com/ (there is cert issure your browser will rightly complain about)
Found it referenced on this personal brand page: http://brandonhilkert.com/
Best of luck to them and onwards indeed!
[+] [-] parfe|13 years ago|reply
A thank you letter to users is not a post mortem.
[+] [-] flexxaeon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eksith|13 years ago|reply
The problem here was planning.
No one seems to have sat down there and thought it through with: What are we doing? How do we do it? Do we have the means? Do we have the capability? Are we going about this the right way?
"The landing page didn’t work in IE. It was buggy." Did no one open up the page in IE before launch? See what I mean about planning. It's unfortunate because these guys seemed to have cared about their product.
I lifted that from the end of this page: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2005/12/bitt...In a way, that too is an example of poor planning.
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
I'll leave this here: http://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
The most interesting question you ask is: "Are we going about this the right way"
That's a question we asked ourselves...A LOT. We never quite found the answer.
[+] [-] jgrahamc|13 years ago|reply
Doesn't sound cool to me. The most interesting relationships I have are the ones where there is not a huge overlap. They are more interesting.
[+] [-] talisshort|13 years ago|reply
I was a Meeteor user, albeit an inactive one -- I don't remember receiving emails engaging me or asking me to come back, so I forgot about it over time. That said, I signed up in the first place because this is indeed a pain point for me and many others I know. At the time, I had just moved to a new city and was having a hard time making friends (basically, I didn't have the balls to attend classes, meetups, etc. by myself) so I saw products like Meeteor as providing a great solution. Even now, I would love to expand my circle of girlfriends but in an industry filled with men, it's been hard to find like-minded females who happen to share similar interests.
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxmcd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fourmii|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
Social Networkin 1.0 was about connecting with people online, that you had already met in real life. (You added a friend on Facebook, because you already knew them).
The next evolution of Social Networking was about people discovery. IT was about leveraging all that data we had online about ourselves, and our friend graph, to connect with new people based on our needs. Need to connect with someone at Amazon? Need to find a date for next week? Need a new cycling buddy?
Chances are that your new professional contact/date/cycling partner are just a friend away. Manufacturing the serendipity to make you connect with them is what we envisioned.
It's really powerful if you think about it - life comes down to relationships (and I don't mean that in a pure network-y sense).
It's also extremely monetizeable. Dating websites and LinkedIn make their money off of being the gatekeeprs to new relationships. If you can build the platform that is used for all of those contexts - you have the next big thing. (And Facebook just rolled out their attempt at this, which is stumbling with problems of identity and intent, but they'll figure it out hopefully)
[+] [-] bcoates|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dusklight|13 years ago|reply
Did you make at least $1 of profit? Gross?
The "meeting people" problem is asymmetrical. You have a bunch of people who want to meet new people. Unfortunately the type of people they want to meet already know so many people they are not looking to meet new people. Lots of people want to meet Katy Perry; She's probably a bit tired of people wanting to talk to her. How did you go about addressing this issue?
[+] [-] smalter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
That was a lot fun - don't get to do that often in your life. Learned a lot from Mark that day, his composure and fluidity in conversation (holding court against three overly eager entrepreneurs) was unbelievable.
[+] [-] filvdg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply
8,000 Registered Users (Growth was horrible) +1M people in our database total (after importing friends/connections)
Peak Engagement: 30% MAU 10% WAU Around 0.5% DAU (I think, this last one I'm less sure about)
Our SXSW Service was the most successful, but still not good enough : Signed up 3% of conference goers (As much as Glancee, Highlight signed up 5% of SXSW) 25% of our SXSW users logged in 3 or more times 20% of our users reached out to their matches.
I'll keep thinking through what other stats I can share.
[+] [-] desireco42|13 years ago|reply
Sorry founder(s) but no-one apparently cared much about your site. It happens to the best of us.
[+] [-] ddon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] article23|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Vinnix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimWillTri|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robodale|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] whileonebegin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philco|13 years ago|reply