
Killing Your Startup on a Thursday Night - sethbannon
http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/28/killing-your-startup-on-a-thursday-night/
======
andreasklinger
Fascinating how many people make very strong judgements about his life, story,
product and decision with a very shallow level of information.

It's a bit sad to see. Especially because i believe that many people here know
(or should know) how complex these topics are.

In my opinion great article. Thanks for sharing that honestly.

~~~
dageshi
I can only give this comment one upvote, I wish I could give it more. When
you've got no outside funding and you're keeping your idea alive though sheer
will power then eventually it grinds you down. Most startups fail, my guess is
that this guy finally came to the conclusion that there were a number of
problems which he no longer had the energy or cash to solve, I'm sure he
gained a lot of insight from the process even if he can't quite bring that to
bear just yet.

I wish him luck and wholeheartedly thank him for making that post.

~~~
hknozcan
The level of honesty in the post is touching. Figuring out the right time to
quit is as important as starting up. However, lack of outside funding
especially after he looked for it might also be a sign that either the idea or
the was he handled the business so far is not viable. 1000 tickets over that
much time does not seem impressive. Again, inspiring post.

~~~
brc
I'd say the low ticket sales coupled with scalability problems was probably
the thing that brought about the end - possibly a surmountable problem, but
one that takes a lot more time and capital.

(ie, each showing requires staff at the very least to collect tickets - he
makes reference to smoking and drinking with the bar staff).

That's the sort of problem that, if you come across it, and you're already low
on energy + resources, is enough to finish it off.

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cletus
Two problems I see. The first is:

> I still had a job, which made everything near impossible, that I couldn’t
> afford to quit. I worked during the day as a report writer, snuck in emails
> and business calls for Altsie over my lunch, and worked late into the night
> to take care of hundreds of necessary details to keep the project going.

combined with

> Despite my downward physical spiral, I managed to marry the love of my life

I appreciate that people have lives too but you just can't do two jobs and
have a personal life. Sorry. Something has to give. I've read many tales of
where having _just_ the startup has put a strain on personal relationships.

I wonder what the situation was with the cofounders. How many were there? Were
they full-time? If so, that could be a problem (in that they might end up
feeling that they've gone "all in" when you haven't).

> Two years building and eight months running Altsie took its toll.

Two years to launch? i wonder how much quicker it would've been to launch if
it had full-time resources. For something that isn't hugely technically
sophisticated (correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't sound like that kind
of startup) that is (IMHO) too long. People talk about MVPs for a reason. You
need to prove your idea and get feedback ASAP.

Whatever the case, eight months doesn't seem long enough to prove anything one
way or the other.

I don't mean to be harsh so I apologize if it comes across that way. Lucas,
good luck to you. I would suggest that when you wish to try your next venture
(assuming you do), you do so when you can dedicate it to yourself full-time.

~~~
peteretep
> I appreciate that people have lives too but you just can't do two jobs and
> have a personal life.

Sure you can. You just have to work at it, and get organized. For the last 2
and a half years, I've worked a 9-5 contracting gig, been CTO at a startup
with major blue-chip clients, gotten married, learned to drive, released some
open-source software, prototyped some software for another startup, and
completed the first third of an MSc at a well-known university. Also I finally
got my shit together, and lost a lot of weight.

 _And_ I often feel like I waste a lot of my time.

Is it easy? It's not that hard (or I wouldn't be doing it). You just need to
be organized... I gave up drinking alcohol, which meant I don't lose precious
hours to hangovers. My wife is also pretty busy, but we carve out two evenings
a week and a whole day of weekend to just spend with each other (and often
with friends), and that works well. I think the trick is to be _really strict_
about when you're working and when you're not working. Email by default only
flashes up on my phone when it has the word 'urgent' added to the subject.

The amount people big-talk here about burning their bridges, full commitment,
etc etc, I get the idea that everyone else is working their fingers to the
bone, and I just don't feel that busy. I'm pretty tired by Friday night, but a
lie-in until 8am on Saturday sorts me out. I don't think it'll work when I
have kids, and I wouldn't want to do it forever, but it's certainly doable.

~~~
gallamine
> You just need to be organized

Putting _just_ inside of a sentence doesn't suddenly make it easier. "It's
easy, you _just_ have to learn linear algebra". "It's easy, you _just_ have to
sleep less."

People's ability to organize seems to be part learned and part innate. You
should count yourself blessed that the organization is _just_ that easy for
you :)

~~~
peteretep
I am fairly sure the discussion centered around "is it possible", rather than
"is it easy". No, it's not easy. I am surprised you came away thinking it
might be.

~~~
aidenn0
Maybe because you said "It's not that hard (or I wouldn't be doing it)."

The ability of people to be organized (whether it is learned or innate) is
widely varying, so it is reasonable to assume that the step "just be
organized" is going to have a wide range of difficulties depending on the
person.

------
bmelton
Maybe it's just me, but wouldn't you email your co-founders and have that
discussion _before_ you start closing down accounts and making the move
completely permanent?

Perhaps one of them has an idea to cut costs, or would like to open source the
code, or can line up a buyer for the assets, or ... _something_.

Telling your stakeholders/investors/cofounders after you've pulled the trigger
seems like the exact backwards way to do it.

~~~
jabbernotty
I don't get why this one founder would be closing everything down on his own
either, but then I didn't find any mention of co-founders or even co-workers
in the story. He only mentioned that he didn't know how to ask for help. What
kind of 'co-founders' were these co-founders?

~~~
citricsquid
Probably arbitrary "I can't do it alone" co-founders. I don't know anything
about the startup listed in the post but I see quite a few people on reddit
asking for co-founders as if someone that doesn't really care about your
startup but hangs around is better than focusing on it alone.

------
joshmlewis
To me it sounded like the guy had a good idea, it was slow growing but it was
also not his main focus. He had paying customers, distributors, and producers
using his service, it had roots. It may not have been worthwhile in his eyes
to keep up, but to me it seemed like he had a good idea, good people behind
it, he just needed to keep going a little while longer. Did he give up too
early right when things seemed to be at the end? I guess we'll never know.
Startups _are_ hard. If it was easy everyone would do it. Not to downplay this
guys dedication, it seemed he had a lot, but 3 years of working full time and
growing a startup, that seems like it would take a toll on anyone. I guess
everyone can't just take a leap and quit their job, but something has to give
I feel. When you're starting a company it absolutely needs at least one
persons complete focus.

~~~
underwater
I wonder if he tried to change how he operated before he shut up. It sounds
like something that would be very easy to franchise. He sources the
distributors and finds a passionate person in each city (lots of people love
indie films; so this should be easy) to run the actual events. He can then
take a percentage of their profits without having a massive workload he can't
handle.

~~~
bigiain
"He can then take a percentage of their profits"…

I think that is likely to be the problem. I think this is a great idea too,
_BUT_ I've seen a few attempts to start up "indie movies in bars" type things
here (in Sydney .au), and you seem to either get reasonable attendance numbers
at free (or "donation requested") nights, or almost nobody showing up to show
charging admission (even if it's as low as $5).

Between the film distributor, the venue, and the organiser - there's very
little profit to be made anyway. Adding another person wanting a cut into the
chain leaves even less money for each person's share, and I'm not sure a
website (no matter how slick or well designed) adds enough value for the
distributor/venue/organiser to want to give up some of their meager earnings.

I think this is much more a hyper-local marketing/advertising problem than
anything a national-scale website can offer. The bottleneck is the venues, and
the venues are only going to be interested on nights they're not already busy
(or busy enough), which means you're only going to get Monday or Tuesday
nights (or possibly Sundays). From my experience - that means you mostly only
get "locals" showing up - it seems nobody wants to drive halfway across town
on a Monday night to go to a bar and see a movie - back when one of my local
bars was doing this (Jay Katz and Miss Death doing Monday nights at The
Annandale), I'd guess more people turned up on foot or by bicycle than in
cars. When your target customer is defined by "lives within 15 minutes walk of
the venue", multi-city focused websites seem a lot less useful - I'd be
concentrating my efforts on social media and posters/flyers placed
appropriately around the venue...

(But maybe I'm wrong, I'd love it if somebody found a great angle, and make a
huge success out of this idea… Once you reached critical mass with it, it'd be
wonderful to expect to be able to hit the "cool indie movies in bars" website
and find something interesting and fun to do on a Monday night in Melbourne or
Portland or Vancouver or Berlin…)

~~~
underwater
His model reminded me more of the pub trivia scene rather than an alternative
to brick and mortar cinemas. If his percentages were low enough then he could
make this a decent business by having educated locals spend a few days a month
promoting and running this in dozens of cities.

That all assumes his fixed costs are low enough that he could let the business
run like this while he continues he day job. This might not be the case
though.

~~~
bigiain
I guess my question is - what are those "educated locals" getting in return
for his cut?

~~~
underwater
Uh, I meant to type "motivated locals". Autocorrect strikes again.

There are three parts to his business: the brand, his connections with indy
film publishers, and the event organisation. From the sounds of it the later
is what is taking most of his time and energy, but that's also the part that
is has nothing to do with what makes his business unique. There are thousands
of people who can organise an event. Many probably do it better than him.

The value of his business is in the brand and connections. His business
doesn't even support one person's wage with three cities so a single location
franchisee would have to be a hobbyist. Such a person has no time to be
organizing the rights for screenings, designing and printing flyers or
maintaining a website. For the franchisee, the chance to make a bit of pocket
money doing something they're passionate about as a socializing film-lover,
and to have Lucas handle the rest of the organization.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm struck by two things in this story, the expectations Lucas started with,
and the lessons learned (or not).

Lucas says "I put three years of my life into building and running Altsie,..."
... "As we approached launch last May" and "Two years building and eight
months running "

What are the expectations on a business where you are looking for people to
integrate a new thing (going to a bar to catch an indie movie) into their
lifestyle? A week? A month? a year? five years? If you look at the restaurant
business most seem to require a 3 year 'boot' cycle, the first year nobody
knows about them but perhaps the local food critic trys them. The second year
they have some foot traffic and perhaps they get written up in a more widely
distributed guide, then the third year they have people coming who have read
about them in the guide or found them on their phone's 'maps' product and they
get to see how successful they are going to be. I can't imagine that any idea
which requires people to change their behaviors in the real world could really
be tested in less than a year.

The other thing that was sad to read was this bit, _"I’d signed up to fight on
the front lines. I still had a job, which made everything near impossible,
that I couldn’t afford to quit. I worked during the day as a report writer,
snuck in emails and business calls for Altsie over my lunch, and worked late
into the night to take care of hundreds of necessary details to keep the
project going."_

There is a reason YC and others ask you to quit your job if you're doing a
startup. There isn't a lot of excess time. If you have a spouse or partner who
can bring in enough income to pay the bills and maybe health care that is one
thing, but being both the 'stable income source' and the primary mover of the
new venture? Not a good idea as Lucas discovered.

Now the most important thing to do is to capture all of the things you learned
into something you can use in the future. What worked? What didn't work? How
did you spend your time, could you have out sourced any of that? What were
your costs and how did you evaluate the business? What variables did you guess
at? Did you guess high or low? People who have been through the ringer are
twice as valuable as people who haven't done it yet because they have a better
idea of what they _need_ to know to make forward progress.

I hope that Lucas' next venture is a lot less stressful on his health/psyche
and much more satisfying overall.

------
arbuge
He has my full respect, not just for what he tried to do but also for writing
this post. One can only wonder how many unwritten stories like this there are
out there - most people who give up don't blog about it. People would probably
be better served by getting a full picture of the startup scene, including
stories of some of the failures besides the successes, but there's a natural
survivorship bias which happens instead.

------
Joeboy
> Altsie was a new, live theater market for the growing pool of independent
> films that don’t make it to the big box theaters. We basically turned bars
> into movie houses, with all the infrastructure (business profiles, showtime
> dashboards, and ticketing) housed on the web

I have no idea how good a business idea that is (I guess not such a great
one), but it sounds like a great idea and I wish something like it could be
successful. In my moderately sized UK city it's impossible or very difficult
to see a large proportion of new releases on a big screen.

~~~
potatolicious
Sadly, a lot (most?) of great ideas won't ever be viable businesses. I'd very
much like to see this idea happen also, but I also suspect there are some very
firm reasons why the indie film scene is only truly active in a few cities
around the world.

------
davedx
I like reading these articles, especially when they're not pure software
startups. It's incredibly hard to make the decision to cut your losses and
fold. But you can always try again. (In fact, accepted startup wisdom says you
should try, and try, again).

------
advertising
Some of the things I can relate to:

Definitely identify with gaining weight. It's brutal how quickly you can fall
out of shape.

After playing basketball 6 times a week since college I barely get out once
every three months. I'm 30 now and feel 40.

Aside from the up and down roller coaster ride, the hardest part for me has
been balancing a relationship that began at roughly the same time that my co-
founder and I went into business together. I have no idea how you could
possibly balance anything else (like a real job) outside of a startup and a
new relationship for extended period of time.

There are times my relationship has been a distraction to our business. But
well worth the juggling act :)

------
mvip
This was the most refreshing post I've read in a long time.

~~~
jfasi
Agreed. There is much glamour and flash on display on this site that people
seem to forget that failure is what teaches you things, not success.

------
shredfvz
Pretend for a moment it's July 1, 2009, you're Lucas, and you must answer the
following 3 questions correctly, else you might spend the next 3 years chasing
your vision for $0:

1\. What pain does my idea solve? 2\. Does it solve it for a large number of
people? 3\. Just how painful is it for not being solved?

Do you know plenty of people who are in pain because they can't find a venue
to watch an indie flick? Does not being able to find an indie flick at an
appropriate venue eat at their thoughts 24/7? Are they going to go nuts
finding a solution if you don't provide one? How much money would solving this
problem be worth to them?

Admittedly I know diddly about Altsie, and I'm not one for indie flicks, but
let's compare Altsie to Airbnb. Airbnb solves a basic human need: that of
housing. How painful is it when you don't have a house? _Immensely_. How much
money are you willing to pay for a roof over your head? Thousands per year.
How many people are searching for your solution. A shitload. Now replace
housing with "Indie Flick", and objectively recalculate.

After doing so, you might think three years is a long, loooong time
investment, hugely out of proportion to the level of pain Altsie solves, not
to mention the price of solving that pain.

~~~
spindritf
> Do you know plenty of people who are in pain because they can't find a venue
> to watch an indie flick?

Yes, watching an indie flick in any venue is a problem. Distribution of indie
flicks in general is a problem. Shows are usually organized by people from the
production crew traveling from college campus to college campus by van. Many
well-made movies are only shown in a couple of theaters because coordinating a
proper release is beyond the capabilities of a small producer.

Considering you can make a movie with great production value for a million
dollars nowadays, the distribution problem is only going to get more severe.

~~~
arbuge
The indie producers are probably the party in the most acute pain here.

A movie is a couple hours entertainment to the viewers but a livelihood to the
makers...

------
whelps
> Elon Musk said that running a startup was like eating glass and staring into
> the abyss. When I first heard those words they sounded brave and romantic.

I honestly don't think anyone understands what it really feels like to build a
company until you do it. Before I started running my first startup, I thought
that the hardship and mental anguish other people describe was somewhat like
what I already experienced during hard times at other companies. It wasn't.
You pour your heart and soul into a startup and push to the side your physical
health, hobbies, family and basically everything else. Then after a year or
more of doing everything possible to try and succeed, you potentially end up
with nothing. Like Lucas says, you don't really end up with nothing, but it
sure as hell feels like it at the time.

------
jeremyjh
Thanks for writing this up, this was a great article and exactly the kind of
thing that attracts me to hacker news (if not why I sit and F5 it all day).

------
brennenHN
This was a great story and I have a lot of respect for Lucas after reading it,
but there are a few things that I want to notice.

First, Altsie is a pretty awesome idea! I really like the idea of going to a
bar to watch an indie movie, I'm sure producers would love to get their film
shown, and bars want extra customers coming in. This is something that
definitely could have worked.

Second, the technology behind this product is trivial, a 2 year build is a
huge warning sign. I cannot find on the site or in this description anything
that should be hard to put together, and the fact that Lucas spent a few years
building this in his spare time instead of hiring someone to do it in a (few)
week(s) shows a dangerous prioritization of money over time.

Third, it takes a strong presence of mind (or maybe just good communication
with your partner) to realize that what you're doing isn't making you happy.
Kudos on letting it go.

------
jack7890
Any reason this is entirely in italics?

UPDATE: Must have been a bug. It has now been fixed.

~~~
jabbernotty
It makes it feel more personal, giving the impression that it is handwritten.

------
Snapps
that almost felt real... some interesting perspective, no doubt.

------
chris123
Here's a quarter... :)

