

The Jellyfish Entrepreneur - aandon
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47035579568/the-jellyfish-entrepreneur

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lubujackson
Congrats to this business for forging ahead with someone no one else was
daring to do. But I do have a bit of an ethical dilemma with the lean startup
concept of setting up AdWords to sell something that doesn't yet exist.
Especially something like a $25k installation in a restaurant that seems to
have turned into a total trainwreck (spilled tank, "other minor problems,"
then ultimately abandoning jellyfish altogether).

I don't know what the solution should be. Is it on the restaurant to do their
own due diligence here? Or should he be (and maybe he was!) upfront about the
lack of expertise and do the initial install for minimal profit?

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lightup88
I agree that actually taking the contract is problematic, but I love the idea
of using AdWords as market research and validation. Maybe not revolutionary,
but I've never seen such a cool example (a market that essentially didn't
exist).

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biot
This is a technique that goes back decades. Put an ad in the classifieds
section of newspapers advertising a product for $X plus $Y shipping and
handling. Send a check to P.O. Box 12345, New York, NY and wait 6 - 8 weeks
for delivery. If the number of orders weren't sufficient, return all the
checks saying "Sorry, we sold out." If there are sufficient orders, the 6 - 8
weeks gives you enough lead time to procure the product from suppliers and
fulfill the orders.

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jrabone
Hmmm. I don't know where they are in terms of sentience, but I kinda feel
sorry for the jellyfish. It's the main reason I don't keep pets of any sort,
but particularly fish. I love aquaria, but even the truly huge ones don't seem
large enough - take the Lisbon Oceanário for example - hard not to feel sorry
for that one Sunfish (maybe a metre across) just swimming in circles around a
huge cylindrical tank.

Keeping cephalapods would be a great engineering challenge, in terms of what's
necessary to make a viable habitat, but it seems so cruel given their apparent
intelligence. Perhaps these things shouldn't be cheap?

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aandon
I'm a big environmentalist and supporter of animal rights. I originally wanted
to be a marine biologist when I graduated college.

But I don't think keeping jellyfish in captivity is unethical. They're
somewhere between a goldfish and a houseplant in terms of sentience. They have
no central nervous system; just a loosely connected net of nerves that control
their muscle contractions and very simple senses, like swimming towards light
and migrating up in the water column at night and down during the day.

I would argue that it definitely is unethical to keep cephalapods in captivity
unless they have a big tank and some sort of stimulation.

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MartinCron
It's not only unethical for most people to keep cephalapods, but it's just a
bad idea. They tend to escape from their habitats, some of them are extremely
toxic, and almost all of them are very short-lived.

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yosho
I have the Jellyfish tank and it's pretty cool, however, all the Jellyfish
died after about a month. They were too hard to find, get caught up in the
rocks a lot, and feeding was a pain. However, we still have the tank and use
it to hold tropical fish now.

I would suggest that they go into the tank business and focus on unique
designs, that's a scalable business with a big market. I wouldn't buy the
Jellyfish again, but if they had another interesting tank, I would get that.

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brandnewlow
I heard once that Airbnb thought the "breakfast" in Airbed and Breakfast was a
crucial element of the experience for the first year or so. It took them
awhile to realize no one cared about the breakfast.

Perhaps the Jellyfish aren't the crucial piece of the experience for Jellyfish
Art? With your anecdote plus the story about the restaurant keeping the tank
and using it for fish, perhaps there's something there.

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GFischer
Tanks with cool neon lights and more design?

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kapsel
I bought one of these, their latest ones, from a German company about a half
year ago. It arrived, I followed the instructions and got it up and running
within a couple of hours.

It takes at least a couple of weeks to settle, with the added reef salt and
everything. Then I was going to purchase jellyfish - and found out that they
actually cost more than 50$ a piece, because of overnight shipping (from
Germany, I live in Denmark).

So I started doing some research on the tank, and read about 5 horror stories
about how they always died within 3 days, even after following instructions
very accurately.

I later emptied the tank, and now it's sitting in the attic.

Build quality is decent, but not perfect. After sitting still for about 3
months, the top lid started bending/skewing quite a lot, now it almost doesn't
fit anymore. It's also quite noisy, not something that you'd like to sleep in
the same room as.

If anyone wants a jellyfish tank where the jellyfish apparently dies within a
couple of days, I have a cheap one for pickup here in Copenhagen.

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aandon
I'm really sorry to hear about your disappointing experience with the tank. We
can set you up with some suppliers in Europe that you might not have tried
yet. The jellies definitely should not die within a few days! If you want to
email us I'll make sure you get taken care of.

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MatthewB
Congrats to Jellyfish Art. I saw one sitting in my neighbor's window about a
year and a half ago and was immediately in awe.

On a separate note, I'm always excited when I see a new blog post from
priceonomics. They always choose super interesting topics, do a ton of
research, and express the info in a succinct way. Good stuff.

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ph0rque
Great article, Mr. Andon. We at AutoMicroFarm are in a very similar boat, as
you know.

It's fascinating that the barrier to further growth is breeding jellyfish to
fill the demand of a cheaper aquarium, once it's released to market. Is Jelly
Fish Art (the company) focused on researching the science of scaling the
process? Have you looked into selling other exotic aquatic animals that fit
the aquarium you've developed?

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aandon
Hey guys, I'm a big fan of AutoMicroFarm. I hope it's going well. Indeed it's
a small business, but all our development effort is going towards breeding
jellies in a scalable manner. Unfortunately there are inherent lead times
because we're dealing with a living animal, but we're patient. Yes, we looked
into other exotic animals, but it would be as off-brand and out of our
expertise as trying to build a database for dog and cat buyers, so we haven't
pursued anything else.

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nick007
I own one of their modest desktop tanks -- what an awesome piece of
craftsmanship. Feels like it was made by Apple.

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sheri
>The supply chain worked this way for a year. Then one day, the tropical
supplier went to his jellyfish catching spot and couldn’t catch a single one.
All of them were gone. Every week he checked out the same spot, but every week
he went home empty-handed.

This is simply unacceptable. His achievement at the expense of local fauna is
not to be applauded, but condemned. Regardless of whether jellyfish feel pain,
exploiting nature is such destructive ways is simply ridiculous in this day
and age.

Sad that so many comments here completely overlooked this, and focused solely
on success at any cost.

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DoubleCluster
Do you have any idea in what amounts jellyfish usually appear? Probably the
weather changed and they moved off, or died due to changing seasons etc.

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agent462
I'm a long time reef keeper so I instantly jumped on this with the kickstarter
campaign. Like many that bought this tank they were littered with issues and
flaws in the design that sent the jellyfish to their death.

I consider my reefing keeping ability as advanced with a 220 gallon main
display. This tank was also advertised for beginners. As someone who
understands the ecosystem, how to mix the salt/water and test for common
parameters I would highly discourage this tank and jellies to beginners.

This tank had too many issues.

There are competitors: <http://www.moonjellyfish.com/products/eon-jellyfish-
system> <http://www.cubicaquarium.com/product-jellyfish-aquarium.php>
<http://sunsetmarinelabs.com/>

They may cost more but the reviews are much better.

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moultano
Is it at all plausible to set up a tank with jellies that breed and sustain
their numbers? I'm remembering a friend's fish tank that was perennially full
of snails, because the snails laid eggs on the walls of the tank much faster
than they died out.

Could the jellies be captured and shipped in polyp form to cut down on the
cost?

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kanamekun
There's a great interview with Jellyfish Art on Mixergy from November 2011,
with a lot more detail on their pre-YC history: <http://mixergy.com/andon-
jellyfish-art-interview/>

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beneth
Cool product!

1 quick suggestion: on your sales page food is listed in ounces. I think it
would be more helpful and may increase conversions with impulse buyers to list
that as "X months of food".

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realdlee
Great blog post (as usual from Priceonomics). I'm sure many people (myself
included) would become Jellyfish Art customers once Alex can nail the lower
price point.

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6ren
One great strength here is the _smallness_ of market. Easy to dominate.
Unattractive to large competitors.

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caseyf7
Did you write a blog post about living in a van in SF? I see people doing this
and I've always been curious about it. I would love to hear what that was
like.

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shloime
Really fantastic article. We sell the tank on Outgrow.me and have only
received positive feedback from our customers thus far.

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up_and_up
> Alex made the sale, but now he had a problem: he had to deliver on the tank
> he promised. Alex had a general understanding of jellyfish tank construction
> based on googling around and talking to experts, but he didn’t have enough
> expertise to deliver the product.

Daring and a bit crazy.

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elliotanderson
I've had a tank on my wish list since I first saw it on Kickstarter.

Sadly, we only have one distributor in Australia and they mark the price up
110% for just a basic tank setup. There's an untapped market over here, only
problem is in the distribution channel.

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spo81rty
This is such a great story and example to others that there are a million ways
to make money.

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orangethirty
What type of e-commerce platform are they using?

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stove
Looks like it's just Stripe without any CMS-type platform

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orangethirty
Cool, thanks. I know they were using another platform before, but that one was
full of security holes. Another win for stripe. (:

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yoster
Great article! I have been a small entrepreneur myself from time to time. I am
currently working on something in the tiny scale, and would like to one day do
the same thing on that type of scale.

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carsongross
"Then they can lower their prices grow again."

That would be deflationary and, as we all know, deflation is the worst
possible thing that could happen, ever.

(Great story on true entrepreneurship in action and, in particular, the focus
on lowering, lowering, lowering costs and bringing more to more people.)

