

Ask YC: Advice on shutting down startup - prashantdesale

I and 2 of my friends developed Onista (http://www.onista.com) a while back and we also invested some money (not a whole lot) for hosting and legal bills (like forming corp, patent investigations and all)
We launched it, and somehow we never got to do much on marketing the app so it never picked up (or may be it was a wrong idea to begin with)
At this moment all 3 of us lost the interest and want to shut down Onista to pursue other ideas independently because our time commitments are not same anymore.<p>What are our options?
	- Try to sell Onista? Not sure if we can even do that since there is not much traffic. Don;t even know if we can do this. 
	- Just shutdown servers, dissolve corp and move on?<p>Any advice on what is the best way to move on?<p>Thanks in advance
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robotrout
First, you need to write up a post for HN, detailing what niche it was that
you were trying to fill, some of the obstacles you overcame, and why you think
you failed. It will be educational for you to do it, and for us to read it.

Second, I think you just pull the plug. You can put an announcement on your
homepage, giving your users notice, and email them, as well, if you have their
emails. You could even send them the post detailing your journey and why it is
ending, to give them a bit of a feeling of closure, and not feeling just left
out in the cold.

Take the code. A lot of that back end stuff that you've written, you'll build
off of for your next site.

Good luck in your next venture. 2010 could be your year.

~~~
prashantdesale
Certainly.. I do plan to write all my experience on what we were trying to do,
what went wrong and what I myself will correct when I build next startup.

About pulling the plug, We are thinking around couple of months process. Like
putting announcement as you suggested, and informing users and then pulling
the plug.

Thanks

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rms
I think your site has to be worth something on Sitepoint.

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dualogy
Most definitely. Looks like there are hundreds of products actively on sale
there Right Now.

If you got that far _without_ marketing, finding someone who's got those
marketing skills and will but is looking for something pre-built to start from
and expand upon will be fairly trivial, those people exist, lots of them in
fact.

~~~
dualogy
Come to think of it, you could pull a minor publicity stunt (and attract more
buyers) by simply putting Onista up for sale on... Onista.

~~~
prashantdesale
Thanks, Talking to Partners and see how we can sell it. We never sold sites in
past and coded most of this ourselves, so were not sure if it is worth
anything. But yes, Seems like we should at least give it a try. Need to find
out how we can transfer domain names as well.

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LaPingvino
Some questions: \- Would you turn the service over to other people? \- How
many would you ask? \- Would the service be easily translatable? \- The video
about how it works doesn't work. I would like to see some more information
about the inner workings of the system. \- Is the code easy to pick up and go
on, or does it demand a lot of study? \- Do you have manuals/documentation
about the inner workings?

I have been thinking about creating such a site like this, but in Esperanto (I
know, small market BUT a lot of people from a lot of places who know a lot of
languages). We do have a great working of a non-auction working marketplace
("Marktplaats") in the Netherlands (now bought by eBay) and as I am good with
languages (I speak 9 languages to several extents by now) I would love to have
such a service in an international fashion, and eBay just doesn't fit for me
(for one instance, it's waaaaay to messy).

I have to warn you however, I'm 20 years old and have more ideas than money,
so don't trust I will do everything you will profit from. It's just that I
like the idea of the site as I see it now because of personal preferences, and
I would love to make it something great if I get the chance :).

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prashantdesale
Video is also available at <http://www.vimeo.com/1594866> Let me what inner
workings of the system ud like to know. App is on PHP, MySQL. Most of the
JS/CSS is coded by ourselves. Documentation, there is some and there is PRD as
well that explains how things are supposed to work. About it being easily
translatable, I don't know because we never thought of outside US market while
developing it. So seriously I don't know. I assume there will be work.

~~~
LaPingvino
There are certainly points I see you could improve on, but generally I like
the things I see in the video (but the video really is a bit too long, and not
best quality; a Getting Started link would have worked much better I
think...). I think I can make it translatable, although it will take some time
and it won't be worth to quit a job and get it running (more of a side task).

Completely aside of that, I'm based in the Netherlands so just taking it over
and running on probably won't do it, it will more be like a great codebase to
start with. Talking about that, you could think of making it OpenSource for
small community needs; I think many people would be keen to jump on that and
improve things a lot.

I have added my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles to my HN profile, so you will
be able to contact me personally if you like.

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wensing
I remember you telling me about Onista at the YC offices back at Startup
School '07.

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prashantdesale
Yep, I remember we discussed Onista and Sormpulse. Hope all is going well at
your end.

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wensing
Thanks for asking. We're still going. We are at a critical point where we need
to go from seasonally-popular to popular year round. Have the plan, now just
need to execute.

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robotrout
<http://www.onista.com/>

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blizkreeg
I think it would greatly benefit the HN community if you write up a lessons
learned and share it.

How long did you guys work on it (post-launch marketing/promotion time) before
deciding to pack up?

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snitko
I think you probably should put a huge message on the site, saying you're
shutting down, so that those who still go there occasionally, wouldn't be
surprised too much. After all, they are your users, so you've got to respect
them till the end. Also make sure you prevent new users from signing up.

~~~
tibbon
Very true. I've seen too many startups recently do a 'silent' laying off of
everyone, closing doors, but leaving the servers up and the community to rot.
The users don't even know that no one's driving the boat- but that servers are
just still running because the prepaid their bills for the year. Unfortunate
really.

