
So long, and thanks for all the fish - ivankirigin
http://tipjoys2cents.blogspot.com/2009/08/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-fish.html
======
ojbyrne
Sad. The thing about "ramen" profitability is there's another level to be
achieved after that, which I refer to as "opportunity cost" profitability.
It's often much more challenging, and I sense it being an issue in this
article.

~~~
sho
Actually that's an excellent point that I don't see mentioned enough.
Profitability enough to offset opportunity cost - ie, how much you'd be making
if you were working in a "real job" - is indeed very hard to reach.

Anyone can be "ramen profitable", defining that as say, under $1k a month. In
fact, in actual good countries, you don't need to do anything at all to be
able to eat. Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal; in
other countries it's higher. People can and do live off that their whole
lives!

Your average HN reader/startup founder is generally highly capable, multi-
skilled, and, probably, a very valuable employee. To start a business capable
of matching or exceeding their likely "normal" salary is indeed a far harder
proposition than just making enough to eat.

~~~
angusgr
>Australia will pay you $1k/month just to not be a criminal

FWIW, this isn't strictly true, at least not in the last 10 years. Provided
you are not disabled or retired, Australia will only really pay you ~$1k/month
while you demonstrably look for work, or while you are an undergraduate
student doing your first degree.

~~~
sho
Well .. in theory yes. But in practise, people stay on it for years and years,
just putting up with the hoops they make you jump through. Apparently they
stop even pretending to care after a couple of years. I know this because a
couple of friends of my brother have been on the dole for literally 10 years.
There is nothing wrong with them, they just don't want to work and are
apparently happy to live within the constraints of their $450/fortnight.
Places like Broome and Byron Bay are full of such people.

I used to resent people living off the system like this but now having lived
in countries without it, I don't mind it anymore. In fact I now support a
Norway-style basic income program. They're never going to work, that is
completely obvious, just give them the damn money...

~~~
mr_luc
I just burst into raucous laughter, mostly from my own shock at realizing that
that the idea is potentially practical.

I've always thought of government assistance on a large scale as the kind of
thing that will seriously damage a country if allowed to continue indefinitely
-- by creating economic incentives not to work. [See: Sweden]

I'm not sure it has to work that way. Between food technology and plateaus in
first-world population growth, sustenance and covering could probably become
as cheap as we are motivated to make them, for some definition of "sustenance"
and "covering."

I think it's obvious that society is better off if people work. But society is
also better off if the people who work work harder, and only Ayn Rand fans
walk around the office glaring at the dullards dragging society down. ;)

In a way, those who really don't _want_ to work are holding a gun to their
head and demanding money. If we don't give it to them, then we'll have to get
the blood out of our carpet, which will cost more than the few dollars they
are asking for. If there were no risk of this, there would be no blood to
clean up and thus no reason for social programs to exist. (Those who _can't_
work are already bleeding, and the assistance is intended to keep their
situation from worsening expensively).

The people that don't want to work are doing something that I would find
morally wrong. But I'm doing something that others doubtless would be troubled
by: I work three months out of the year, saving my money, and then live off of
that money for the rest of the year in a third-world country. I've had people
angry at me for not spending all of my money in the US; others feel it's
short-changing society to minimize the amount of work you do for money.
Nonetheless, I'm at least paying with my own money, and society is net richer.

From the standpoint of a person, I think that being a parasite is morally
questionable.

From the standpoint of society, however, maybe it makes sense to subsidize
some level of determined laziness. I can vaguely imagine that under certain
circumstances and with sufficient disincentives, such a thing could be a net
win for a society.

It seems societally risky, though. ;) Better to "officially" not support such
a policy, so you can jettison it if its effects get out of hand.

------
icey
I'm sorry to hear it you guys; best of luck with your next venture!

~~~
CamperBob
Their efforts might have borne more fruit if I could have actually paid for
the tips I owed. Every time I clicked on a link to pay them, I'd get an
unhelpful error message along the lines of "The cash-out feature is
temporarily down for maintenance." This situation either lasted for a couple
of weeks, or was broken all three times I tried over that period.

I thought Tipjoy was great in concept, but ultimately they didn't seem to have
either the technical or marketing chops to go up against other systems like
Amazon's.

------
jack7890
Props to Ivan for getting on here and giving frank responses to nearly all of
the questions and comments.

------
tjic
Having launched a few ventures, I've learned that smarts and hard work are not
most of the story - having the right venture is.

Tipjoy struck me, from the very first time I heard of it, as the entirely
wrong idea. It "solved" a problem that didn't really exist, competed with
multiple existing solutions, and I couldn't figure out who the customers were
supposed to be.

I will say that ivankirigin came to his senses and abandoned his bad idea far
faster than I came to my senses and abandoned various of my bad ideas, so hats
off for that.

------
tdavis
Sorry to hear, my friend. I had a hunch it was coming; why move back to SF
unless you were soon to be in need of a job (or fresh investors for TipJoy 2
;)?

I'm, impressed though. You stuck with it for a long time and handled the
shutdown right and without a ton of fanfare. If only you hadn't lost all that
money to me in Poker, you might have been able to keep running... ;)

Give Abby my best!

~~~
ivankirigin
Damn the semi bluff!

The move to the bay area was independent of the shutdown. There are so many
more opportunities, for biz dev, investment, talent, acquisitions, etc.

------
gehant
Best of luck to Abby & Ivan in their future endeavors

It's refreshing to see this communal response to the closing of a startup
rather than the typical icy headlines with droves of disconnected
commentary...

~~~
yankeeracer73
For sure; it's always sad when these things happen because this community
especially knows how hard all these people have worked whether their ideas
ultimately panned out in the end or not. A complete 180 from Techcrunch
comments where assholes seem to rule.

------
drusenko
Sorry to hear the news -- wish you both the best of luck going forward!

~~~
ivankirigin
Thanks!

~~~
michaelneale
And thanks for taking the time to answer the questions here !

------
maxklein
I called this one also: <http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=200025>

Another YC company that will soon be going under or losing its founder will be
loopt.

~~~
unalone
Oh? I'm interested in hearing your logic. I see no point to Loopt and think it
looks cheap, but it's expanded to the point where it's mentioned in TV
commercials, and its founder is Paul Graham's golden boy.

I'm asking because your logic re:Tipjoy was sound, and I'd like to see a
similar argument for Loopt.

------
jack7890
Was the shutdown at all related to the need to get licensed as a money
transfer agent? I know that's a very expensive process (since you have to go
state by state) and I know you guys were thinking about doing it. How did that
end up playing out?

~~~
ivankirigin
Lack of traction was much more important.

------
nostrademons
You gave it your best shot. Best of luck on your next venture!

------
10ren
With your attitude, it's just a matter of time before you succeed.

BTW: I appreciate your analysis. It reminds me of how hard EDI is to get
started without a dominant trading partner who mandates it, such as a dept.
store or supermarket chain.

------
rsheridan6
This is a little meta, but to what extent does the fact that companies die
like this prevent adoption of new services? If I had a business, I'd hesitate
to make it dependent on or spend a lot of time integrating with some small
startup that stands a fair chance of going belly up next year, and as a user
I'm not about to do something like, say, spend a lot of time picking my
favorite music for some music recommendation site when they might die at any
time.

------
sabon
The whole story seems to repeatedly wave the arms and shout:

"Hey, Twitter! Hey, Facebook! Here we are! We know how to do this! Hire us,
hire us, hire us!!!".

At least that's how I read the story. And I'm quite convinced it's their
intent. Which shouldn't be a bad thing too.

~~~
ivankirigin
That's a pretty bold statement, and on the face of it incorrect.

Our messages was first and foremost to assure users that their money is still
there. And then we made a comment on the market that we failed to succeed in.

~~~
sabon
Well, of course customers' money is the most important thing, no doubt about
it.

But it struck me that you mentioned several times in the article that you know
what and how to do, you just don't have the leverage of being _the_ main body.
Why would you deny it? Is it something bad? I don't think so. Would you refuse
if Twitter or Facebook approached you with a decent offer?

~~~
ivankirigin
Writing a blog post like this would be a lame way to get the attention of any
future employer - that's why I'm complaining. You're questioning my
motivations, which you have no insight into.

Whether I would choose one thing or another is irrelevant.

If I wanted to get the company bought, or get a job, I'd just have a
conversation with any of our awesome advisers to get directly in touch with
pretty much anyone.

------
ryanwaggoner
This is really sad news...we had the pleasure of working with them to
integrate the TipJoy API on an experimental project called MightyTweets. Even
though our project didn't go anywhere, they were fantastic to work with.

I wish them the best of luck in whatever they do next!

------
sanj
What about poker night? Still hosting it in Arlington?

~~~
tdavis
Alan (of Cloudant) is tryng to take the reigns but we haven't had lot of
interest (granted, only a couple days notice this week). Subscribe to boston-
startup-poker@googlegroups.com for more info.

~~~
ivankirigin
Yes, use the google group in place of the meetup.
<http://groups.google.com/group/boston-startup-poker>

------
known
True scientists celebrate their failures.

------
sho
Surprised to hear it. I thought you had plenty of "mindshare", around here at
least. Guess that doesn't translate to actual dollars.

Good luck in your future endeavours. Hopefully it's been a positive learning
experience. Look forward to seeing the next big thing!

~~~
ivankirigin
The learning experience has been astounding. I have a bunch of things I will
do differently next time. Karma on new.yc doesn't translate to usage
unfortunately. And twitter as a marketplace is about as mature as @ev's kid.

------
zackattack
I know hindsight is 20/20, but would you be willing to be completely
forthright and tell us what your business plan was at the beginning stages,
when you were raising money? I would find that sort of insight very valuable,
and appreciate it greatly.

~~~
ivankirigin
take a cut

~~~
zackattack
how did the math work out, taking a cut of tips (presumably small, and even
smaller after payment processing fees?) how many users would you have needed
to reach profitability? i actually tried doing the back-of-envelope math for
your site a while back, and was perplexed. i'm curious as to your answer..

~~~
ivankirigin
Tips don't really work. You need to sell stuff. Branding in the name sucked
when we were pushing long and hard* to become a general purpose payments
company. Our twitter API could power a full freemium model, subscriptions,
etc. - but not enough apps on twitter used it.

*twss

~~~
adrianwaj
Did you ever see <http://www.harmony-central.com/Features/Fairtunes/> \- tips
for music artists in 2000 that closed down.

For musicians, what if there was a way to offer downloads or a virtual
chatroom where musicans could interact with tippers only. Artists could keep
log of all their fans.

The problem may have been a tip niche wasn't honed in upon.

~~~
cunard-n
Interesting. So, what became of Goyer and Cormie? I'd like to hear more about
their experience. yr. 2000 was early days!

------
keltecp11
Stupid Market...

~~~
thetrumanshow
Downvoted the best comment? That does it. I am going to start at the bottom of
the comments from now on. :)

~~~
ivankirigin
It is a stupid comment, without much content. Like the other reply, even if I
agree, this is no way to say it. Our announcement is essentially saying the
same thing, but elaborating to add information.

~~~
thetrumanshow
I thought it added levity and gave a gentle ribbing (did you think it was
harsh?) {shrug}... I've said the same thing when my own startups closed.

~~~
ivankirigin
I'm approaching this from a news.yc community perspective. Feel free to tweet
about it :)

------
CulturalNgineer
See Chagora (dot) com and CulturalEngineer.blogspot (dot) com (why chagora,
live debate function and other related posts) for the role of the Pooled-User-
Determined Account and the microtransaction as essential in politics and a
catalyst for enabling the practical micro (and other)transaction in charity
and commercial areas. The political microtransaction is a fundamental of
speech. I believe this could have made Tipjoy workable. Sorry I couldn't reach
you. I tried.

~~~
fallentimes
Please don't.

~~~
CulturalNgineer
I understand... and will consider it. But could you give a clearer evaluation
since I've put a great deal into this and would appreciate more helpful
feedback. Thanks!

