
Splitterbug (YC S11) shutting down - fearless
http://www.splitterbug.com/?
======
dtran
If you believe the Lean Startup thesis*:

    
    
      Success = F(#Iterations)
      #Iterations = Runway / Speed of each iteration
      Runway = Cash on hand / Burn rate
    

Then things are looking quite good for this team if they can continue to
build, validate, and iterate this quickly with the new project they are
pursuing (Assuming they didn't spend their Start Fund money on hookers and
blow in the past 9 days).

[1] [http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/03/cash-is-not-
kin...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/03/cash-is-not-king.html)

------
LargeWu
I know people who, if they were for example taking a long cross-country trip,
would split up gas, hotels, meals, etc., down to the penny. I even heard of
somebody who hounded one of his friends for $1.72 after the trip was over.
This app sounds perfect for them. Still, I can't believe there's much of a
market for them, since anybody who's cheap enough to care about $1.72 from a
friend would never pay for this sort of app in the first place.

~~~
Confusion
Exactly my thoughts: nobody that cares enough about _exactly_ splitting bills
is going to pay for an app like this. There is the alternative, that has
always served me well, called 'pen and paper' that is faster and easier to
access. And as long as you don't care about a few $ up or down, sharing
expenses is incredibly easy.

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dstein
Whatever happened to Y-Combinator funding startups tackling "hard problems",
and searching for "the next Microsoft" ?

~~~
kalvin
Even Microsoft started small. What PG likes to say is: YC is looking for
startups building the next BASIC interpreter for the Altair (which was almost
as obscure then as it is now.) Something minimally useful in or adjacent to a
market that's going to explode, and started by determined/smart founders.

See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934374>

~~~
dstein
Exactly my point. YC says that's what they're looking for, but YC startups
tend to look more like this little "social calculator" web app then a company
that will invent a new operating system, programming language, and personal
computing paradigm.

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keeran
9 days from private beta to shut down?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2724933>

So a great offer for the other project or a well thought out early fold?

~~~
Shenglong
Not sure if private beta ever launched. I signed up for TestFlight and to try
the app out, and still haven't, to this day, received an opportunity to try
it.

I was looking forward to this though. Sad to see it go.

------
swanson
And I just recommended this to a family member about a week ago :(

This scenario happens on family vacations all the time. If you've ever gone on
vacation and rented a big house for 3-4 families, you end up having to split
the grocery bill, dinner bills, group activities; it's a huge pain, everyone
has to always keep cash on them to divide the cost right away or people
forget.

~~~
blahedo
Protip: keep an envelope of pre-split money. Anytime money is added to it,
every contributor adds an equal amount (or whatever agreed-upon proportion).
Money can then be spent from the envelope without splitting.

Also useful on long road trips where gas money is being split.

~~~
shuttlebrad
While the app's a work in progress (and if you forgive the shameless shill),
Splitsies (<http://splitsies.net>) does more or less the same thing and is
freely available in the App Store.

Doesn't do groups yet (because I haven't worked out how to make them awesome
yet) but its coming...

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angryasian
that was fast. Would be nice to share more of a postmortem

~~~
sean_lynch
I've got all the parts of a good postmortem post floating around in my head.
Unfortunately, it's probably going to have to wait a few weeks while we tackle
our new product.

~~~
joeyespo
There was no link to any blog (or any kind of site to see a postmortem for
that matter). Any chance you could send a followup to the goodbye email when
you finally get around to writing something?

I'm very interested in reading it and I have this fear that it'll slip between
my frequent HN checking.

~~~
sean_lynch
We're not staying in the same space so I don't think we'll want to spam our
current set of beta testers with our new product. If you track me down on
Twitter though (sean_lynch), I'll send you a heads up when we launch.

~~~
joeyespo
Was afraid that might be the case. That's an ok compromise though. Following.

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dotBen
When I've needed to do this, I've used a spreadsheet (with some sophisticated
conditionals to get a net "you owe" matrix for each person in the group based
on a list of shared expenses paid for by different people.

In other words, it isn't a startup IMHO - certainly not something I would pay
money for.

I should put the spreadsheet on Google Docs Templates I guess.

~~~
streptomycin
I've done that too, but the average person would struggle to do it. That is
(was?) the market.

~~~
derrida
And I use a napkin.

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shuttlebrad
Interesting: if I may ask, what lead to the decision?

~~~
tilt
PG: “Who needs this?”

~~~
dlss
But then why did he fund them?

~~~
pg
This wasn't even the idea they applied with.

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xyzzyz
Yeah, me and my friends are using BillMonk and are quite content.

On a side note, the problem of shuffling debts among a group of people, so
that the total amount of checks written is minimized, is NP-complete.

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patrickmandia
Some shameless self promotion:
<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tabs/id383784290?mt=8> Not quite the same, but
close enough :)

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forgingahead
I just re-read this essay yesterday, and it really rings true.

<http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html>

~~~
guildchatter
Thanks for the link.

I especially liked these two sections:

"One of the most interesting things we've discovered from working on Y
Combinator is that founders are more motivated by the fear of looking bad than
by the hope of getting millions of dollars. So if you want to get millions of
dollars, put yourself in a position where failure will be public and
humiliating."

"I like Paul Buchheit's suggestion of trying to make something that at least
someone really loves. As long as you've made something that a few users are
ecstatic about, you're on the right track. It will be good for your morale to
have even a handful of users who really love you, and startups run on morale.
But also it will tell you what to focus on. What is it about you that they
love? Can you do more of that? Where can you find more people who love that
sort of thing? As long as you have some core of users who love you, all you
have to do is expand it. It may take a while, but as long as you keep plugging
away, you'll win in the end. Both Blogger and Delicious did that. Both took
years to succeed. But both began with a core of fanatically devoted users, and
all Evan and Joshua had to do was grow that core incrementally. Wufoo is on
the same trajectory now."

=]

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anilv
For anyone looking for an alternative, I've been using <https://venmo.com/>
with good success. They have been around for a while.

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wccrawford
Wow, that's remarkably similar to website I thinking of making... It was going
to just keep track of who owed you what, and what you owed to who. The
splitting app on top of it would make it even better.

I'm surprised this didn't take off at all.

(If anyone wants to steal my idea, don't feel bad. I rarely get around to
them. And I want the app. lol)

~~~
shuttlebrad
My take on the problem has been live since end November (yeah, working on the
marketing & design side now). <http://splitsies.net/>

~~~
wccrawford
Looks nice!

Android please. :)

Edit: I signed up. Looks like it -just- does splits, and not separate IOUs.
Unless I say that I paid, but the cost goes to someone else?

Might be worth having a separate IOU interface to save confusion.

Just a thought. :)

~~~
shuttlebrad
We're looking at it. I'll probably go for mobile web first - 1 developer and a
backlog of essential work that needs to be done. But I hear the call for
Android, its definitely on the urgent list.

(edit to respond to edit)

What do you mean "just does splits"? It doesn't (at the moment) do a good job
of explaining that the IOUs balance each other out: if I buy you lunch, then
you buy me lunch, we're probably pretty close to balanced out.

I'm working with a great designer at the moment to try and fix some of the
programmer-isms in the UI.

~~~
shuttlebrad
Actually, that's a UI issue ;) In the web or mobile app, just click the
"delete" icon next to "you" when adding a bill.

And yes, we've got a _way_ clearer and sexier UI in the pipeline.

