

Ask HN: I'm giving away my startup taketake.com for free - who wants it? - heymatty

I could go in a long explanation of the personal reasons why my co-founder and I have decided to give away our startup, but let's just say in a nutshell that we've burned out.<p>We're looking for at least two people to give it away to. Preferably a team with both tech and UI/UX experience. We're running on our own PHP framework. You'd need to master nginx, redis, resque, Node, MySQL and MongoDB as well.<p>You will get the majority stake after a vesting period. You'd be in charge of everything and it would be your startup to do with as you see fit. My co-founder and I would retain a minority equity stake in the startup and have an advisory role.<p>We thought of shutting down everything, but would rather "give" the startup to another team to take over. We believe in taketake a great deal and have some solid ideas for its business model.<p>We are looking for a team who are ready to fully dedicate their time to taketake to launch it, raise money and grow it.<p>We think we got solid branding and a compelling product. We were accepted in mini Seedcamp (we didn't go) and have been invited to pitch at Echelon next month. We have an agreement with a top online retailer to share their users purchases on taketake and also have top bloggers interested to cover our launch. We're at a good place.<p>If you are interested, please email matt-at-taketake.com
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jellisjapan
*assuming this is not an april fools joke

I don't usually login to post, but I just wanted to say, although I do not
know your situation at all, if you're putting it up due to burn out, please
take a second look and make sure what you're doing is for the best. Startups
always have their down cycles, so I would hate for you to give away your
company if it could be retained in some way, as burn out / down cycle are
problems that can eventually be fixed.

I say this as I was on the brink of shutting my own startup very recently
before I found my passion and drive for doing it again (after a burnout that
took 8+ months to recover), and I'm very glad I ended up sticking with it.

~~~
phenning
I agree completely. Startups can feel a lot like "swimming" a marathon instead
of running one, but what great rewards when the really hard work is done. I'm
sure there are many circumstances that take anyone out of the game, but I
agree with you. Maybe they could wait a while longer and see if they get
through their down cycle??? I wish them good luck whichever way it goes!

------
d_r
I just wanted to say that -- wow, this is one beautiful site design. Sorry it
didn't work out so far. If you end up giving it away, I hope it finds good
hands!

That said, I hope the two of you can take long vacations, find new energy, and
that we'd see a "How we got 1000x users" type of post from you in the future
months.

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gregschlom
Clickable link to the site:

<http://taketake.com/>

Looks nice, btw.

~~~
rmontanaro
Loved the clickable link. I'm such a procrastinator.

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scrrr
Assuming this is not an April's Fool joke: This is actually a very nice idea.
Keep a small share and let other people run it. I hope someone skilled will
take over. Please keep us posted how it went. Also I like your "Help us get
featured on", idea. You're very clever marketers indeed. :)

~~~
heymatty
It's no April's fool joke! Thanks for the kind words :)

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ry0ohki
I like the "Help us get featured on" with all the logos, at first glance it
probably looks like you've been on all those, creative!

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vaksel
i like the "help us get featured on X"....at a glance it looks like you
already were

~~~
tommi
and for a moment I felt betrayed.

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dangero
Still thinking this is a well done attempt to get viral press. You might want
to repost tomorrow if it's true.

Aside from that, I hate to be a downer, but I'll be surprised if this takes
off. I'm actually wondering if the whole concept is an April fools joke in
itself. It's basically relationship status for everything you own. I'll stick
to reading amazon product reviews I think.

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code
Who did the screenplay and video work for the demo?

~~~
heymatty
<http://epipheostudios.com>

~~~
timmyd
expensive ? seems it would be to get them to produce a video ? are you able to
share the cost ?

~~~
heymatty
I'd rather not say here, but it's a bit on the pricy side but totally worth
it.

~~~
timmyd
yeah - >$5K - hot upwards or cold downwards ? :)

~~~
heymatty
$5k is cheap, epipheos aren't cheap.

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nethsix
I just want to encourage you guys to go on. It's really a cool site and this
is coming from someone who doesn't do much social networking. Given that
already quite a number of HN readers are impressed, maybe you can recruit a
small bunch of us to help develop, grow the user base, raise money, etc., in
return for some upfront equity.

~~~
heymatty
That's a cool idea and we will certainly consider it if we can't find a
rockstar team to take over. Whoever wants to take over taketake would need to
understand well the technology we built it with.

I'm hoping we can find a team to take over. My co-founder and I will certainly
be there to help with all the technical stuff and the business model.

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citricsquid
After watching the video I WANT TO USE THIS PRODUCT please someone take it and
develop it.

~~~
dbuizert
I had that exact same thought! Looked really awesome and a great potential for
consumer and creator!

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dualogy
Whoa you've gotten to the point of having a Real Team
<http://taketake.com/about> ... how can you give it away?... burnout? As
others have said here, take a week off. Also, startups can change direction at
all times, maybe your initial idea isn't driving you enough. Evolve the idea
to get excited about this once again... well I'm just ranting it out, you sure
have your reasons. But looking at /about this don't seem like a weekend
project to be flipped later at SitePoint or sth. You've built something
already! Why not let it live and thrive to see the world.

~~~
heymatty
We also want to see taketake thrive and we are doing everything we can to see
that happen. My co-founder and I simply can't be leading it anymore. We're
burned out and skid off our cash runway. We did take a week(s) off. This is
not an easy decision.

By getting another team to take over, it's almost as if we were getting
one/two other co-founders to come on board. My co-founder and I will take an
advisory role and that's why it's fair that the new team gets a majority stake
in the company. We would retain 10-15% of common stock each.

------
taggly
Can anyone say guerilla marketing? We want to give part of taketake.com away.
You spend a bunch of much finishing things, marketing it and running it. We
keep ownership in the upside.

There is no angel or vc that will invest in anything where the original team
wasn't confident enough to stick around and see something through unless those
ties have completely been severed and a new captain is running the ship. Plus,
there is a lot of competition out there already.

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fezzl
I have been following TakeTake.com for quite a while now (we're also in this
space called "social commerce"), and I still remember your Ask HN thread about
whether you should launch after building/refining it for months and your
subsequent launch with the explanatory video, which did an amazing job in
explaining the service. I would hate to see anyone give up something that
looks so promising, but I wish you the best of luck.

------
olalonde
Out of curiosity, why do you use both Redis and MongoDB?

~~~
heymatty
We use Redis and MongoDB for two different purposes.

Redis is used for our messaging queue (resque), sessions and caching. MongoDB
is used to store our user data. Redis could be used to store our user data as
well but we feel that MongoDB is a lot easier to work with because of its
query language.

MongoDB fits better to store our user data and Redis fits better for our
messaging queue, sessions and caching. We have yet completed migrating from
MySQL to MongoDB which is why I've listed both in my post.

~~~
minalecs
whats the reason for the migration from MySql to mongo ?

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nilesh4life
okay this must not be true but at first, it looks like you sent it to HN and
other sites so people go online, sign up to browse around(greed for buy) and
this will spread the concept, make it famous and then you might decide to keep
it with you or give it to your wife or something. I think such silly things. I
am sorry.

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srgseg
Impressive site design.

On what basis did you decide this wasn't working out? Low virality, low
engagement, SEO didn't work out....?

The 'long explanation' of why you got burned out would be a very interesting
post.

~~~
heymatty
Well, made a lot of mistakes. Discovered the lean startup principles too late.
We should have released an MVP earlier and iterate. Instead we were never
really happy with what we built and started from scratch too many times. We
became really frustrated with not being able to execute up to our
expectations. Waited too long and slid off our cash runway.

I will probably write a more thorough post about it later on, but right now
we're trying to focus on finding a team to take over and save taketake.

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sirraj
That is beautiful site design, and I'm thinking this is an April Fool's day
joke!

~~~
heymatty
It's not :)

~~~
arondeparon
Wether this is an april fools joke or not: I think it's a smart move either
way. A post like this is ought to get some attention :)

~~~
nilesh4life
Exactly

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jakkinabox
When I go to peoples websites I always ask my self "Would I use this?". At
first I was like "nah" but by the end of the video I was "hmm yeah let me sign
up!".

It's a shame you're giving this away.

~~~
AndrewS
I completely agree. As much as I hate videos that play automatically, your
intro was inoffensive enough that I listened until it got interesting.

On a side note, why do you have invite only on?

Best of luck whichever way you go with your startup. Maybe you just need a
short holiday to sleep on it...

~~~
heymatty
The site is not completely ready and we got stuck into that non-sense of
making everything perfect before we opened it.

------
ssebro
If it's money you need (would you stay on if someone offered you an angel
round?), consider asking for funding, kickstarter style. We're all very
impressed, and we think you should stick with it.

~~~
ssebro
And if you're determined to get rid of it, you should not give it away- you
should sell a chunk of it off for a substantial amount of money just so the
incoming party has the same interest in making it work. In otherwords, who
ever you give it to will not have poured sweat over it, and will likely not
give it the love it rightly deserves.

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sayanee
Very beautiful site indeed! Very clean design and i liked the xxx have
requested invitation + the send a tip!

Will you guys be still coming to the Echelon? in Singapore right?

~~~
heymatty
Hopefully we can get a team to take over and then possibly be at Echelon in
Singapore. We will see how things develop in the next few days :)

~~~
sayanee
Good luck! And hope to catch you guys in Singapore :)

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DarrenLehane
Just so you guys (or potential buyers) know:
<http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/taketake.com>

~~~
Udo
How and from what are those scores derived?

I tested this by entering the address of my former blog. It ranked high in
"vendor trustworthiness" even though there is no commercial aspect to the site
at all. It has a high child safety rating even though some of those posts
contain very strong language.

Am I mistaken or is MyWOT useless?

~~~
calebhicks
Ratings come from users of the WOT browser extensions. Users are able to rate
sites based on their personal experience with them. Sites with poor reputation
yield warnings from the extension upon later visits.

If no one has rated you, your rating will stay positive, or neutral, until
someone does.

~~~
Udo
That's what I expected. Like I said, my test site wasn't "neutral", it was
clearly rated positive on vendor reliability and child-friendliness. So what
it boils down to is that someone arbitrarily gave taketake.com a very negative
rating, not necessarily based on anything real. I'm not saying it may not be
justified, but this kind of reputation system is clearly very flaky and prone
to manipulation.

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bmelton
Since nobody else has said it, I'll take it!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Don't you mean taketake it? \ _groan\_

I'd of had it, even just for the domain name. I can understand giving it away
but not giving it away to just anyone with no commitment to continue the
project.

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feelyd
April Fools I reckon, the site is quality ! Love the look of it, hurry up and
accept my invite so I can take a propper look.

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pdenya
If this isn't an april fools joke why would you post it today? I call
shenanigans. I guess we'll see tomorrow though.

~~~
heymatty
It didn't cross my mind to be honest. Had much more serious stuff on my mind
than April's fool when I posted this. It's not a prank.

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parkern
Is it possible to get a user login to see what functionality has already been
established?

~~~
heymatty
For people who are serious about it, have the right skillset and contact me by
email this will be provided :)

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sami_b
I can tell this an April Fools joke, but that's a nicely designed website.

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phenning
I really like your site. Hope all works out for you! Great intro. :)

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kennethologist
Sorry things haven't worked out...as yet! Don't give up keep pushing.

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rosenjon
Ummm.... what's the date again people? This looks like way too much work to
just "give it away". I was expecting an empty homepage with a single search
box. Nice prank though. Me likey.

~~~
heymatty
It's 100% real and not a prank, but yeah I guess I should have waited a day
before making my post.

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methodin
How long has the site been in invite-only mode?

~~~
heymatty
Beginning of January.

~~~
arondeparon
So have invites been already sent out? Interested in an inside-view...

~~~
heymatty
They haven't been sent out yet.

~~~
johnnyo
So, you don't actually have any users?

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hackernewz
So, it's angie's list for products... ?

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killerdark
Looks pretty, but all this talk about relationships with inanimate objects in
the video made me feel like it aimed at owners of real dolls. I have
relationships with people (and maybe animals and myself), objects just enable
me to have these relationships. Maybe an object oriented website just isn't my
thing.

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zhongguomeiguo
No "startup" of any value would ever be given away, regardless of how burnt
out its employees or owners might be. This is rediculous. Either this is an
April Fools joke, or you never had the dedication to succeed in the first
place.

~~~
heymatty
We're not giving away 100% of it. We don't want to have an active role anymore
and are willing to give away a majority equity stake to a qualified and
competent team who would be taking charge of it. It's almost as if we were
taking another co-founder on board. But because we would be taking an advisory
role, it's just fair that (after vesting) the new people in charge have the
majority stake in it.

