
Staffjoy is shutting down - philip1209
https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoy-is-shutting-down-39f7b5d66ef6
======
ryanwjackson
Startups are hard.

It's even harder to be open and honest with yourself, your employees, your
customers and everyone else when shutting down. Perhaps somewhat weird, but I
find it refreshing to see posts like these. I think it's the sign of a good
and healthy entrepreneur/team (albeit hard to write).

I'm sure you and your team learned a lot, and I love the gesture to open
source your software.

Best of luck on the next step!

~~~
leothekim
Scheduling is hard too. Every company has different requirements around how
their scheduling works. Lots of businesses need their employees to clock-in
and -out of their assigned shifts for accountability reasons, not sure if
Staffjoy supported that. The shifts can have requirements too, e.g. the
maintenance shift can only be scheduled for 8 and 12 hours, but nothing
longer/shorter. There are usually payroll and billing implications, so
adapting to an existing payroll/billing system would be an additional
challenge, and not doing so would be a non-starter for lots of businesses.

If anything, the product surface area they were trying to tackle is really
broad. Probably could have focused on a particular vertical and provided more
value-adds.

I'm excited to see what gets open-sourced. Schedule visualizations are also
hard. :-)

~~~
tracker1
That doesn't even count the heavy hitters in the space, and even MS's recent
entry add ons for o365.

I do find that the exit, open-sourcing their platform, and not burning all the
cash before exiting is very classy indeed.

~~~
philip1209
We looked at the Microsoft tool [1]. I honestly think it's more of an upsell
play for existing customer than a new customer acquisition play. The pricing
is confusing and not competitive [2].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/transitorykris/status/820009983601295360](https://twitter.com/transitorykris/status/820009983601295360)

[2] [https://products.office.com/en-US/business/compare-
office-36...](https://products.office.com/en-US/business/compare-
office-365-kiosk-plans)

------
mring33621
Thank you for the pragmatic writeup rather than the usual "fantastic journey"
blather. Also, returning investor money, rather than wasting it, demonstrates
leadership.

~~~
tomhallett
Is there any feedback if investors would prefer to get some of their money
back or see you roll the dice on another pivot?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Arguably, if they'd like you to roll the dice on another project, they can
always just... invest in your next project.

~~~
bredren
...with a clean cap table.

------
ocdtrekkie
Thanks for committing to open source your code! Nobody else has highlighted
this in the comments yet, but this helps ensure the money spent on your
company didn't end up wasted: At the end of it you will be leaving behind a
valuable contribution to the open source community.

~~~
philip1209
Thanks, most of the code for V1 and V2 should be online by the end of the
week. Two of the repos use applied math libraries that cannot be open-sourced.
For one, I think I can drop in an open-source alternative. The other I may not
be able to open source.

I'll also be publishing our YCF application and our pitch decks in the coming
days.

~~~
heinrichf
May I ask what these libraries are ?

~~~
philip1209
Gurobi.

The pre-V1 algorithms used the Julia JuMP package [1], which allows swapping
of the backend solver easily. I don't think some of the functional tests would
pass on the open source solver though (precutting and heuristics in gurobi
caused a huge speed gain).

The later iteration of the algorithm used the Gurobi python library directly,
which is closed source.

[1] [https://blog.staffjoy.com/retro-on-the-julia-programming-
lan...](https://blog.staffjoy.com/retro-on-the-julia-programming-
language-7655121ea341#.l3t8azsbz)

~~~
sandGorgon
would love to see the solver application (if you are planning to swap an open
source solver for gurobi). These class of problems are something I have
wondered about, but never truly tried ny hand at.

------
tarr11
Sorry to hear this. Any lessons learned?

I use WhenIWork for this area, which suits our needs. Not sure what would make
me switch, probably not a text messaging. Most of my employees have
smartphones, so a mobile app is fine.

Biggest problem for me (as a business owner) is managing schedules to a
budget, and making sure we are being as efficient as possible with our
staffing spend.

Most tools I've seen have a pretty weak budgeting feature. (You just put your
budget in and it tells you how you did)

~~~
madenine
I know some companies are using ML to do this internally - predicting staffing
needs, optimizing costs, etc.

It strikes me as a very individualized problem; might be hard to generalize -
or the markets you could generalize too aren't that big/don't need a solution
all that much.

~~~
philip1209
ML is more statistical - good for forecasting. We were doing optimization
mathematics with hard constraints for the scheduling.

One of the issues that we encountered was that a generalized algorithm was
tough. Different companies had different requirements for an algorithm, and it
started to feel like a consulting company. For instance, if a big box retailer
would rather be slightly underscheduled at peak time rather than adding
additional employees (and being over-scheduled near the peak time). A high-end
boutique retailer (like a diamond shop) might be the opposite - each sales
brings in so much money that they overstaff at non-peak hours so that they can
service customers during peak hours.

~~~
xapata
Sounds like a machine learning problem. The dependent variable is profit, not
budget.

~~~
botexpert
Not really machine learning.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_scheduling_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_scheduling_problem)

Above is a nice example. There has been some nice contests with the above
problem and the ILP solvers work extremely fast and great and solve them to
optimality. Although Staffjoy constraints might have been more general.

Either way you could easily attack any custom problem with an ILP solver. It
depends how long it would take to get a feasible solution and then how long to
minimize the costs or fit the budget.

In order to speed up the solver you might use ML but that would require
previous data. Probably the only way to speed up the solver is to learn it
through reinforcement learning on a batch of data. Takes time and time and
time. Not to mention that your ILP solver has to be equipped to merge with any
ML machinery you are using.

~~~
xapata
But deciding how many nurses to have at what time, based on the probability of
how many and what kind of patients and the likelihood of a good medical
outcome is a different problem.

~~~
botexpert
It is, but saying it's machine learning hides the combinatorial issues and
combinatorial search that has to happen. Machine learning model can't replace
the necessity for search.

Scheduling problem (the general one) maps easily to the vehicle routing
problem. Vehicles are routed and service customers. On-demand requirements and
scheduling are probably easier to conceptualize in that framework (think Uber
but with ride-sharing bus sized cars, or team picking up and delivering food
from restaurants to locations, or repairmen doing stuff at people homes).

All needs combinatorial search and machine learning is only one little piece
of the puzzle.

~~~
xapata
I usually say it the other way -- optimization is just one part of machine
learning.

ML includes optimization/search, dimensionality reduction (aka unsupervised
learning), prediction (aka supervised learning), and reinforcement learning.
And I'm probably forgetting a category.

~~~
botexpert
ML does not include integer linear programming (nothing learnable there) and
similar mathematical optimizations. ML can be a part of it but is not integral
to it. Just like finding the shortest paths between two points does not
include ML. ML can be used to learn the weights through time (traffic
sensitive routing) but the search part is separated from it.

IMO, ML is nowhere close to useful in these problems when most of the clients
just use pen and paper. It should be fairly easy to beat that with some simple
search heuristics.

~~~
xapata
Simple is better than complex. I agree with that.

------
debt
"small businesses still use paper or spreadsheets"

that's usually your first red flag. when management starts going after this
market then things aren't looking good. low margins, sales dominated org if
you're lucky can keep you afloat for a bit. long work days etc. avoid.

the real money is always in enterprise. liability is a huge issue. ain't no
huge corp going to throw down millions on some random scheduling software run
by a couple of dudes.

in the rare event that it does happened, raise as much money as possible and
hire as quickly as possible. reduces risk and your work load.

they just didn't have the capital to compete. the market is there though
clearly they just ran out of dough.

~~~
icehawk219
I'm currently working on a product with a team and we did a bit of exploration
for an idea for SMB's and had that same issue. We were talking to someone who
on the surface would be a perfect fit for the product but then we asked how
they handled organizing a job. They reached down into their bag, pulled out a
file folder, opened it up and spread a few sheets of paper in front of us and
went "will this page is this thing, this one is the other thing, and that one
is another thing". An entire jobs worth of documentation and info right there
laid out in front of us all at once in 3 seconds flat.

That was the moment we realized the reason our target industry was still using
paper and spreadsheets. Because they're not just "good enough". In most cases,
they're the best possible option. Maybe with enough iterating and testing we
could've come up with a UX that could've put all that information in front of
4 people in one shot that quickly. But the odds are against it and even if we
did it would've taken a long time to get there.

A lot of startup founders view "legacy" as a four letter word. But sometimes
it's simply the best course. Not everything needs a high tech solution. And
accepting that can be really tough sometimes.

~~~
ams6110
Also spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) in the hands of a smart user are very powerful.
They are incredibly flexible and will handle most data management tasks for a
small/mid size organization. And with Google Sheets (which has gotten a lot
better in the past couple of years) or other cloud storage, the fear of losing
everything with a failed hardrive or lost laptop is gone too.

I run a small nonprofit. I get emails at least weekly from some little tech
company that has an app for some aspect of my operations. I usually ignore
them, but when I do answer it's always some variation of "I can do everything
I need for free with Google tools." And to myself I wonder why these companies
are even targeting small organizations that have almost no money for
technology.

------
taytus
$1M in cash, and you decided to return the money instead of pivot and try
something different?

Why? I might be totally wrong, but I guess those investors invested in you,
more than your original idea.

Good for you for not burning the money in something you know eventually won't
work, but why not try a different idea?

Man, I wish I had just a portion of that capital to at least validate my own
startup.

~~~
pc86
Because the investors gave money to StaffJoy, not the idea one founder had
when it because apparent SJ wasn't working out. And it sounds like either the
other cofounder(s) either aren't interested in the new idea or aren't welcome
to the new team as he says there will be a new founding team. That makes it
very complicated especially if it's the same corporate structure moving
forward with a different idea, you don't want un-involved prior cofounders
sitting on equity.

So they're giving the money back, wiping out the corporate structure and
starting fresh with one of the cofounders and what sounds like some but not
all of the investors.

~~~
throwawaydbdksn
Sounds like the founders didn't get along and they're trying to exit without
losing individual marketability

------
wsh91
Really sorry to see this; your candor is refreshing, and I've been interested
in the optimization work you've been doing for some time. Best of luck with
what comes next.

------
dorianm
> So, we have decided to return over $1M in cash to our investors.

That's some nice common sense there!

------
simplehuman
Never heard of Staffjoy before this.

Honestly, the hardest part of a startup is simply getting known and spreading
the word that it exists.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I think you're right and this isn't the first time for me, there's been dozens
of times a startup is announcing they are closing here on HN and it's the
first time I have heard of them. Not a criticism of Staffjoy of course, it's
just a general truth.

------
mmanfrin
This is superficial, but what is the successrate of startups that end in -joy?
Homejoy and Staffjoy closed shop, are there others that closed or survived?

~~~
gukov
Cratejoy should be concerned, then.

~~~
philip1209
Considering the failure rate of startups, I think the data shows that we just
have a representative sample :-)

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

------
brilliantcode
Like other YC companies that failed, I've never heard of this one and many
more are likely to follow.

It's really tough to "make stuff people want" AND _willing to pay you every
month_ for it.

------
maverick_iceman
_> Their biggest scheduling problem was communication, because many workers
relied on prepaid phones._

I don't see what's the problem with prepaid phones. Do you mean feature
phones?

~~~
philip1209
Many workers didn't have access to email, or they were wary of providing it to
an employer. Without smart phones, they lacked access to apps. So basically,
they had no way to register for an account and see their schedule on other
applications.

During user studies, we saw that restaurants would still print out their
schedules, and managers would take a photo and text it to employees.

This created problems when the workers treated this channel as two-way. For
example, workers running late would text the manager, and the manager would
not notice the message promptly while working.

~~~
callalex
Twilio!

~~~
CamelCaseName
...How is Twillio the solution?

------
dvt
Any chance of a postmortem? Failure is part of the journey, but it still
sucks. Good luck in the future!

------
philip1209
I posted our YCF Application today: [https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoys-yc-
fellowship-applicatio...](https://blog.staffjoy.com/staffjoys-yc-fellowship-
application-5771c8a105cd)

------
sinamdar
One of the points mentioned often by @sama is that founders give up too
quickly. What advice did you get from your YC Partner on this conundrum of
being cockroaches versus shutting down?

~~~
mildbow
From the outside, it seems like the founder saw a bigger opportunity and
decided to move on.

So, the primary motivation isn't shutting down _this_ startup. The primary
motivation is moving on to the next startup which they believe is a bigger
opportunity.

Not too awesome for current employees: hope they are getting taken care of.

------
arjie
The name reminds of those half a dozen home cleaning service startups that a
couple of people kept starting.

~~~
philip1209
I got the .com for $10 3 years ago, so I've been happy with it :-)

------
csolorio
Can you share any revenue / growth numbers that resulted in your decision?

~~~
philip1209
Here's one fun fact: Our three-touch outbound email campaigns to restaurants
had a ~0.1% conversion rate.

~~~
aedron
Trying (and failing miserably) to sell to small/medium businesses is almost a
rite of passage for new entrepreneurs.

------
jakestl
Have you considered starting your next company back in St Louis?

~~~
philip1209
I've considered making it remote.

------
uladzislau
So they launched right after the holidays in the slowest time possible and are
shutting it down only after a month? I think we don't have the full story
here. It looks like a panic either on the investor's side or startup side, or
both.

~~~
philip1209
We did outbound for multiple months, and were feature-complete on the product
in November. Our first users on the V2 came onboard in early December.

Based on our user research, our primary markets (service and retail
industries) freeze all of their software during the holidays. During the lull
in January, they evaluate new purchases.

Launch is basically a one-time bump in inbounds that doesn't scale, so we
timed it when we thought it would have greatest effect. However, we had been
doing more scalable outbound - e.g. emails, canvassing neighborhoods with
flyers, etc - for months.

Conversions to signups were remarkably low, and conversions from signups to
paid were also low. We basically realized that we were not solving a core
burning problem for these businesses. That's more what contributed to the
shutdown.

~~~
___start
I was a partner in a startup a few years ago doing roughly the same thing.
After working on an early prototype, the project fizzled out due to
involvement in other projects, but a competitor launched with the same idea
soon after that called shiftplanning.com. They did literally the exact same
thing except they got to market before us and they (from what I can tell),
made it big. The market for this type of software is massive but obviously you
need to find some key business up front. Maybe you had the wrong investors? At
the time we had an investor that wanted to put money in AND have his large
restaurant chain start using it; a strategic partner... Something to think
about...

~~~
throwawaydbdksn
What startup founders don't realise sometimes is that marketing is more
important than having the best product.

I've had the luck of being on both development and marketing ends and high
quality marketing can definitely sell a product that's slightly inferior to
the competition 10:1

If you need big names attached to your product early the best way is to give
it out for free to those first strategic customers. Why would anyone turn down
something useful and free.

If you can't tell why another startup beat you out when you had a better
product it's garaunteed to be marketing related.

------
65827
Man they aren't even lasting 2 years nowadays? I think it's official: the
startup bubble is over in 2017 officially.

