

SnapTalent (YC W08) Shuts Down - dannyr
http://www.snaptalent.com/

======
sjsivak
They did a good job by being honest and I think it is probably a great idea to
get out of the online job recruitment sector.

I just wish they would have read over that goodbye note, or at least spell
checked it.

~~~
benatkin
It would be nice if they switched course without announcing they're going out
of business. Reminds me of this:

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

AppJet did a good job following that advice IMO, but Heroku takes the cake.
They didn't just change direction. They kept the old product alive, too.

Edit: I was wrong. AppJet kept some of their old stuff around, too! I can't
wait to check it out. <http://appjet.com/dev-archive.html>

~~~
jacquesm
According to the letter they already switched course and it didn't work out.

------
maurycy
Finally, a failure. I'm tired with all the success stories.

~~~
pmjordan
Most failures just wither away and die. They rarely announce it.

~~~
jrandom
And how many of those failures actually pay back investors instead of burning
through all their cash first?

This is quite possibly the most responsible failure I've ever read about.

~~~
nostrademons
Odeo. Except that in hindsight, I think the investors may've wished that Ev
kept their money and started Twitter out of the same company...

------
jasonlbaptiste
Sumon and crew will be successful at whatever they do next, there's no doubt
about that. By giving the money back to investors and being fully transparent,
they've also shown that they're classy and full of integrity. Seriously, mucho
respect for this move. Curious to see what they do next.

~~~
ynniv
Why is it classy to throw in the towel? The letter doesn't suggest that
investors asked for their money back. This is the worst case scenario given my
understanding of the VC market. It sounds like the team has lost their
momentum, but certainly they have learned something in the process. If they
dissolve the company and start something new which becomes successful, the
original investors get nothing. There's nothing wrong with that from a
morality perspective, but don't assume that investors want their money back -
their reasons for investing might be complex.

~~~
jasonlbaptiste
They had two years in the bank. They knew the risks and the likelihood of what
would have happened. They could have been paid themselves for 2 years, tried a
lot of different things, and potentially wasted the money. That is how it
usually goes. Instead they cut their losses. I'm pretty sure the investors
would rather have their money back than nothing at all.

~~~
ynniv
By "they", I assume that you meant the founders. Did the founders have
personal losses to be cut?

> I'm pretty sure the investors would rather have their money back than
> nothing at all.

Did you ask them? Are you yourself a VC investor? Its rather possible that
investors saw promising talent and wanted to buy 2 years of their time.

~~~
coryrc
The investors could have said "No, keep the money, do something else." Who
would turn that down?

~~~
jacquesm
Who knows, maybe they did ?

Maybe they felt like being free from the extra duties having 'foreign' capital
brings with it.

------
ujeezy
Good luck! It's never fun to read about a young startup closing its doors, but
I'm sure you'll do great things with these experiences.

A quick question: I've been reading a lot about the theory of customer
development lately (mostly via Eric Ries's blog and The Four Steps to the
Epiphany). I know hindsight is 20/20, and I apologize in advance if it sounds
like I'm just rubbing salt in your wounds, but I'd love to know what you think
about this...

It sounds like your experience is a good example of a company that might have
benefited by putting as much effort into finding the initial customers as in
product development. Working closely with these earlyvangelists from the start
might have helped you learn whether the product being built solves real pain
points and to learn how and to what extent these earlyvangelists would be able
to deploy the product internally.

I personally think it would be very difficult to do anything _but_ build
product in the three months leading up to demo day. The time it would take to
locate and engage potential customers seems mammoth. Perhaps the product
delivered on demo day is used to secure additional funding, and then as the
demo product used to find market fit.

Anyway, I'm no expert in this stuff, which is why I'd really like to know your
thoughts.

Best of luck with your next company!

~~~
jamiequint
We did start applying Steve Blank's stuff in Q4 '08 when we began to change
direction to focus on college, but we applied it poorly. There are a number of
reasons why, many are too long to explain here. I'll be writing up some posts
on what went wrong and post them here so hopefully that will prompt further
useful discussion.

------
aseidman
Spent 1.5 years as lead Product for Yahoo HotJobs and this post is spot-on --
nicely captured. To put it rather bluntly there is more innovation happening
in most small sized municipal utilities (see the Palo Alto Green program) then
in the online job recruitment space. Given how incredibly important talent is
to companies the CEO needs to reset incentive structures for their HR
organizations.

------
yan
I'm sure the SnapTalent guys started working on something new before even
posting that good-bye

~~~
jamiequint
It takes a long time to shut down a company. We stopped working on Snaptalent
almost 4 months ago. I'm hoping to get some time in the near future to write
some posts going into more detail about what went wrong. There are definitely
a lot of takeaways that are being practically applied to my new project.

~~~
veteran
are you selling assets/domain? or folding into another venture?

~~~
jamiequint
Company is being liquidated. All the other founders and I are doing separate
things now.

------
noodle
too bad, undoubtedly a result of the collision of a bunch of bad
circumstances.

good to see that they're able to analyze and learn from the situation at hand
and have the fortitude and responsibility to make the call to shut it down
before they crashed and burned.

------
wyw
Except for a couple of typos ('are' instead of 'our'), this is an extremely
articulate and informative statement which will no doubt help them justify
this decision to future funders or employers. Very impressive.

~~~
sielskr
If you think language like the following is "extremely articulate" or
"informative", well, please do not send me anything to read.

 _The decision has primarily dictated by market conditions and opportunity
cost which in aggregate would mean we probably wouldn't have been able to show
the kind of results we wanted to make this a big company in this market._

------
javery
HiddenNetwork (<http://www.hiddennetwork.com/>) which had a very similar
business to SnapTalents first service also recently shut down. I think both of
these affirm that advertising jobs to people who aren't looking for jobs isn't
the best business model. (Job boards frequented by good people can be a
lucrative business though, see 37signals, etc)

------
Maro
"In November 2008, we transitioned from this product to identify an
opportunity to try and focus on how recruitment products could be adapted for
the Facebook generation. We hoped that our experience of consumer products and
frustrations of this generation would allow us to deliver an amazing product."

Frustrations of this generation?

~~~
daleharvey
knowing the difference between how technology can work, and how it does work
in real life.

at least for me.

------
dmose
Couple guys from my University started Jobloft.com and they were recently
acquired - although this was before the recession.

------
rishi
Does anyone know if they tried to sell the company?

------
viggity
You gave it a go, which is more than you can say about most people. So, good
job.

Good luck in whatever endeavors you head to next.

------
willphipps
so sorry to hear this.

------
californiaguy
Recruiters and HR are the worst people to deal with in the entire technology
industry.

~~~
blang
What about lawyers?

~~~
californiaguy
Depends on if you're paying.

