Is there anything called ‘Art of Dying’? Techtribe goes off the web, Media sections lives on

August 27, 2009

By sinha

Techtribe, as we mentioned earlier was deadpooled – the site is officially off the world wide web, but the surprising part is that the media section of the site lives on.

What’s really disappointing is that there is not a single mention of service being not available anymore (sign-up button ofcourse doesn’t take you anywhere) on the news section.

While I have utmost respect for entrepreneurs who try (we are one!), do you think startups should announce their dead state – and then die? Or if they are dead, they should just remove the entire site?

Techtribe Query on Google

To me, it’s a question of trust (after all, Techtribe team is working on Tenmarks) and while people have short memories, sometimes it all comes back and haunt you.

Is there something called ‘Art of Dying’? How to fold off one’s startup?

What’s your pick among the three options here:

Announce the time your service will cease to exist / Give users ample time? [most of Silicon valley startups follow this – recent e.g. tipjoy]
One fine day, announce you are dead and take off the entire service.
Move on..keep the site running, till your server bills are paid? [many Indian startups do this]

What route will you take?

Tags: deadpool, ShortCircuit, techtribe

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Sriram Vadlamani on August 27, 2009 at 8:16 pm

Having a startup die is painful enough and they might not think of letting the world know. I think it pays to say that they are closing out.

Think of a bank which folds down. That would be something and a lot of things kick in because people deposited money in the bank.

In the same way what have people deposited with an online startup? Sometimes trust and sometimes loyalty.

A startup should let everyone know that they are folding up. Some can even stretch and offer lessons learned which would be a greater good to humanity.

Rohit on August 28, 2009 at 6:59 am

If they close down this news section what will they have to show off as their “Achievements” to prospective investors for Ten Marks or their other ventures?

Palash Soni on August 28, 2009 at 12:54 pm

Oh…sad to see this….I was totally unaware of there dismal situation. Btw, what happened to the funding they got from Canaan Partners.Is it considering another round of funding by any chance?…any idea about it??

Rohit on September 1, 2009 at 11:03 am

Sinha, thanks for pointing this out. We didn’t even know that the news section was still on – I guess we don’t google ourselves enough . What made you google us?

When we took down the site, we figured no one got to the news section by remembering the URL – everyone usually follows the link in the footer. We had hosted news on a different box, which frankly I don’t even recall how it’s still hosted since we aren’t paying for any hosting for the last year .

@Rohit – not the same as me of course – nah.. i wish we needed media coverage to show off our achievements. Some models work, some don’t. As some smart guy said – nothing ventured, nothing gained . I learnt a lot from running a consumer Internet company for 3 years, and especially one targeting the Indian market.

Rohit on September 1, 2009 at 11:11 am

@Sriram – I would disagree with the comparison to a ‘Bank”. If that were the case, I guess it would be fair to ask “customers” to notify us when the decided to not use the services? . Unfortunately, in the Internet space, when there’s a service being offered that didn’t deliver value as expected, it’s fair to not announce a closure – when one’s in the middle of different conversations – one tries until there’s no more left to try for.

It’s easy to critique, difficult to follow. I’d ask people the same exact question – if you had a relationship that was breaking down, or you ran out of money, do you call all your friends who’ve invested in that relationship and keep them apprised with each step? Would you call all your friends and tell them to not call you out for dinners anymore because you can’t afford it?

I would completely agree that if there’s a paid service, or a mission critical service of any magnitude, it’s the responsibility of the company to notify people FAR IN ADVANCE to give people options to switch providers. More, i would recommend providers and strike deals with them to make the transition easy. But for a service that people weren’t using for anything critical, and only realize was gone when pluggd.in mentions it , it’s not a requirement for me.

And for the loyalty comment, last i checked, loyalty was a two-way street. I wonder how many people wrote to us offering their symathies . The ones that did, got notified .