TechCrunch is running a guest post of mine about the exciting new field of site-specific browsers. Needless to say, it’s a honor to be on TechCrunch, and I hope my article will help to increase awareness of what SSBs are and why they’re important. Personally I’m convinced that they represent the future of web apps.
I haven’t seen any sign yet of the “gaggles of groupies” that Mike promises in the post’s comments, but I’m sneaking out the back door to pick up a sombrero and some wraparound sunglasses, just in case.
I’ve just come across this horror story about G-Archiver, a windows shareware which backs up your gmail account to your local hard drive but also emails your username and password to the creator!
When we initially launched AllPeers, the client was not open-source but we always said our goal was to do it. At the time, the source code was not clean enough to open but we knew this was the only way for us to prove we were genuine and not planning on spying on our users.
When we finally opened the code, some people saw it as a desperate move on our part. It was not. It was a way for us to be transparent and to say “if you don’t trust us, just look at our code”.
There are a lot of advantages about developing open-source software but trust and security are certainly high on the list.
Now forget about open-source software and think about all these websites who ask you for your login credentials in order to “import your contacts”. Can you really trust them and if so how? How paranoiac are you about this? I usually tend to trust the sites but is a nice design and a groovy name enough to earn my trust when it comes to my email credentials?
Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis caused a blogostorm with his candid treatise on making every startup dollar count. The controversy is not especially surprising when his list of tips for thrifty includes such items as “fire people who are not workaholics” (which provoked so much ire that he felt compelled to change it to “fire people who don’t love their work”). Some went as far as to label Calacanis a “prick“, with the obligatory observation that they’ve never heard or his company, but love to death the products of cooler companies who pay for their employees to go backpacking.
I’ve seen both approaches in action in my day. More than one startup founder has told me that they keep the hours reasonable because they “don’t want to burn out their staff.” Sorry, but what I heard was “I’m too lazy to work long hours so I can’t expect my staff to.” Of course, it depends to some degree on your ambitions. If your goal is to earn a good living with a bunch of smart, like-minded folks tackling some not-too-intractable problem, with plenty of free time to bungee jump from helicopters or make erotic origami, that is doable. But if you want to create a world-beating company, Mike Arrington has it nailed: your odds of succeeding are long enough without four-day weeks and ambling trips to the local juice bar five times a day.
Besides which, software geeks don’t have the same view of life/work balance as most people. In their response to Jason’s post, 37signals explain that:
Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.
Probably the guy who wrote this is a graphic designer or something, since for all the real programmers I know, the most interesting subject imaginable is the software project they are currently working on. That’s why our social skills suck so bad. When we run into someone who isn’t a geek, we have no idea what to talk about. Naturally this gets old eventually, and even the pocket protector set ends up settling down, getting a dog and starting a family. Ever wonder why most startups are populated mainly with 20-somethings?
Which brings me to my real point: in light of this state of affairs, does Europe have a chance in the software biz? I’ve been working in European software startups for 15 years (and running them for 10). Having grown up in America, I’ve always been frustrated by the lack of obsessiveness when it comes to driving the company’s success. Programmers on this side of the pond work a lot harder than, say, post office clerks, but traditionally it’s still been a far cry from the mattress-under-your-desk workathon of the American startup nerd. When Arrington mocked the idea of “three weeks vacation” I had to smile. Over here, the big question is whether we can beat our staff down from five to only four weeks.
The good news is that the situation is changing. I’m seeing more and more startups built up around the American model. Globalization, more awareness of “cool” company cultures like Google’s and a few European home runs (such as Skype) are helping to reshape attitudes on this side of the pond. Lack of precedents for success, paucity of venture capital, stifling regulation and excessive risk aversion have conspired with our generally sedate work habits to lock Europeans into second-class citizen status in the software world. As we overcome these obstacles, I expect we’ll mount a much more credible challenge to America’s technological dominance.
Although AllPeers didn’t produce the kind of outcome that we had hoped for and expected, it’s been a tremendous learning experience. Hopefully others will be able to benefit from what I consider to be the main lessons.
Luck and ambition
Naturally the success of any startup is dependent to some degree on luck, and the luck factor rises in proportion to your ambitions. If your plan is to sell T-shirts online then execution is probably the main consideration. If you make really cool designs, have an easy-to-use website and do good marketing then you’ll probably make money, though you’re unlikely to be buying a private island in the South Pacific any time soon. If, on the other hand, you plan to dethrone Facebook by adding state-of-the-art social features to the fabric of the web, transforming the internet experience of billions of people, you’re going to have to execute to perfection and still get really really lucky if your company is to succeed. Of course, if you make it you’ll be assured a very comfortable early retirement.
Neither of these approaches is inherently wrong but you should be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. If you can’t stand the thought of failure, make sure you’re not tackling a problem that is too big and ambitious. In the case of AllPeers, we knew that there was going to be a lot of luck involved (as there is with any product that relies on network effects and viral adoption), and we were pretty well prepared for the challenges we would face. It is comforting to see failure in this way because we certainly wouldn’t have sacrificed our lofty ambitions to increase our chance of moderate success.
Raise as much as you can
I’m not the first one to say this, but let me express my wholehearted agreement: raise as much as you can, as soon as you can, and not a penny less. In early 2006, before we had released even a private alpha of AllPeers, we suddenly became a minor web star thanks to a couple of white-hot buzzwords (”Firefox” and “BitTorrent”) and a very positive writeup on TechCrunch. (And in fact we owe a great deal to Mike Arrington, who grasped our vision immediately and did a great job of articulating why it was exciting. It’s easy and intellectually lazy to be pessimistic before the fact and snarky afterwards, while it takes courage to go out on a limb and predict success.) We believed our own hype a bit too much, unfortunately, and didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to raise a lot of cash at a high valuation. Instead we brought in a very modest amount under the assumption that we’d be in a great position in a few short months to close a much bigger round.
As a result, we were under constant pressure to get user numbers up so we could raise more money. This isn’t the way to run a company, particularly one with an ambitious technological vision. We ended up making a string of tactical moves rather than taking a step back and looking at the big picture. As a consequence, we ran out of money before we could get the product to where it needed to be. Don’t make this mistake.
This shouldn’t be construed as a criticism of Mangrove Capital Partners, who led our series A investment round. They are a fantastic group of individuals whom I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend to any entrepreneur seeking funding, and a classic example of a VC who really does offer much more than money to a budding startup (something they all claim to do). But only a company’s founder has a single-minded focus on the company’s success, and this includes acquiring a war chest to deal with unforeseen contingencies.
Since the announcement of the closing of AllPeers we have been submerged by emails, IMs, SMS and phone calls from total strangers and friends in the industry.
Before making the announcement, Matt and I were wondering yesterday if anyone would really pay attention. After all we had not been in the news for some time and we would not be the first company to “join the deadpool”. To our surprise, our announcement has generated a lot of press coverage including Wired, CNET, InternetNews, Ars Technica and of course blogs (from the most famous ones to the smallest ones). The feedback is a general feeling of sadness and incomprehension.
This has been beyond our expectations (this is a recurring thing here at AllPeers) and we are turning all this love into positives vibes for our personal and professional lives.
As Obi-Wan Kenobi said: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.“.
This is pretty much how we feel right now 24h after going public with the news. Thanks to all for caring, this is why we create businesses.
It is with deep regret that we inform our users, friends and fans that we will be shutting down the AllPeers service today. We are tremendously proud of the product that our team has built, and we remain convinced of the potential of adding social features like file sharing to the web browser. However, we have not achieved the kind of growth in our user base that our investors were expecting, and as a result we are not able to continue operating the service.
The past few years have been an incredible adventure for us. We would like to thank all of the amazing people who have helped us along the way. This includes countless users who provided us with valuable feedback about how to improve our product; the Mozilla community, who has proven to us that “community” is more than just a word when it comes to open source software; the many volunteers who spent hours translating each AllPeers version into fifteen different languages to make it available to non-English speakers across the world; and the friends and family who have supported us as we pursued what undoubtedly seemed like a crazy dream.
Being an entrepreneur is the most rewarding and exhilarating job we can imagine. Being able to build on a vision you have one morning and watch as it grows into reality is quite an experience. Seeing people get excited by what you are building is incredibly gratifying. The praise, devotion and even harsh criticism of the user community is what keeps you going despite long working hours, frequent stress and periods of uncertainty.
When we started working on AllPeers, we knew that it was an ambitious project with no guarantee of success. Such is the nature of any software startup. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Although we are deeply disappointed with the way this adventure has ended, we hope that fear of failure will never prevent us from daring to act on our inspiration.
We have met many many new friends thanks to AllPeers (you know who you are). This is a fantastic silver lining that gives us great comfort. We hope you will stay in touch as we move on to new pastures.
The success of this blog has also been one of the best experiences to come out of AllPeers. We will continue to operate it under the “Peer Pressure” name, posting our random thoughts about the web, the software industry, the evolution of media and whatever else strikes our fancy. We hope you’ll keep on reading. Matt will also continue writing his Just Browsing blog with a focus on web browsers and browser technology.
You haven’t heard the last from us. See you in our next life!
