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

73 points by heymatty ↗ HN
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.

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.

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.

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.

We are looking for a team who are ready to fully dedicate their time to taketake to launch it, raise money and grow it.

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.

If you are interested, please email matt-at-taketake.com

74 comments

[ 13.2 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] thread
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 ?
nikcub
a lot of people seems to lump all nosql into the same category. redis and mongodb are very different.
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.

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 :)
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!
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!
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.

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.
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 :)
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.
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.
kennethologist
Sorry things haven't worked out...as yet! Don't give up keep pushing.
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.
lmai
why weren't they sent out? Seems like you built it, but never gave it a chance to run.
johnnyo
So, you don't actually have any users?
phenning
I really like your site. Hope all works out for you! Great intro. :)
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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.

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 :)
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.
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.

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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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.
true_religion
Lack of determination doesn't mean what they built is valueless.
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.
sami_b
I can tell this an April Fools joke, but that's a nicely designed website.
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.