[polpo]

From the article:

While the app was initially used primarily by individuals who made a few airport pickups per year, today Just Landed is increasingly used by professional limousine and taxi drivers, airline professionals, and travel companies.

So they were seeing increasing use by commercial users. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to start charging for such access.

[Eridrus]

No kidding, this was the weirdest shutdown statement I've read in a while, "we found users who derive commercial benefit from using us... so we're shutting down"

[IkmoIkmo]

I think he did touch on that though. Essentially he's selling bread, and he's got to buy scarce flower at high prices in a convoluted system from a small number of farmers, and be forever at the mercy of the flower selling farmers. Only it's data instead of flower.

Further, the data sometimes is bad and causes inaccuracy issues for customers without him knowing, this causes lots of complaints that he has no control over, something that isn't feasible when charging money to commercial users. Not just that, but the price of data is ever increasing, free data is becoming restricted and he needs to restructure as data suppliers go out of business or restructure their API.

I mean there are obviously solutions, like generate his own data etc. But it really looks like he's got other opportunities to earn a living and this isn't the lowest hanging fruit for him.

What I DO find strange is why he's not selling it. I just can't imagine not at least one of the company's he's buying data from wouldn't buy this at a discounted price if need be. Some money is better than nothing.

[jgrall]

Creator of Just Landed here. Actually, I have been approached by a number of companies over the years about selling Just Landed, including some household names. The trouble is, almost none of them wanted the app – they just wanted me as an employee. These weren't companies I could get super excited about working for - especially since I love being an entrepreneur and working for myself. Of the few who did want the app or the tech, their quality bar/taste wasn't a good fit, and I worried about how they would treat my users. It was never about the money. Time is my most valuable scarce resource.

[mikecarlton]

Thanks for building this, I've been a low-volume user since sometime in 2013. I'll miss it, but completely understand your reasoning.

[annnnd]

Hmmm. If it's about users, then why shutter the service they depend on? I am sure you have throught about this a lot and are probably tired of investing more time and energy in this project, but if you have hundreds of thousands of users, you have a huge opportunity on your hands.

How about:

1) start building your own set of data to complement the bought data. Every time there is an inaccuracy, approach the airline company and start using their data directly. Later on, you can even become one of the companies who provide data to others. When there is a problem ("the data companies are not doing their job") there is an opportunity.

2) change the pricing model to charge big users more. They should be your bread and butter, because they get paid to use your app. You are just a small additional cost to them. You can even lower the initial price tag and charge more for enterprise usage... Since you are better than others (see 1.) the enterprise users will be happy to pay more.

3) failing that, sell to an entrepreneur who will continue. I am sure there are many interested persons and your users would be better served if someone picked up where you left off. Hell, I am interested... :)

[unclebucknasty]

Ever think about contractualizing the things that concerned you (like user-treatment) and getting a conditional employment contract, which also featured a limited term?

I hear you on the time point. Thing is, it's hard to get to that place where you have an offer on the table. Starting over would have a time cost, so over the long term, you might've been able to buy yourself more time with the time you'd already invested.

Of course, that also depends on the amount of the offer.

[morgante]

The app is great and I actually think a business model could be found (though I can totally understand your weariness).

Have you considered selling it to another entrepreneur to carry on instead of shutting down completely?

[tw04]

Not to be that guy, but I think you mean flour? Sorry, it threw me off and had to re-read a few times.

[IkmoIkmo]

Thanks!

[nostrademons]

I think that what the other posters are touching on is: why sell bread at all? Why not sell beer? Or ethanol, to gasoline companies? You have a source of flour, and you also have access to customers who are deriving their livelihoods from your product. If the bread market is tapped out and too competitive to make a profit, why not turn around and seek other markets?

In my experience, consumer mobile is pretty much tapped out - it's very difficult to make a living as an independent app developer. But the enterprise market is still booming. Now that the giant consumer applications (WhatsApp, Instagram, Uber, Instacart, etc.) have been found, there's a long tail of smaller niches that'll pay good money for specialized services.

[duderific]

But he doesn't have the source of flour -- he gets the flour (data) from unreliable/expensive sources and turns it into bread. The people with the data are the ones who are in the leverage position.

[quadrature]

hate to nitpick, but you might appreciate that its called "flour". good analogy !.

[aws_ls]

Perhaps, the HN dupe detection algo needs to be slightly improved to check parent comment? :-)

[motdiem]

You touch an important point. I'm in the process of winding down an app that relies on scraping a variety of badly formed data - there is commercial interest, but it is really difficult for me to make people pay for something if I can't guarantee the quality of the data- which after struggling for a couple of years chasing obscure data format changes, I was not looking forward too. I'm sure there were other factors, but I completely understand the app creator's decision to shutdown rather than enterprise up with that in mind.

[colmvp]

I've worked in a similar situation, providing pricing/inventory information to buyers from vendors, and it's hellish as a middleman with limited clout to ensure vendors remain consistent in transmitting up-to-date pricing and inventory. When one side encounter inconsistencies, middlemen always get the blame despite the other side being responsible for providing the information. Hence why I sympathize with the app developer.

[brianwawok]

Commercial people using your app vs commercial users willing to pay 500 times the current price are 2 very different things.

[jgrall]

You got it. To profitably support commercial power users I would have had to change the business model to a pay-as-you-go subscription model. I considered doing this in a way that wouldn't shut out my casual users (for whom I created the app in the first place, and who are still the majority), but I had serious doubts about the willingness of taxi and limo drivers to pay for Just Landed on an ongoing basis.

The proliferation of half-decent free flight trackers (albeit without the unique airport pickup focus), the other systemic problems mentioned in my post, and the increasingly common cannibalization of utility apps by Apple's iOS itself, led me to the conclusion that such an endeavor was likely doomed to fail.

Just because you can find passionate users doesn't mean you've found a good business, and that was the case here.

[lucio]

Have you tried it? What if instead of "we're shutting down", you'll say "from now on the service will cost 5 bucks a month" (or we'll close)" and see what happens?

[pbreit]

Why "500 times"?

[mst]

Because that was how much more data they were using than the early users.

[brianwawok]

Exactly from the article he said they used 500x more data (which I am sure is a total broad guess, but I could easily imagine 100x or more for someone hitting an airport up every day)

[estefan]

It's like "After 4 years we finally found our most potentially valuable users but don't want to charge them and would rather shut down..."

[untog]

Corporate customers that are paying you money would be a lot more demanding. And it sounds like this was only ever a side project.

[mathattack]

Yes - charge a lot more money for a smaller user base.

[wantreprenr007]

Failure to monetize such as hypertargeted/local ads/deals or freemium features.

Winners tend to turn challenge into profit opportunities rather than give up and disappoint many people when they had something sizable which could be sold to someone whom can fix it or fix it themselves.

Too often, when people whom are uncomfortable with uncertainty and don't know what success looks like, they give up and throw away opportunity which may never come again because of their past behavior / reputation for not finishing things. My cousin nearly had a florist shop by having tons of orders, but gave up when he didn't know what to do by feeling overwhelmed... and I was so disappointed that he didn't handle it better to come out ahead in something he had passion and opportunity that passed by. (Self-sabotage or novice mistakes, who knows.)

I see these shutdown notices not as some self-deprecating contrition but as braggging about letting people down, destroying value and wasting their and all their customers' and investors' time and money... don't shutdown when you have a good team and customers, pivot or sell. (Don't squander assets: talent, social or capital.)

[girvo]

What an entitled smug attitude. No wonder you posted it under a throwaway.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I agree that it was poorly stated, but there is some truth in there that's worth considering.

[zippergz]

And then watch someone else launch a free version 3 weeks later...

[JoeAltmaier]

Reading the article, its clear that won't ever happen. The data sources are expensive.

[cryptoz]

I've been thinking recently about crowdsourcing our own dataset of airplane data. When you get on a plane, tap a button that says 'we're delayed 5 mins'. When you land, tap a button that says you've landed. In fact, you probably don't even need users to tap those buttons. The better way would be to use the accelerometer and barometer to automatically detect takeoff and landing.

Airplane data sources are ALWAYS wrong in my experience. I have been on a flight that was 2 hours late but all the flight data sources/apps would say 'On time'. Bullshit. And very often there are delays that the flight data does not account for, but are real delays. User's phones could provide a much more real-time view on where airplanes actually are than any existing flight data source. I hate sitting on a plane and knowing that I am more up-to-date on how late we are than the official data source is. That's super annoying and it seems like there's an 'easy' fix: just build a new kind of crowdsourced, real-time flight data service.

[theparanoid]

Users will complain loudly about battery life. Using the GPS, accelerometer, barometer isn't free.

It should be possible to piggyback on the user texting or performing some other common action after landing. But probably isn't easy.

[eCa]

> use the accelerometer and barometer to automatically detect takeoff and landing.

Or check location with a given interval and see when they no longer travel at mach 1?

[teraflop]

Would that even be possible? I know I've never been able to get GPS to work reliably on any phone I've owned while on an airplane (even holding it up to the window), and presumably cell tower location wouldn't be available either above a certain altitude.

[GauntletWizard]

Edit: I am utterly wrong about my first point, the export controls don't kick in til 1,200mph or 59,000 feet; Both much faster and higher than standard commercial jetliners. [1]

GPS on your phone can't, by US law, work when you're in a plane. It is required that consumer GPS devices stop sending data when it is traveling over a certain speed, to prevent them from being repurposed as guidance systems for cruise missiles. Seriously.

You don't really need it, though. If you've got two or three people on the plane, the signal from when they all turn off airplane mode is a fairly good landing indicator. Takeoff is less steady; You're theoretically supposed to turn off your phone when they close the cabin door, but most people I know don't until they are actually taxiing down the jetway.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoCom#Legacy

[pjc50]

This is somewhat impaired by "airplane mode".

[zippergz]

I've seen enough cases of people creating crappy free "replacements" for premium apps or services, and people flocking to them, that I don't know if you'd actually need to fully replicate the data sources. Just find something "good enough" and people will come. Or pay for a little while, planning to "figure out monetization later" and then fail in six months or a year.

[plorkyeran]

That just means that the free alternatives won't stick around, but you could still get a steady stream of people who see your prices, assume they can undercut you and still make a profit and take away a few months of revenue each before they run out of money and give up.

[jgrall]

They're welcome to try, but you're correct.