[whalesalad]

What??? How is this even remotely possible?

I call BS. It's either a smoke screen for some other issue, or their app was built back asswards. Either way, this post and the circumstances are indicative that Amy and/or the Charm leadership has no idea what they are doing.

And they were not even launched? Beta or something? The comment about opening to the general public implies that they weren't getting that much usage. These days it's hard to build something with a modern framework and decent hardware that does not at least work for a closed-beta period. Add 100k to the mix and honestly what the hell.

Amy/Tom run Freckle and do some other cool shit so why are they dropping the ball on this? It's like getting a paper cut on your finger and going home for the day because it's just too much to bear. Cry me a fucking river.

Why does this keep happening?! People are throwing cash into the dumbest shit these days.

[gizzlon]

Who gave these guys & gals $100k?

Reading this must make founders striving to get investments furious..

[slexaxton]

Thomas and Amy speak a lot on never accepting outside investment. So this was probably their own money. ("Bootstrapped," if you want)

[davidw]

Given Amy's modus operandi, I believe it's probably mostly their own money.

[johnward]

I'm pretty sure it's their own money.

[ahoyhere]

Yes, the other gentlemen are correct. This was all our own money. Which we earned from scratch from our other products (all doing very well, thank you). And, perhaps more galling, VCs approach us every month to try to invest (but we're against it).

I'm sure shutting down a perfectly good and potentially very profitable product will make lots of wannabes and aspiring entrepreneurs jealous. Luckily I don't make my life decisions based on what other people would do in my situation.

When you run a real business, with real customers, you quickly discover that what sounds good, isn't, and what looks bad, is often the absolutely right thing to do. Luckily, our early access customers for Charm heard & understood & appreciated my email.

[gizzlon]

I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Not very sorry, but a little bit.

FWIW, it deserve respect to shut down something you built with your own money.

In hindsight, I think you would have gotten an entirely different response had you said "We can't run Charm with the team we currently have, there are technical challenges we can't solve". Understandable and believable. But for all the people dealing with problems like the one you blamed on a regular basis, saying what you did just sounds like:

"We spent or life-savings building this great house! But it keeps running out of toilet-paper, so we burned that s"#¤ down!!"

[ahoyhere]

When running out of toilet paper causes your house to fall down and people to lose money, your metaphor will actually make sense.

[ahoyhere]

It's always nice to hear from people who are informed on the facts of the situation, who analyze things calmly and rationally and consider all the individuals involved. Thank you for participating.

BTW — you got all the facts wrong. Just in case that wasn't clear. And nobody was asking for your sympathy.

[chelate]

It's good to see that you guys are going down with grace and ironically, lots of charm, and not flailing around like angry children when people question your motives and competency.

Good to know you couldn't master the most popular Linux distro though! Hope the VCs can read this.