<story><title>Everpix VC Feedback</title><url>https://github.com/everpix/Everpix-Intelligence/blob/master/Anonymized%20VC%20Feedback.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ivanplenty</author><text>This morning I did a public write-up of the Everpix business model to see why it failed:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.ivanplenty.com/2014-economics-everpix-shutdown-decision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.ivanplenty.com&amp;#x2F;2014-economics-everpix-shutdo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Submitted to HN a few hours ago as &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7052593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7052593&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;tl;dr
Everpix sold its product at a &lt;i&gt;marginal&lt;/i&gt; loss and closed its doors after the financing ran out. Since the marginal costs always exceeded the marginal revenue we now know that Everpix should have shut its doors immediately as it never could be a viable business in either the short or long runs.  There doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be a what-if cost structure change that it could have made realistically to stay in business.  Shutting down was the right decision for the business, and this evidence suggests it should have shut down a long time ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>barrkel</author><text>&lt;i&gt;a business should supply a product if the marginal revenue is greater than the marginal cost&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t right. The return on capital must exceed the cost of capital, at the very least the market rate of interest. Otherwise you&amp;#x27;re not taking into account opportunity cost.&lt;p&gt;I have another issue with your analysis. It&amp;#x27;s quite blinkered, focused on immediate profits with the zeal of an accountant. Solutions to the photo problem have potential for being strategic, and I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s been figured out yet.&lt;p&gt;A better focus on cost structure could have extended the lifetime of the company, but it likely would have grown too slowly for &amp;quot;$B&amp;quot;. I think the founders tried hard to generate growth metrics, betting that the growth would convince investors they could hockey-stick. But they didn&amp;#x27;t get quite enough growth, and their burn rate was too high to put on the brakes[1] - and likely they weren&amp;#x27;t interested in putting on the brakes. So I don&amp;#x27;t think your analysis is particularly relevant in the end. It deals mostly with cash-flow level tactics, whereas this was a strategic play.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I think you&amp;#x27;re a decent analyst. But I expect people use you for your specific focus, not for the big picture. I think you would have predicted YouTube to be a failure, for example.&lt;p&gt;[1] I&amp;#x27;m relying on the burn rate being in a vehicle of some sort for this not to be a mixed metaphor...</text></comment>
<story><title>Everpix VC Feedback</title><url>https://github.com/everpix/Everpix-Intelligence/blob/master/Anonymized%20VC%20Feedback.md</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ivanplenty</author><text>This morning I did a public write-up of the Everpix business model to see why it failed:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://research.ivanplenty.com/2014-economics-everpix-shutdown-decision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.ivanplenty.com&amp;#x2F;2014-economics-everpix-shutdo...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Submitted to HN a few hours ago as &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7052593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7052593&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;tl;dr
Everpix sold its product at a &lt;i&gt;marginal&lt;/i&gt; loss and closed its doors after the financing ran out. Since the marginal costs always exceeded the marginal revenue we now know that Everpix should have shut its doors immediately as it never could be a viable business in either the short or long runs.  There doesn&amp;#x27;t appear to be a what-if cost structure change that it could have made realistically to stay in business.  Shutting down was the right decision for the business, and this evidence suggests it should have shut down a long time ago.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>swisspol</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a very interesting analysis, but you&amp;#x27;re applying brick-and-mortar &amp;#x2F; bootstrap business logic to a an early stage VC backed consumer business where 101 economics don&amp;#x27;t fully apply. Not a single investor, VC or advisor cared about that &amp;quot;marginal loss&amp;quot; (which is &amp;quot;easily&amp;quot; fixable through infrastructure). If that was the case, the vast majority of consumer startups wouldn&amp;#x27;t be around in the valley (let&amp;#x27;s not even talk about the ones having zero revenues resulting in an infinite marginal loss).&lt;p&gt;I provided some extra context and counter-points here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7053473&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=7053473&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>