Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Swurl - Founders doing too many things





What?

Swurl was a life streaming service with a stunning user interface. One unique feature was the timeline view that organized all your content from many different services into one neat calendar perspective.  It also creatively let you publish your content in a blog-esque format.

Who?

Two guys doing swurl as a part time job. Ryan & Jonathan 

Lesson Learned?

Side projects are great, and having a full time job sometimes justifies the time spent on side projects, as a steady income keeps the food on the table.  However there is a HUGE downside as people lose focus quite easily, and take enormous amounts of time to get relatively quick steps accomplished.  I don't think you should never tackle that dream side project you have, but its important to distinguish fantasy from reality and outline EXACTLY where you want to take the project before you dive right in.

Last Words?

Hello Swurlers,

We built Swurl as two guys doing something we love in our spare time.
Unfortunately, due to the pressures of our day jobs and other
distractions, we can no longer support or maintain the service at the 
level that we think our users deserve.

Building Swurl has been a great experience for us. We want to thank
all of the folks that used Swurl as a way to document their lives
online and share with their friends and families. Thanks a bunch to
those users that gave us lots of valuable feedback and encouragement.

Thanks,

Ryan & Jonathan 

PS You can also check out our other work at: http://picclick.com
http://www.optinnow.org

RIP Swurl - 3/3/09

What The Hell...?

Startup Death is essentially going to look at and document startups as they fold out of the race, whether due to the extremely horrible financial times, boredom, new projects, lack of motivation, lack of faith, or the million other reasons.

So keep a look out for updates as the deaths come in.

Remember a death is nothing but a rebirth somewhere else. We can learn from the tragedies these companies have faced, and strive to build more effective products and services.

Enjoy.