Here is the author answering a similar question: https://medium.com/@oscargodson/the-whole-concept-we-were-se...

(in short: a mixture of "that's not what people liked about the concept" and "not big enough of a goal"?)

You don't get to say what people like about something unless you let it out into the world. There are so many cases where people built and released something just to find out people love it for the reasons they never expected. This guy makes it sound like he knows why he failed but it's far from it. The biggest reason they failed was because they never released anything. The first thing you learn as soon as you release a product into real world is that people say one thing but do another--so many people say they love something but they never use it. Only way to get around is to release it in public and find the early adopters who WILL actually use it (instead of just saying they like it).

>> The first thing you learn as soon as you release a product into real world is that people say one thing but do another--so many people say they love something but they never use it. >> @galostoca above

That right there, is the whole truth. Not only do they not use it, they don't buy it to begin with. What sells and what people like are not the same as what they need or think they need.

Case in point. I developed a process, software and hardware, to take an ordinary photo and turn it into a 3D carving in the early 2000s. There were CNC programs that could do it with a lot of human touch-up, mesh manipulation, and machine coding, but mine went pretty seamlessly from photo to 'send it to the machine'.

Everybody, everybody is not just family and friends, loved it when they saw the photo and sample maple hardwood output side-by-side. People made statements like, 'I would pay an arm and a leg to have a door carved for my house'.

I brought the carvings to wooden boat shows with my and my partner's handmade seagoing kayaks, and people flocked around our table/booth. 'Can I get this on the kayak too?' Not one sale! The only money ever made by it was doing carvings on wooden urns for a local animal or pet cemetery. In similar fashion, I had an offer from a company that did bronze bas relief plaques for tombstones for a one-time purchase of my software! Needless to say, this didn't help with my emotional state, Stephen King references aside.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Yeah for the first couple of times I was heartbroken (It still happens), but now I've learned to embrace it. Nowadays when I have an idea, instead of asking the same dumb question to people "Would you use this?", I try to build an MVP as quickly as possible and let the product do the asking, and users answer with action instead of words.

Like Steve Jobs said, people don't know what they want. This is not a condescending comment, it's a great insight that comes from being able to understand how human mind works.

I still don't understand what made them want to reinvent venmo to pay kids for chores

Neither do I, it doesn't sound like a very fun challenge.

Where "reinvent" = something totally different. For one, it's not reciprocal, only the kid side gets money. Second, it involves chores, not splitting bills etc where money are shared. Third, it was supposed to use the currency to be able to buy apps etc, not get actual money. And lastly, there's the kids angle. Sure, it's about debt and value exchange, but that can be said for tons of apps, even a bitcoin exchange.

Would be a perfect way to introduce kids to cryptocurrency. No need to deal with regulatory agencies. The "points" (btc/ether) are actually worth something (whether more or less in the future).

kid marks they've completed task, parent xfer bits to kids wallet. Kid can now buy games at newegg or gift cards from tons of stores through Gyft.

the smart kids (like my oldest daughter) roll the dice and Alex p. Keaton it for long term savings that has decent potential to multiply in value.

I do this with my kids already, but with no app..just verbal "do this and I'll pay you $0.25 in bitcoin" an app with actual chore list they can work through and automate fund transfers would be awesome.

If you're a rich VC make sure you PM me to partner up. There's only one way to successfully monetize this, and I'm the only one who knows it.

Small target market but growing every day...the power of "frictionless transfer of value outside the insanely regulated walled garden of fiat banking and high finance"

Very close to what I was thinking. BTC or possibly a credit card for the kid to use. Doesn't need to go through a bank. Kid gets a card, parent accepts chore, piggybank charges parent, piggybank credits kid.

The problem as I see it is the founders didn't think about what they were doing, and didn't have the right attitude to find another way.

Yes, shift the fraud risk to the family situation; offer any actual financial transfer as an upgrade.

can bitcoin be converted into money outside the US?

There's plenty of exchanges outside USA. Safello is currently the big local one here in Sweden, and there's plenty of bigger ones in other European and Asian countries.

It sounds like they did the user research and found that having an actual debit card was a big part of the draw of the app.

I could believe that. When I was a college student, it was a big deal when my parents got me a credit card. Even if you are limited in what you can spend, it shows that you're integrated into the same financial system that adults are and can make your own choices with money. You don't get that with a virtual currency or parents dispensing out $20 bills.

Couldn't you just piggyback another service like PayPal to process the payments? The PayPal student debit Mastercard is/was available to anyone over the age of 13. Then when you specify the chore and amount, the app sends the amount to the kids' account and therefore the card.

The card doesn't seem to exist any more, but it sounds almost exactly like what this app does (without the todo list functionality). It's linked to a parents' account so they can provide cash for fuel/going out and can keep track of the kids' expenses.

http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/paypal-targets-students-parents-...

The challenge is storing money, legally, on behalf of a customer. No normal startup can afford to get licensed.

So you need to legitimately work around the 'stored value' problem, i.e. you need to find a 3rd party with a legal solution. That's either a real bank account or a prepaid card. And the 3rd party has to have an API that allows you to open accounts, execute transactions, etc.

The card program requires a bank partner too. And card programs cost 10K+ a month to run, regardless of whether or not you have 1 card issued or 250,000. Lots of cash burn early.

So that's the target state. Johnie outlined some nice interim steps below, but this is not simple. Oscar took on a challenging business problem.

> When I was a college student, it was a big deal when my parents got me a credit card.

That sounds incredibly odd to me. Aren't you 18+ when you get into college? Couldn't you just get your own debit card without parental involvement?

If you're generating suitable income, which many college students are not, and have a suitable credit history, which many college students do not. Credit card companies want to make sure they'll be repaid. It's pretty common for them to require parental co-signers (or just issue an additional card on the parent's account) for people who don't have a full-time job.

For a debit card - yes, you can just open a bank account and get one. You need money in the bank account. If you arrange a way to automatically transfer money into a kids' bank account at the touch of the button, you end up with an app much like this postmortem.

Because then it's basically just another todo-list app that shares lists between parents and children. That's neat, but hardly the kind of thing that needs a whole company behind it with lots of funding.

So do it in your spare time over a few months, release it and charge 99 cents, and maybe make a little money

Company in the uk www.roostermoney.com is this

I'd pay for that.