October 2014 status - a live autopsy and question

Speaking of donations, if you can get up another paypal button for repeating donations you will probably get some more people giving money.

Speaking of donations, if you can get up another paypal button for repeating donations you will probably get some more people giving money.

It is on the menu, under LFGSS

Why not sell LFGSS, make bank?

I have probably now fucked that up.

The two companies that wanted to buy LFGSS in the last few years did so because they run a hosted platform for vBulletin and could reduce the running costs somewhat and they already possessed a lot of in-house skills to handle running lots of forums.

So by my migrating LFGSS away from vBulletin, I've probably hurt my own chances to sell it... were I to even want to.

Reopen vbulletin lfgss with all the banned users reinstated. Sell them a forum of Tommys, jeezes, spammers etc.

@velocio, with all due respect, you think/type too much. monetise classifieds. go!

Do you know what the value of all cycling products sold second hand on UK ebay is?

some of that market share is ripe for the taking...

It is on the menu, under LFGSS

Get that out in the open!

I hope everyone feels ok about the ROI and the ultimate decision to wind-up.

I've been waiting until David made the decision he needed to make before commenting.

I'm sad that it hasn't worked out, as I think the product is excellent and something to be very proud of. However, I can understand that getting other forum owners to migrate would be extremely time consuming and labour intensive.

FWIW I think David has made the right decision. I understood from the beginning that I was making a risky investment and stood to lose it all, although it now looks like I can get most of that original investment back via SEIS, which rather softens the blow.

Shit - only just seen this.

Sad days. Hard decision for you to make David. Hope all works out for you.
The yacht will just have to wait another couple of years.

I didn't notice any of this until I saw the fire sale ad in the classifieds. I should pay attention more...

Being a bit of an investor/tech-Luddite, and despite a bit googling, I don't really get the whole SEIS money back thing. Can you give us a tl:dr version of how it works. Do we just fill in a form and get 50% back? If so that's great, I'm going to suggest it to the Hippodrome management next time I lose at baccarat.

Good luck with the next step...

If it's become autopsy time; I'd be interested in knowing how much was raised, from whom, and what it ended up being spent on?

And getting people to pay for classifieds seems like a stupid idea.

I recall the forum getting money from sales of Ebay items linked from here. Why not have a forum (stealing the idea from Retrobike) where you can list what you have found on Ebay? i.e each item is an individual thread.
The current thread is primarily a list of links with no indication of what the item is. Or it was the last time I bothered to look at it.

Being a bit of an investor/tech-Luddite, and despite a bit googling, I don't really get the whole SEIS money back thing. Can you give us a tl:dr version of how it works. Do we just fill in a form and get 50% back? If so that's great, I'm going to suggest it to the Hippodrome management next time I lose at baccarat.

I'm not totally sure on this either... Seedrs will advise.

But... my understanding is along the lines of: Relief (taxman giving you adjustment to your personal tax liability) for up to 50% of the investment can be claimed upon once you got the original SEIS3, and then a further relief of something up to 22% of the investment can be claimed if (when in our case) things go South.

The SEIS3 form should be filled in and posted to the taxman and declared in your self-assessment. You should have an accountant verify this process... I am merely repeating what others have said elsewhere.

Not sure what forms are issued once the company is wound up, but that's why we have an administrator and Seedrs.

Basically... I think the above is the case, but you will get proper info from Seedrs in due time.

I notified Seedrs yesterday, and will be putting out a statement to investors later today but this conversation already gives way more detail and thought than the statement will contain as that is barely going to be a side of A4, a summary of the decision and what happens next.

I recall the forum getting money from sales of Ebay items linked from here. Why not have a forum (stealing the idea from Retrobike) where you can list what you have found on Ebay? i.e each item is an individual thread.

I always imagined a kind of blend of local adverts and remotely held adverts.

The hard part is that we don't want spam and adverts that aren't maintained... so we created that rule to not cross-post. We were going to solve that issue by creating a "Classifieds" type (like the "Conversation" and "Event" type), and remotely held adverts would be available only to premium/verified members... or something like that.

So it would be a pay-to-play... but you could advertise without paying and pay to get more capabilities and prominence for your adverts.

If it's become autopsy time; I'd be interested in knowing how much was raised, from whom, and what it ended up being spent on?

That's a good question, I'm curious too on how the result really breaks down. I shall perform a proper autopsy in the coming week or two.

I only saw this last night. That comparison with all the other software that reaches squillions of users in 17 seconds isn't really very apt, as Microcosm didn't set out to exploit people, which I suppose is what attracts venture capital, and David can hold his head high for having done it the ethical way. Shame it didn't work out. I'm sure it would have done with just a little more investment. On the plus side, the awesome software is there. Onwards and upwards!

I've provided an investor update to Seedrs for their review and issue, I've updated the main microcosm.app web site, and I've written a blog post detailing the process: https://medium.com/@buro9/the-journey-of-a-london-startup-what-i-learned-when-my-company-failed-c67acd74b862

A good read...
There's always Dragon's Den
#6

Just seeing all this - hugely saddening.. ^^A very enlightening read - even for none techies, which was always the LFGSS/Microcosm way.

@Velocio David - I hope that this experience leaves you stronger for the future. I believed in you and your idea. I still do.. Let's grab that beer sometime.

Only just seen your post. What a shame. At least you can identify things that you might do differently next time, or at least things that need to be brought in earlier on, if possible.

Time to do yourself a favour and earn a salary you can comfortably live on, at least for a while.

were does this leave LFGSS?

I'm not sure I care enough to fight that side of things (LFGSS costs) at the moment. I suspect I'll throw it on credit card, wait until it stabilises and then will see whether I've come out behind, about the same or ahead (and if ahead, LFGSS CIC can have it as a donation).

were does this leave LFGSS?

Running on some open-source code.

Long-term either I consider an export route if the open-source project doesn't get any volunteers beside myself or Matt (it would need to be half-viable).

Or if it works open-source, then I'd probably look to change the code so that instead of the focus being "run an enormous platform with thousands of sites" it was a leaned a bit more towards "run a small platform for tens of sites".

That's the difference between thinking of writing the export tool from here, or thinking of how to remove the dependency on the management web apps that configure and work with the backend. There was necessary complexity in building for a larger platform.

Seedrs email received.

Do you think it might be kind to promote this thread so users can more easily find this conversation?