Goodnight, Deepleap.
It's a grave day here in Austin. Tonight we offically killed Deepleap. We have our reasons, mostly fiscal. It's a tough market and we were lucky to make it as long as we did. But that's self-affirming bullshit. This sucks. I'm sure it's a dissapointment to our users, it's a dissapointment to me as a founder, but mostly I'm just unhappy that we had to give it up right as Deepleap began working on new, exciting stuff.
Version two only was a few weeks away, but when all is said and done, it doesn't matter how hard you work if your bills aren't paid. The people delivering an eviction notice don't care much about your conviction to this or that, unless This or That is your rent check.
There will be a formal, more in-depth statement soon, but that's a business matter. Looking back over the archives of my site I am reminded why I do this, why I write about my life. I'm reminded that 8 months ago I thought I was crazy doing this. I'm reminded of sleeping on the hard wood floors of an empty house the first night we got to Austin, of endless research, four people sharing a 28.8 modem, countless games of soul caliber on the wall, my unhappiness with the dot com crazyness, and of our very first meeting with a VC. And that was just the first month or so.
There's more to come, no doubt. But for now this is an amazing weight that has been lifted. It's awkward to declare oneself a failure, or to proclaim-- publicly-- that your pet project has died.
It's odd to meet for dinner at Curra's and over the course of a meal outline the specific extent to which your company is in debt. It's odd to see blank stares on the faces of your co-founders.
It's odd when no one shows up to work anymore. It's odd to spend the duration of your days sitting around and occasionally interviewing for other jobs. It's odd explaning the status of your most recent employer to a future employer-- the stark phrase "death bed" works well.
Spending the day anticipating one cathartic email, waiting patiently for the ability to share with everyone the secret that you have kept for some time. Accepting a job offer, making arrangements to move out of your house, and trying to sell the majority of your worldy goods is all very odd.
Listening to people tell you how much they liked Deepleap and lamenting its demise is odd; so is trying to answer the question "why is Deepleap going away?"
Some of it is sad, some unfortunate, and some is even probably for the better. Regardless, it's the way things are. Goodnight, Deepleap, and goodbye.
--Posted 08/22/00 04:35AM