I think the trick here is going to be who you decide to market to.<p>Right now, it looks like the target audience is really small, tech-savvy start ups (most likely those start ups out in San Francisco that the grove.io team can directly market to, etc). That's probably fine but it seems like a rather small audience. So alright then, the audience is tech-savvy start ups located anywhere. This might be tricky because now you have to convince the tech-savvy people to quit hosting their own IRC server, or to add a new IRC server to their list of servers that they already frequent. I already run my own UnrealIRC daemon, on Linode, for $20/mo with however many users it can handle. I have a logger bot that logs chat to a nice looking web page, and obviously IRC supports channel access control out of the box. Plus, now I have a Linode server to play on. So, I don't think I would do grove.io for my own start up. So, then maybe an easier audience to market this to would be tech-savvy start ups that are too busy to mess with hosting their own (probably a good portion of them) or do not like the other free servers. They'd probably buy this, but you have to wonder why they're not using IRC already (do they really want it or need it?). You could try targeting non tech savvy start ups, but then you have to figure out how to speak their language and explain why they need a chat service when they already have email, or something. This is probably why Campfire stayed away from making the IRC connection.<p>I have to admit that I feel like this is a bit like trying to sell ice to an Eskimo, or whatever. Do start ups have this problem? I'm not knocking the service. I'd love to be offering a service like that. Heck, I do offer an IRC service but I just do not get paid for it. Perhaps I'm just jealous that I did not attempt this type of service myself. :) I love the idea and best of luck!
I'm really happy for @leah and that pivot. I've used convore a lot but was also wondering where they'd make money. Grove.io is a sweet spot for me as I'm a big fan of IRC and I believe lots of programmers are. Still, I find it somewhat risky.<p>Programmers are used to configure and hack their way up.. I'd be afraid to ask them to pay for a service that they could quickly "apt-get" on their vps. (I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the point). I mean, for a really small team, just go on freenode and get a channel. (It's obviously free). And for a bigger company, it's worth spending 1-2 hours for that.<p>I think a free version for small teams would be great. But then, if you can charge for it, why not? :)<p>Anyhow, I've already offered my help (I'm mostly a django/python dev) but if you need another spare-time contractor feel free to contact me.<p>(Just wanted to say that mIRC is where I first learned to code.. and this is where I've learned socket, dialogs, etc. I remember, I coded a web server in mIRC to which I'd connect using a client inside mIRC (in @windows).. and I coded the server bot. It was fun time, I miss it.)
We migrated from a self-hosted irc server to Grove and couldn't be happier. The archive and search are a godsend when you can't be bothered to set up loggers and such yourself. Whenever we're troubleshooting server issues, all the context is already there in the web client for other devs to hop right in and catch up. We post to the API from our fab deploy scripts, and when someone's feeling motivated, we'll be setting up Hubot, as outlined on their blog. <a href="https://grove.io/blog/hubot-grove" rel="nofollow">https://grove.io/blog/hubot-grove</a><p>EDIT: I should also give mention to the great transparency from the team. Leah emailed me in response to feedback/issues multiple times, and they definitely keep up with Twitter chatter.
What do tools like Convore or Hipchat or Campfire offer that you can't do as easily with Skype?
We've been using Skype at work for communication for years and never really even felt the need to explore alternatives. Is there something I'm missing about these?
Interesting the other cofounders moved to create Boilerplate, a company focused on building apps, now to creating clutch.io, a development framework for apps. So combined between the founders a lot of pivoting.<p>Also interesting the quote about needing over a million users to really create any real profit through ads. Lots of free consumer apps seem to end up with user counts that seem really big but are probably still hard to profit with.
The product look great, and piggy-backing on IRC makes a lot sense. However, I wouldn't pay for this, on the basis that the pricing model makes me feel like they assume users are naive (to put it nicely).
Multi-tiered pricing models that work typically offer users incremental value, most often in the form of extra features (that took time to develop), support (that takes time to provide) or hardware/bandwidth resources (that are fixed costs to the company).
In this case however, the incremental value is "number of users". Unless we're talking about hosting video (or other bandwidth-intensive media), the difference in resources needed to host 50 users can't warrant a 10x price difference from that of hosting 5 users.
This is where they lose me (and probably most devs) to the "apt-get" alternative.
IMHO, they should apply a one-price model : 10$ per month, unlimited users. It would better bridge the gap between the DIY option, and the luxury of having someone else do a mostly one-time configuration (and occasional maintenance) for you.
How is Grove.io different from 37signals' Campfire product? Is it the IRC?<p><pre><code> Grove.io: "Hosted IRC and so much more."
Campfire: "Team collaboration with real time chat."</code></pre>
There's a lot of comments here saying what a great pivot that was. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one until there is more market traction.<p>It's a very crowded space Grove are entering. Most non tech-savvy small businesses I know use Skype by default. I run a technology business and we use it as well. And the standard fallback is just plain old email. This sounds like a hard place to make money to me. However, I wish them luck.
At the bank I was at, they used something called iConnect, built by AOL (can't even find a reference to it online). It was horrible. They were switching to Office Communicator.<p>I think chat is great, but I wonder if people are looking for more of an all-in-one communication solution...specifically video and audio.
This is a great pivot for Convore. I suspect the most frequently asked question for Grove will be: "Can I use Grove to connect to freenode"? That is what I'm currently using IRCCloud.com for. That, /and/ keeping me logged into those freenode channels when I close my browser window.
Just signed up. I am a bit worried for them that there is such an easy and direct way to trnasition off this service. If I really like using Audium or whatver I have a whole month to set up my own ircD. If I really like this I will probably go that route, convince a junior teammate to set up ircD after hours as a learning experience.
Ohh, so this is what became of Convore. I remember hearing Leah Culver talk about it in some DjangoCon vidoes, and I've seen grove.io around as well, but didn't make the connection between the two.<p>Looks solid though -- the business model seems much more logical than Convore.
The right chat for companies is not a stand-alone product, be it desktop, mobile or web-based app. I want a browser plugin that beefs up my google mail chat (search, send files, view history in a browser tab, organize shared files etc...). In other words, I want the app to be where I already live: Gmail for businesses. Remember Xoopit?<p>I haven't used Grove, and I have never used IRC before. So I admit my comment is uneducated.
Sorry to turn this into reddit, but she's quite pretty. My genuine interest is to know what impact that has for her. Harder to be taken seriously? Easier to to sell to other hackers?