Congrats to this business for forging ahead with someone no one else was daring to do. But I do have a bit of an ethical dilemma with the lean startup concept of setting up AdWords to sell something that doesn't yet exist. Especially something like a $25k installation in a restaurant that seems to have turned into a total trainwreck (spilled tank, "other minor problems," then ultimately abandoning jellyfish altogether).<p>I don't know what the solution should be. Is it on the restaurant to do their own due diligence here? Or should he be (and maybe he was!) upfront about the lack of expertise and do the initial install for minimal profit?
Hmmm. I don't know where they are in terms of sentience, but I kinda feel sorry for the jellyfish. It's the main reason I don't keep pets of any sort, but particularly fish. I love aquaria, but even the truly huge ones don't seem large enough - take the Lisbon Oceanário for example - hard not to feel sorry for that one Sunfish (maybe a metre across) just swimming in circles around a huge cylindrical tank.<p>Keeping cephalapods would be a great engineering challenge, in terms of what's necessary to make a viable habitat, but it seems so cruel given their apparent intelligence. Perhaps these things shouldn't be cheap?
I have the Jellyfish tank and it's pretty cool, however, all the Jellyfish died after about a month. They were too hard to find, get caught up in the rocks a lot, and feeding was a pain. However, we still have the tank and use it to hold tropical fish now.<p>I would suggest that they go into the tank business and focus on unique designs, that's a scalable business with a big market. I wouldn't buy the Jellyfish again, but if they had another interesting tank, I would get that.
I bought one of these, their latest ones, from a German company about a half year ago. It arrived, I followed the instructions and got it up and running within a couple of hours.<p>It takes at least a couple of weeks to settle, with the added reef salt and everything. Then I was going to purchase jellyfish - and found out that they actually cost more than 50$ a piece, because of overnight shipping (from Germany, I live in Denmark).<p>So I started doing some research on the tank, and read about 5 horror stories about how they always died within 3 days, even after following instructions very accurately.<p>I later emptied the tank, and now it's sitting in the attic.<p>Build quality is decent, but not perfect. After sitting still for about 3 months, the top lid started bending/skewing quite a lot, now it almost doesn't fit anymore. It's also quite noisy, not something that you'd like to sleep in the same room as.<p>If anyone wants a jellyfish tank where the jellyfish apparently dies within a couple of days, I have a cheap one for pickup here in Copenhagen.
Congrats to Jellyfish Art. I saw one sitting in my neighbor's window about a year and a half ago and was immediately in awe.<p>On a separate note, I'm always excited when I see a new blog post from priceonomics. They always choose super interesting topics, do a ton of research, and express the info in a succinct way. Good stuff.
Great article, Mr. Andon. We at AutoMicroFarm are in a very similar boat, as you know.<p>It's fascinating that the barrier to further growth is breeding jellyfish to fill the demand of a cheaper aquarium, once it's released to market. Is Jelly Fish Art (the company) focused on researching the science of scaling the process? Have you looked into selling other exotic aquatic animals that fit the aquarium you've developed?
>The supply chain worked this way for a year. Then one day, the tropical supplier went to his jellyfish catching spot and couldn’t catch a single one. All of them were gone. Every week he checked out the same spot, but every week he went home empty-handed.<p>This is simply unacceptable. His achievement at the expense of local fauna is not to be applauded, but condemned. Regardless of whether jellyfish feel pain, exploiting nature is such destructive ways is simply ridiculous in this day and age.<p>Sad that so many comments here completely overlooked this, and focused solely on success at any cost.
I'm a long time reef keeper so I instantly jumped on this with the kickstarter campaign. Like many that bought this tank they were littered with issues and flaws in the design that sent the jellyfish to their death.<p>I consider my reefing keeping ability as advanced with a 220 gallon main display. This tank was also advertised for beginners. As someone who understands the ecosystem, how to mix the salt/water and test for common parameters I would highly discourage this tank and jellies to beginners.<p>This tank had too many issues.<p>There are competitors:
<a href="http://www.moonjellyfish.com/products/eon-jellyfish-system" rel="nofollow">http://www.moonjellyfish.com/products/eon-jellyfish-system</a>
<a href="http://www.cubicaquarium.com/product-jellyfish-aquarium.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.cubicaquarium.com/product-jellyfish-aquarium.php</a>
<a href="http://sunsetmarinelabs.com/" rel="nofollow">http://sunsetmarinelabs.com/</a><p>They may cost more but the reviews are much better.
Is it at all plausible to set up a tank with jellies that breed and sustain their numbers? I'm remembering a friend's fish tank that was perennially full of snails, because the snails laid eggs on the walls of the tank much faster than they died out.<p>Could the jellies be captured and shipped in polyp form to cut down on the cost?
There's a great interview with Jellyfish Art on Mixergy from November 2011, with a lot more detail on their pre-YC history:
<a href="http://mixergy.com/andon-jellyfish-art-interview/" rel="nofollow">http://mixergy.com/andon-jellyfish-art-interview/</a>
Cool product!<p>1 quick suggestion: on your sales page food is listed in ounces. I think it would be more helpful and may increase conversions with impulse buyers to list that as "X months of food".
Great blog post (as usual from Priceonomics). I'm sure many people (myself included) would become Jellyfish Art customers once Alex can nail the lower price point.
Did you write a blog post about living in a van in SF? I see people doing this and I've always been curious about it. I would love to hear what that was like.
> Alex made the sale, but now he had a problem: he had to deliver on the tank he promised. Alex had a general understanding of jellyfish tank construction based on googling around and talking to experts, but he didn’t have enough expertise to deliver the product.<p>Daring and a bit crazy.
I've had a tank on my wish list since I first saw it on Kickstarter.<p>Sadly, we only have one distributor in Australia and they mark the price up 110% for just a basic tank setup. There's an untapped market over here, only problem is in the distribution channel.
Great article! I have been a small entrepreneur myself from time to time. I am currently working on something in the tiny scale, and would like to one day do the same thing on that type of scale.
"Then they can lower their prices grow again."<p>That would be deflationary and, as we all know, deflation is the worst possible thing that could happen, ever.<p>(Great story on true entrepreneurship in action and, in particular, the focus on lowering, lowering, lowering costs and bringing more to more people.)