Splitterbug (YC S11) shutting down

If you believe the Lean Startup thesis*:<p><pre><code> Success = F(#Iterations) #Iterations = Runway / Speed of each iteration Runway = Cash on hand / Burn rate </code></pre> Then things are looking quite good for this team if they can continue to build, validate, and iterate this quickly with the new project they are pursuing (Assuming they didn't spend their Start Fund money on hookers and blow in the past 9 days).<p>[1] <a href="http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/03/cash-is-not-king.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/03/cash-is-not-kin...</a>

I know people who, if they were for example taking a long cross-country trip, would split up gas, hotels, meals, etc., down to the penny. I even heard of somebody who hounded one of his friends for $1.72 after the trip was over. This app sounds perfect for them. Still, I can't believe there's much of a market for them, since anybody who's cheap enough to care about $1.72 from a friend would never pay for this sort of app in the first place.

Whatever happened to Y-Combinator funding startups tackling "hard problems", and searching for "the next Microsoft" ?

9 days from private beta to shut down?<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2724933" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2724933</a><p>So a great offer for the other project or a well thought out early fold?

And I just recommended this to a family member about a week ago :(<p>This scenario happens on family vacations all the time. If you've ever gone on vacation and rented a big house for 3-4 families, you end up having to split the grocery bill, dinner bills, group activities; it's a huge pain, everyone has to always keep cash on them to divide the cost right away or people forget.

that was fast. Would be nice to share more of a postmortem

When I've needed to do this, I've used a spreadsheet (with some sophisticated conditionals to get a net "you owe" matrix for each person in the group based on a list of shared expenses paid for by different people.<p>In other words, it isn't a startup IMHO - certainly not something I would pay money for.<p>I should put the spreadsheet on Google Docs Templates I guess.

Interesting: if I may ask, what lead to the decision?

Yeah, me and my friends are using BillMonk and are quite content.<p>On a side note, the problem of shuffling debts among a group of people, so that the total amount of checks written is minimized, is NP-complete.

Some shameless self promotion: <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tabs/id383784290?mt=8" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tabs/id383784290?mt=8</a> Not quite the same, but close enough :)

I just re-read this essay yesterday, and it really rings true.<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html</a>

For anyone looking for an alternative, I've been using <a href="https://venmo.com/" rel="nofollow">https://venmo.com/</a> with good success. They have been around for a while.

Wow, that's remarkably similar to website I thinking of making... It was going to just keep track of who owed you what, and what you owed to who. The splitting app on top of it would make it even better.<p>I'm surprised this didn't take off at all.<p>(If anyone wants to steal my idea, don't feel bad. I rarely get around to them. And I want the app. lol)