from Hacker News

Just Landed Is Shutting Down

by vsbuffalo on 2/25/16, 7:23 PM with 133 comments

by polpo on 2/25/16, 7:47 PM
From the article:
While the app was initially used primarily by individuals who made a few airport pickups per year, today Just Landed is increasingly used by professional limousine and taxi drivers, airline professionals, and travel companies.
So they were seeing increasing use by commercial users. Sounds like a ripe opportunity to start charging for such access.
by old-gregg on 2/25/16, 8:39 PM
This sucks for us long-term users of Just Landed. I want to congratulate John for making something people _clearly_ wanted. Apparently sometimes that's not enough...
This jumped out at me:
"...Just Landed has outlived several of the services that it originally depended on, and each time a service provider has disappeared..."
This statement refers to the less than 4 years old app, which speaks volumes about value proposition of for-subscription-cloud-based APIs. Just Landed is a relatively simple, focused app built by a small team, yet in this short time it has suffered several (!) hits from disrupted availability of the API providers.
How can one expect to build a big business based on considerably more complex software using such APIs?
Compare that to the pains Microsoft has historically gone through to keep ABI compatibility with decade-old systems. I even have doubts about long-term availability of half of AWS services.
Kudos to John for running Just Landed for so long.
by ucaetano on 2/26/16, 12:16 PM
"The first thing that makes running Just Landed difficult in the long-term is a serious lack of innovation in the flight data industry."
Our company shut down because other people didn't innovate enough, not our fault.
"An app like Just Landed relies on access to high quality flight data to function correctly. "
We created an app based on data that doesn't exist. Not our fault, somebody else failed to create that data.
"Traffic and mapping data in particular, much of which used to be free, has become quite expensive, and is now tightly controlled by big companies under oppressive Terms of Service."
Other companies refuse to give us free services, and want to keep their valuable data restricted under oppressive terms of service. Not our fault, how could we expect that people wouldn't give us free stuff?
"These power users consume 100–500 times as much flight data per year as casual users, and so the cost of supporting will soon begin to overwhelm revenue from new app sales."
We failed to price the app correctly, since we're charging a one-time fee for a continuous service, but hey, not our fault again, who would have thought that people who buy our app would use it?
"Essentially, there’s a massive oversupply of apps, and the app markets are now saturated and suffering from neglect and short-term thinking by the companies who operate them."
There's too much competition! Seriously, it's all the competitor's fault, lowering prices as if there's no tomorrow. How can we be expected to make money with such cutthroat, dog eats dog competition?
Seriously, what a completely lame excuse. [Edit: that was unnecessarily harsh, my apologies]
Sorry for my rant, I guess I'm in a bad mood today.
by BinaryIdiot on 2/25/16, 7:54 PM
I'm always curious why companies like this one choose to charge for their app as a one time fee when, to support the app, they have to subscribe to data feeds which cost money per month. I feel like you have to have a subscription model for that unless the price per month is just so low that, with a small amount of volume, you can easily make up for it.
Either way always an interesting write-up. I do find it odd that so many in SV use the term "sunset" when their company is shutting down. Seems like a weird spin.
by Xcelerate on 2/25/16, 7:39 PM
I know there's a big push against Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome, but he makes a good point about how a lot of small apps and websites depend on services that drastically change or disappear over the course of a few years. I wonder if in some cases it's better to simply develop an in-house solution for a service — it may be more expensive and less refined, but at least you know that service will be there as long as your company is.
by jakejake on 2/25/16, 11:53 PM
This is possibly the most interesting fumblebrag that I've read in a while. It has a few issues which have been hot on HN recently as well as some age-old problems.
The dependence on third-party services like maps, messaging, flight data, etc. is an interesting topic. Services that help you to get up and running in a couple of clicks are awesome at first. But they can become a burden when your usage goes up beyond a trivial amount. This is a great lesson about thinking ahead when choosing third-party providers - either by passing the expense along to your customers or having a roadmap to phase them out when you hit a certain volume.
Another point is the one-time pricing which, in my mind, is somewhat of a ponzi scheme for a business model. I always cringe a little when I see a cool new app with a "one time payment for life!" pricing. You just can't support customers forever with a single lifetime payment unless you are earning revenue in some other way (i.e. advertising). It's easy to think that you'll continue to gain more customers forever, but you're setting yourself up to be crushed by your own success. Unless you're planning on regularly releasing new apps and/or in-app purchases for your customers to purchase, it's not a long-term business model.
Sorry to see the Just Landed go - it looked like a cool app. I think there is a lot to learn from this post so thanks to the author for posting.
by tomphoolery on 2/25/16, 8:44 PM
The #1 reason why this app failed is because people like me, and especially my mother, who would have been a power user...did not know it existed until this Medium post. Your problem has less to do with the app itself and more to do with how it was promoted and marketed.
by clickbyclick on 2/25/16, 8:29 PM
Active users = check Value delivered = check Inability to develop profitable GTM plan = check
I didn't read about funding in the article, but outside of $ a VC or Angel will provide a network and path to solve GTM challenges AND get you in front of the right people for an exit.
I'm sure if this app called an Uber/Lyft timed to plane landing it could find a home...
by amelius on 2/25/16, 9:02 PM
> With well over 2 million apps by now (oﬃcially 1.5M as of July 2015), the iTunes App Store is an incredibly crowded place where it’s almost impossible to get noticed. Despite the persistent myth of the app developer millionaire, it’s extremely hard to make a proﬁt—let alone a living—as an iOS app developer. The Google Play Store is a similar story, except with the added bonus of rampant piracy and a zillion devices to support. There really isn’t gold in them hills, at least not anymore, and independent app development will soon be in sharp decline, if it isn’t already.
Is this true? Is the app store deceiving developers by pretending that earnings are better?
by markab21 on 2/25/16, 7:44 PM
Sad to see companies like this go. The founder stated in the article above that the cost of the data being expensive was part of the demise, I wonder if croud-sourced solutions such as https://flightaware.com/commercial/flightxml/ (FlightAware) was ever used. That said any time I walk into an FBO or look on the screens for arriving or departing flights in general aviation, FlightAware data is the only thing I see people use. It could be because FlightAware owns the data (which is crowdsourced in a similar fashion to WeatherUnderground stations) they provide a service that Just Landed simply can't compete with.
As with anything in Travel outside of actual aviation aspects these types of services such as just landed, to me, feel more like Value Ads than core products. I personally just use google to track the flight of an arrival and can do it from my phone's browser by typing the flight number in a google search box.
by Laaw on 2/25/16, 8:33 PM
Question about flight data and the middlemen:
Do these middlemen have to strike deals with the various airlines, or are they simply accessing public APIs that generally stink? What order of magnitude, cost wise, do these airlines charge in the deals? Could I, $random_guy, make a deal with $random_airline, for an amount that is sustainable without any special kind of funding?
by notliketherest on 2/25/16, 11:04 PM
Typing a flight number into Google gives you everything and more this app offered.
by therockspush on 2/25/16, 11:57 PM
I can see something like this being able to work without paying for access to a flightaware api or something similar as ADS-B rolls out fully. A lot of aviation companies still pay hefty fees to tap into ATC data, that will essentially be made free. ADS-B Out broadcasts identification, position, altitude...
With more aviation geeks out there supplying the data, people won't be reliant on centralized sources of info.
http://www.aopa.org/Advocacy/Air-Traffic-Services-,-a-,-Tech...
by wehadfun on 2/25/16, 8:25 PM
You may want to try to sell this thing man.
by exelius on 2/25/16, 7:51 PM
Yeah; unfortunately this is not a space that's super profitable. There used to be a bigger need for it; but airlines have gotten a lot better about communicating delays to customers, so I'm not sure this kind of app is necessarily needed anymore.
Even the "leader" in this kind of app -- TripIt -- has basically been reduced to a free giveaway for users of Concur's (owner of TripIt) corporate travel booking platform.
by coldcode on 2/25/16, 7:46 PM
This cries out for Apple to support update pricing. However the likelihood of that every happening is less than giving the NSA a backdoor. Update pricing would make Apple money (not that it needs it) and change very little but the desire is zippo to bupkis to do it. This would allow smaller companies to survive. Oh well, doubtful it rises to the level of anyone caring.
by foobar1962 on 2/26/16, 5:26 AM
So, they went broke because the industry didn't standardise their data so a third party could scrape it for fun and profit.
Talia, is that you?
--
"An app like Just Landed relies on access to high quality flight data to function correctly. However, since the airline industry is extremely fragmented, and uses antiquated IT systems and many incompatible data formats, it is not practical for a small independent developer like us to negotiate data-sharing contracts with each individual airline, and then unscramble their jumbled data feeds into a usable format at a reasonable cost."
by sergiotapia on 2/25/16, 7:53 PM
I would have just charged more money for the business users, and make more revenue. But then again, it's probably one of many little things that ultimately led to this decision.
by pbreit on 2/25/16, 9:10 PM
Does something like this have any value to an acquirer even if just to keep the lights on and no cash is involved?
by lpsz on 2/26/16, 10:37 AM
Not as nice as having an app, but can Google for the flight to get some of the same info.
E.g. Google for CX5992: https://www.google.com/search?q=cx5992
by rajacombinator on 2/26/16, 12:04 AM
He brings up some interesting points in the article, but I think the real reason for failure is 1) creating a niche app rather than a scalable one, and 2) not aligning the business model correctly.
by funkyy on 2/26/16, 1:49 AM
To bad, app with the best landing page on the web is going away...
by wehadfun on 2/25/16, 8:10 PM
Do you plan to pivot to become one of these airline data brokers?
by jimkri on 2/25/16, 9:52 PM
I wish I would have known about this before it shut down, but this is a great idea for Trains as well. Just Arrived.
by kin on 2/26/16, 1:31 AM
It was a beautiful app and I'm sad to see it go, good luck on your next big thing!
by Serow225 on 2/25/16, 8:44 PM
Noooooo! I love Just Landed and my family and I all use it :(
by Karunamon on 2/25/16, 8:05 PM
Tangential, but the flawed "android rampant piracy" article made an appearance here again.
It's flawed because as an app developer, you don't have a way to tell if the app hitting your servers is legitimate or not. Just counting:
```
    (sold copies) - (unique hits on our server) = pirated copies
```
..is not even close to accuracy.
What about reinstalls? What about developers/tinkerers who are probably flattening their devices on a regular basis? What about one person with multiple devices?