So HumanIPO site is shutting down on 15th of January 2015. It is a little sad that the site which has been great source of tech news in the past few years is going down just like that. Below is statement posted on the site announcing the end
Africa’s tech news site will be publishing its last story on Thursday, January 15th.
We want to thank the thousands of readers that use the site weekly for their support.
Unfortunately we haven’t been able to build sufficient amount of traffic to make it an interesting business to continue.
If there are investors or entrepreneurs that are interested in taking over the platform then please contact us on [email protected]
The question in my mind at the moment is why a site ranked 108564 in the world according to alexa and has huge following in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa India and United States not able to make a business case to continue. HumanIPO site is a classic demonstration of the blunders and total fail by 88mph in Kenya , among many others. When I hear them talk of Kenya not having great start-ups and full of fluff, I shake my head and wish they could just shut up. But that is a story for another day, a story which I am still working on and will be up in the next few days.
Interesting. If you ask me, they grew too big too fast. But well, that’s 88 for you
Seriously that is such terrible news. They were doing pretty well by most standards. The site was Africa’s ‘techcrunch’
Tom Jackson, the editor for Human IPO, set up a new site a few months back where they’re writing a lot more about the same stuff: http://disrupt-africa.com/
Disclosure – I founded another site which could be considered a rival to HumanIPO (htxt.co.za – tech but not as focussed purely on startups) and have watched its rise and fall carefully… (as a fan, I might add)
My thoughts for what they’re worth is that the site didn’t have an obvious business model. Which when you think about it isn’t great for a site about how to start a business. I never saw an ad on Human IPO and I don’t think they actively sold space – if it was about growth and future revenues from a massive user base, they’re right – they didn’t grow fast enough (we have access to their numbers on Effective Measure) and I’m not sure that they could have done without a lot more money behind them.
I’ve worked in media long enough to know that unless you have investors with huge pockets or can turn a profit quickly – or have an ulterior motive where the news arm of a company is about bringing in business elsewhere – enthusiasm for keeping a daily site running is going to fade out over time. Journos have to eat too and all that.
Sad, but that would be my two-pennorth. The best decision we made as a start-up media company we made was that everything had to be profitable from pretty much day one and we’ve had to create pretty unique business models which mean reusing stories from the website in print media efficiently, but it’s working.
joshmut Can growing too fast be managed? My thoughts on them is that they did not have the strategy to be profitable. See the comment by adamoxford, which i completely agree with.
morreh It is, but that is what happen to most start-ups which don’t business model and growth strategy beyond the funding
whiteafrican Yes, I had seen that and it was one of the signs that things were not going well with HumanIPO
adamoxford I totally agree. I had asked myself several time before on how they were expecting to grow without obvious business model.. Then later on I came to believe that the aim of the site was to promote the 88mph, not directly but indirectly. But even from that line of thoughts you still need the site to generate its own revenue in the long run. Sad but i hope somebody would be interested to keep it up
Yeah, I feel like shutting down every morning and I would be so biased to comment on this!