37

I really enjoyed that site. I've only posted on it once, but I enjoyed seeing other people's posts and appreciated reading about entrepreneurial dilemmas.

8
  • 3
    It was closed because the required community failed to form. Dec 30, 2013 at 20:15
  • 2
    thats a shame. I can understand how this would be more of an occasional question forum than community... Dec 30, 2013 at 20:16
  • 1
    It ran out of venture capital^W^Wcommunity involvement and went bust. Dec 30, 2013 at 23:36
  • 4
    very amuzed that a question like this gets voted down. ahh, the meta experience. :) Dec 31, 2013 at 0:53
  • 8
    It was resurrected by the community outside of stackexchange at Bright Journey and thriving.
    – Patricia.
    Feb 18, 2014 at 4:56
  • 3
    What SE site should be used instead for business-related questions?
    – Yuck
    May 15, 2014 at 21:09
  • Related: meta.stackexchange.com/q/217793/159916
    – Pacerier
    Jun 10, 2014 at 4:59
  • 1
    There's a new SE for startups in private beta. That is, @DaveA, if you still care :]
    – jdero
    Aug 14, 2014 at 1:37

4 Answers 4

23

The Startups Stack Exchange site didn't make it; the community required to sustain it beyond Beta never materialized.

See the Area51 proposal, where you can download an archive of the site as well.

2
  • 2
    Some of the community that did participate seemed to feel a lack of focus/guidance. The answers would wander into brow-beating and knocking those who asked questions. That likely brought a chilling effect to askers (sure did for me). That spells doom. Cautionary tale I suppose. Apr 15, 2014 at 21:07
  • Fun fact: the area 51 stats seem mostly fine. Get rid of these stats already!
    – Raphael
    Jun 22, 2014 at 16:23
20

Apparently it was resurrected as Bright Journey. I just got an email about this.

27
  • Did the email have any information about the software they use? I poked around on the site and could not recognize the engine nor find any information about it. They acknowledge SE source with a link to Area 51 ("Made possible by SE"), and that's it. Feb 17, 2014 at 17:23
  • @user127096, the email didn't say. I was wondering about that too. Feb 17, 2014 at 18:11
  • @user127096 Looking at their roadmap, I think they've built it from scratch.
    – Stijn
    Feb 17, 2014 at 18:35
  • @KennyEvitt Did you provide them your e-mail? How did they contact you using it? Feb 17, 2014 at 19:00
  • 2
    If your questions won't fit in here, feel free to contact me directly at team {AT} brightjourney .com Feb 17, 2014 at 19:13
  • 2
    @user127096 We'll eventually be making our software open source on GitHub for anyone to use. Feel free to email me and I'll alert you when it's released. Feb 17, 2014 at 19:17
  • 3
    @KennyEvitt according to their post on Hacker News alongside a comment they posted here (but removed) they reverse engineered the e-mails from hashes in the data dump which were for gravatars. Feb 18, 2014 at 1:15
  • 1
    @KasraRahjerdi Here is the full Hacker News thread for reference. Feb 18, 2014 at 4:36
  • 1
    Um, everyone's email hash is online and several people have reverse engineered the hashes of the entire stackoverflow audience... A user was able to get 10% of the entire userbase's email addresses: developer.it/post/…
    – Jill.G
    Feb 18, 2014 at 20:36
  • 1
    These threads show exactly how the community feels: here, here and here
    – Jill.G
    Feb 18, 2014 at 20:42
  • 2
    Just to clarify, @Jill: this is probably the one GOOD use for that email hash (apart from Gravatar, of course, which is what it was intended for). And it REALLY SUCKS that a handful of people decided mass cracking + spamming of email hashes was worth investing in, because otherwise we could've kept this option open for the future - it's ALWAYS a good idea to give folks a way to prove they wrote something. Frankly, it pisses me off that "privacy" is winning out over "attribution" in these discussions - but, that's what folks care about right now, so be it. If you have good ideas, post 'em.
    – Shog9
    Feb 19, 2014 at 2:47
  • 1
    @Shog9 I'm not sure why it would have taken this long to just save the gravatars locally and serve them vs using email hashes. And you're right that bright journey was probably the only good use for the hashes. They wouldn't have been able to bring the closed community back to life without it.
    – Jill.G
    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:25
  • 1
    @Shog9 Who are you referring to with the profanity?
    – Jill.G
    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:39
  • 2
    A certain company who decided to extract a bunch of email addresses and then harass SO users, @Jill. Also, vulgarity not profanity. Also, sorry - nothing to do with you, just something that depresses me since it means the next Bright Journey will be a bit harder to set up.
    – Shog9
    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:42
  • 1
    @Shog9 Ah, I see. In that context I misinterpreted as you referring that to Bright Journey. My apologies.
    – Jill.G
    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:46
10

It didn't have enough ongoing activity, so it was closed down. It seems there were only a very small handful of regulars who were maintaining the site.

There are more details on the Startup Business site proposal on Area 51.

(Note that there is also a new proposal to try and get a new community of users around the topic.)

2
  • that's interesting. I wonder if the forum could have value without a hard-core community. The incubator-style questions seemed to serve a purpose. Dec 30, 2013 at 20:20
  • @DaveA I didn't frequent the site, so I'm not familiar with the incubator-style questions. They are still available in the data dump though. Dec 30, 2013 at 21:59
6

As of 2014, there's currently a new proposal called "Startup" in Area51.


As of August 2014, it is in public beta. Visit startups.stackexchange.com.


As of December 2017, it will be shut down again.

13
  • 2
    Why would they do that? If it failed the first time, why would you think "oh let's just start another site and put all the same questions back on it" would change anything? That sounds like a horrific plan.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jun 5, 2014 at 4:44
  • 2
    @animuson, Why do you say they failed? There are good questions and there are good answers. It's only closed because we don't get the minimum 5 questions/day on average (4.8 was the number). Closed != Failed.
    – Pacerier
    Jun 5, 2014 at 5:23
  • 3
    "Failed" to make a community big enough for interests of SE. In my opinion, succeeded in other very intriguing ways Jun 5, 2014 at 10:38
  • 4
    @Pacerier Startups wasn't closed because it didn't hit a somewhat arbitrary questions-per-day number. It had large systemic issues like a lack of cohesive, engaged community, lack of moderation (except by a handful of people), abysmal user retention, and so on. There's no harm in trying again - and we have active sites right now that were restarts of closed proposals - but keep in mind that the goal can't be "get a new site and import all old posts". That's just not how this sort of thing works.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 5, 2014 at 13:58
  • @AdamLear, Do you mean Brightjourney will exist alongside Startups-SE if the new Startups-SE gets traction?
    – Pacerier
    Jun 5, 2014 at 21:02
  • 1
    @Pacerier We don't run Bright Journey. I have no idea what its owners plans are.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 5, 2014 at 21:03
  • @Adam whatever that "Bright Journey" was, it's now pretty much dead, while the SE site isn't really thriving, but is alive and kicking. SE wins. :-D Aug 17, 2016 at 10:13
  • @Sha Let's call it a tie.
    – user315433
    Dec 8, 2017 at 14:19
  • 1
    Saved a copy of that post on web archive, as the question would go away along with the site. Dec 8, 2017 at 14:31
  • @CrazyIvan huh. Isn't it the first time a public beta is being shut down due to lack of activity? I guess they will close many other sites now, Health.SE for sure and others with low activity. Dec 9, 2017 at 7:44
  • @ShadowWizard Far from the first. There were Startups v1, Arabic Language, Theoretical Physics, Literature v1, Astronomy v1, Economics v1, and others
    – user315433
    Dec 9, 2017 at 18:45
  • @CrazyIvan oh. So only graduated site was never closed down? Dec 9, 2017 at 18:59
  • @ShadowWizard Correct.
    – user315433
    Dec 9, 2017 at 19:28

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