Startups.com regrets to inform you that their daily deals website is on the way out. According to founder Gonzo Arzuaga, “unfortunately we couldn’t make a go of it”. An email was sent out to mail list subscribers explaining his disappointment. Apparently, the site set lofty goals for itself and was unable to fulfill them.
Arzuaga comments:
“We didn’t achieve the ambitious goals we set for ourselves when we launched only 1 year ago. So, with regret, this news of our departure from the realm of Daily Deals. This may be a shocker to some of you and we want you to know that we’re really sorry we failed to achieve your expectations.”
“It’s Spring and it feels like the right time for us to do some Spring cleaning. We’re evaluating all of the projects we’re working on, (and we’ve got tons, believe me), and unfortunately we had to make the painful decision of shutting down Startups.com as a Daily Deal service.”
Apparently the Startups.Com homepage is currently offering great deals on software, tech gadgets, e-books, and other business-friendly resources. Arzuaga also owns an affiliated site called Blinklist.Com which will be shutdown as well.
Arzuaga explains:
“We’re selling Blinklist.com, and shutting down other sites as well. There’s no point in going on with something just because you’ve been doing it for a certain amount of time. In a startup, as you well know, everything takes up your precious resources. And people’s time and effort is something we can’t afford to waste. We believe this is the right time to pull the plug.”
It sounds like he’s not calling it quits, but has some other ideas on the way, and he needs to start fresh to allow them to grow.
He explains further:
“New and fresh ideas need room to grow and for us that means clearing out some of the old ideas which never took off. We wanna thank you, one of our 20,000 loyal subscribers for sticking with us for all this time.”
“We’re really sorry we couldn’t make it work for you. But hey, life goes on. Best of luck in your endeavors, we shut our doors knowing that we did all we could to help you grow your online business, which was our main goal for launching Startups.com as a Daily Deal site.”
There’s no word on what will become of the domain name, but more information about what’s to come of the site is available on their site. I am sure there are many small business gurus who will miss the site.