The story of YouCastr started three years ago on a road trip shared by two buddies, Ariel Diaz and Jeff Dwyer; the two bounced ideas off one another for companies and problems in the world they wanted solved. The conversation turned to Mystery Science Theater 3000 a comedy and sci-fi TV show and YouCastr was born. On June 3rd, CEO Ariel Diaz announced the end of the video marketplace and broadcasting website, YouCastr.
Ariel Diaz, is a well-known entrepreneur in Boston’s startup community; He is a force on the networking circuit, and a valued contributor in any conversation regarding the future of web video, the value of content and pretty much anything else that has to do with what’s the future will bring. He graduated from Dartmouth College and was a management consultant prior to starting YouCastr in 2007 with three other co-founders, Jeffrey Herbert, Matthew Hodgson, and Brad Johnson.
In Diaz’s openly honest Posterous blog post titled, YouCastr – A Post-Mortem he outlines the reasons for starting YouCastr, and details what went right and what went wrong. YouCastr received $500K in angel funding in early 2008, but even after operating under the lean startup mentality and generating revenue, they ran out of funds. According Diaz, YouCastr also lacked market fit and felt they didn’t align with the trends they were seeing in the online video industry.
On a more personal note, Diaz admits to not loving the market or the idea of YouCastr in his blog post, and says that these facts made it harder to keep the passion and energy flowing when things got tough. Diaz also pointed to hiring mistakes and in retrospect believes he spent too much time looking for funding. YouCastr is now being sold on website marketplace, Flippa for a minimum bid of $25,000.
In no way is YouCastr where Diaz gives up. “My long term goal is to continue starting companies,” Diaz writes. Currently Diaz is putting his attention on his consulting company, Scenerio4, as well as his non-profit, Bits for Books–a company that provides eBooks to communities in need.
YouCastr was marketed to sports fans as a platform that made it easy to stream, manage, and sell online videos by allowing users to: 1) Broadcast live on video and upload pre-recorded videos. 2) Distribute videos through on demand streaming, downloads, and DVDS. 3) Manage your videos’ custom pages, widgets, and analytics. 4) Earn money by setting prices for your videos and keep 70% of the profits.
While BostInnovation is sad to see such a creative company go, we admire Diaz’s openness about YouCastr’s closure and his ability to teach others the lessons he learned. We can’t call YouCastr a failure, but instead suggest all you startupers out there take it as a lesson learned.
Sometimes you’ve simply gotta know when to move on; there’s no harm in that. What matters is how and when you bounce back.
We are excited to see what Diaz and his former employees will come up with in the next ideation phase, whether in groups or as individuals. I guess that’s why they call them startups — because their founders are always starting back up.
What do you think about YouCastr shutting down? Do you have any tips for those who’ve recently hit the “restart” button? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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