We are sad to announce that AllAboutTheStory is closing down. We had a talented team, a great idea and did a lot right – but in the end it failed.
Founder Julie Starr put in the lions share of the commitment into the business, but in the end, as she wrote to members:
We’ve enjoyed running the site, being able to connect writers with editors, and being involved with so many great stories and cartoons. But we said at the beginning that the site would be an experiment and here’s what we’ve concluded: Yes, there is some demand for this kind of marketplace for content and we have provided a useful service for some of our members, but overall the opportunity just isn’t compelling enough for us to take it any further.
So that’s it. Perhaps we were too early, perhaps the idea is just lousy, or perhaps we needed to insert a lot more money and time. Ultimately I believe we did well enough where we had to in order to be able to identify that there was no market at this stage. While did not ever expect that New Zealand alone would be a sufficiently large market, it was a test market, and the test failed.
Everyone involved is working on something else. Rowan, Koz and Amnon are involved with Vend, Go Vocab and some secret stuff no doubt; Enspiral are working with Siobhan Bulfin on Goalpost and with Natalie and I on SafePlus; Natalie is also with MyTours and Julie is pondering her next attempt, which I know she will do well.
We all learned through the process, and are chalking this one up to experience. It’s important to push an idea hard, but it’s equally important to know when to stop. That’s a lot easier to identify when there are several other businesses to work on, but it is much harder for and on the founder. Julie – congratulations on this business, and I look forward to seeing your next endeavour.
Lance Wiggs 
I think that’s too negative.
Strictly speaking an experiment which doesn’t achieve the expected result isn’t a failure. If the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t find the Higgs Boson, we still end up learning more about the universe.
Likewise, I once interviewed someone who told me investors who never fail aren’t taking enough risks.
My reason for saying all this is that Americans understand that businesses fail, they look at people with battle scars and see entrepreneurs who haven’t succeeded…yet.
In this part of the world we’re more timid. It’s time we changed that.
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I agree and I also wouldn’t characterisie this as negative result.
We did the numbers and analysis to show that it was worth a punt, we tried, tried again and we didn’t make it. Now with lessons learned we are all on to new things.
Lance
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It was a great team, and a great test to see where our media is and is heading.
Hope we have a reason to band together again!
Nat
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Shame. No doubting the energy and thought that Julie and the rest of the team put in to the site.
Wonder if the result would have been different in a larger test market. Possibly just too few publications and contributing writers in NZ…and maybe a hard ask getting journalists to work on spec.
Still – the business drivers for thinking about the future of media are no less pressing today than when AllAboutTheStory launched. A worthy experiment – keen to see what you guys do next.
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Thanks Lance for sharing Julie and her teams story. Getting it wrong is something we all fear, but maybe this is the break to do some extra special. Lean forward.
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Sorry to hear this. Julie is a great person and I was excited to meet her at last year’s Webstock party.
Best of luck Julie and looking forward to seeing your next one.
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