When Jonny and I were first incubating the idea for Shnergle and working out how best to bring it to life, someone suggested that Shnergle should be a creature (think kid cartoon-esque). I understood the concept at the time and thought it was a good one, but we decided to not to take this approach. I can’t offer any insight into whether we made a good or a bad choice at that point, but as I write this I can’t help but think it is an appropriate analogy.
‘Today we are taking Shnergle to the vet and having him put down.
Severely crippled by ‘insufficient-user-uptake-acitus’, Shnergle has been limping about London for a couple of weeks feeling sorry for himself. We have tried every kind of medicine going to get more users, but have ascertained that our pet insurance doesn’t cover the medicine we need; in fact, we are pretty certain that the only person with a deep pocketed enough pet insurance policy is Mark Zuckerberg, and he isn’t interested in Shnergle (we did ask, but he is content with Beast)
It is an emotional decision for all the team to put Shnergle down, but particularly so for Jonny and I, who have nursed him from inception and brought him into the world. We have become very attached to the little critter, but know that keeping him going will just prolong the pain; he’s not going to make it, so best make the transition to the other side as comfortable as possible.
He will be missed.’
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has helped us on this journey; from our supportive investors for believing in our vision; to Stian, Adam and Harshita, without whose incredible efforts the app would never have existed; and to our friends and family for putting up with us being tightwads and never getting the drinks in! Finally I would like to thank our users and merchants – without your invaluable feedback we would never have got this far.
The lethal injection will be administered quickly:
- The App has already been removed from the App Store
- All users have been emailed to notify them of shutdown
- Our servers will be shut down this afternoon
- All Personal Data stored on our databases will be deleted within the next 7 days