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July 15, 2016, 1:06 p.m.
Aggregation & Discovery

The share-one-link-per-day platform This is shutting down

“I’m tempted to make the explanation for that complicated, but it’s pretty simple: we worked ourselves to the point of exhaustion, struggled to raise money and just ran out of time.”

This, the awkwardly named share-one-link-per-day platform, is shutting down at the end of the month, founder Andrew Golis announced over email to users and in a Medium post. The site, launched in 2014, had generated some significant interest among media types, having been invite-only for most of last year. It opened to everyone last fall and began offering automated, curated email newsletters. It recently added a commenting option, and had been exploring sponsorships as well as premium membership options; a new version of its app was featured in the App Store just last month, and Golis was giving it a promotional push just 10 days ago.

Golis explained in his announcement that the lack of funding and any indication of sustainability prompted the decision:

I’m tempted to make the explanation for that complicated, but it’s pretty simple: we worked ourselves to the point of exhaustion, struggled to raise money and just ran out of time. The site, newsletter and app are beloved by tens of thousands of people, including many of the writers and publishers I most admire. But we never got big enough to raise long-term capital or begin to build a sustainable business.

In the last few weeks and days, we’ve entertained a few very flattering conversations with other companies about bringing our work there. But none have come with the scale of commitment that would allow us to attack this huge opportunity with new energy.

And so we’re going to wrap this up in a way that’s best for our community and our team.

In the coming weeks, we’ll offer This. members a tool to export the links they’ve shared to the site. We’ll send around a list of companies and products and people who are building things we think This. fans should keep an eye on.

And I’ll finally give the mobs of people who have tried to poach them from This. the opportunity to snatch up Zeb Young and Mayukh Sen, our brilliant Directors of Engineering and Editorial.

The site was just last month announced as part of a class of seven NYC startups in Matter’s accelerator, and won’t be completing the program. As Golis writes:

In particular, I’m grateful to the folks at Matter VC, the incredible accelerator that has helped us in so many ways. One of our biggest disappointments in the timing of this is that we won’t be able to finish their extraordinary program and work closely with the impressive companies they do so much work to build. I would highly recommend this program to all media entrepreneurs and just wish the timing worked out better for us to take full advantage of this opportunity.

The platform found some market penetration among media types, and a number were distraught at the news, even though the demise of a consciously artisanal sharing platform wasn’t much of a surprise for some.

POSTED     July 15, 2016, 1:06 p.m.
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