PostRocket

What did it do?

PostRocket was software that generated recommendations to help posts on brands' Facebook pages reach more followers. By analysing Facebook's analytics data, it gave page owners daily checklists covering the type, frequency, content and timing of posts.

Why did it shut down?

The young founders, who had dropped out of Babson College, joined the 500 Startups accelerator and raised USD 610,000 in seed funding in May 2012. The company stood out with a promise to double reach at a time when the average page post reached only 16 per cent of followers. But the product was plagued by outages and bugs; in his closure letter, chief executive Tim Chae wrote that they had never reached the high bar they had set themselves. At the same time Facebook was rolling out its revamped Insights tool, and Chae advised customers to switch to it. On 7 August 2013 the company announced that it would shut down the service on 15 August and refund remaining credits.

The story

PostRocket's story began with a young team who dropped out of Babson College and joined the 500 Startups accelerator. The Boston-born company's chief executive, Tim Chae, was the youngest founder Dave McClure's accelerator had ever backed, and the average age of the five-person team was 21. The starting point was a simple observation: as TechCrunch reported, the average post on a Facebook page reached only 16 per cent of followers.

PostRocket examined Facebook's analytics data and gave page owners daily recommendations on what kind of content to post, how often and at what time. The showcase example was the musician Pitbull's page: weekly reach was said to have risen from 650,000 to 1.3 million in three weeks. In May 2012 a USD 610,000 seed round closed, with participation from Polaris Ventures, 500 Startups and angel investors including Mehdi Maghsoodnia and Maneesh Arora.

But the product could not consistently deliver on its promise. Outages and bugs wore customers down. In 2013, as Facebook revamped its own Insights tool and opened it up to users, PageLever, which did similar work, had been sold to another company. On 7 August 2013, in a letter to customers, Chae admitted that they had never reached the high bar they had set themselves, thanked the users who had stuck with them despite the problems and said they would refund remaining credits. Chae advised customers to switch to Facebook's new tool.

PostRocket closed on 15 August 2013. The story shows how fragile tools built on another platform's data become once that platform starts doing the same job itself. It is also a reminder that an early success story cannot cover for long the shortcomings of a product that does not work reliably.

Lessons for founders

• A tool built on a single platform's data needs a separate value proposition that will survive when that platform offers the same feature for free.
• An early result with a famous client draws attention, but a product that scales before its reliability problems are solved quickly burns through that reputation.
• If closure is unavoidable, refunding users' remaining fees and pointing them to the right alternative, as PostRocket did, leaves goodwill for the founders' next ventures.

Sources

1. SEO Was Yesterday. 500 Startups' PostRocket Fires Up $610K For Facebook News Feed Optimization (TechCrunch, 2012-05-31)
2. Facebook Publishing Optimizer PostRocket To Shut Down On August 15 (TechCrunch, 2013-08-07)
3. PostRocket to Shut Down on August 15, 2013 (BostInno)

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