Our Incredible Journey

See https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com for tons of examples Lots of fun "there will be no changes or interruptions to the service" followed next month with "we have decided to shut down the service" stories https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/post/658027964213215232/xai

The best startup-related part is the concession speech literally ending with the words "our incredible journey". https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

This reads exactly like something from Our Incredible Journey[1]. It's amazing how similar the scripts that these startups follow is. Actually, even the titles of these posts give you an idea of what's happening. [1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Love it. Reminds me of https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com

https://ouramazingbet.tumbler.com/ can be the big company version of https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

> Thanks for your support on the first leg of this amazing journey. https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

I feel like at this point there should just be a form letter for Google retiring services. Dear users, [ ]MAJOR [ ] MINOR Google service which you [ ] DEPENDED ON TO DO YOUR JOB [ ] BUILT MAJOR PARTS OF YOUR WORKFLOW ON [ ] LIKED A LOT [ ] HAD BEEN MEANING TO TRY OUT, DAMMIT [ ] HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF will be discontinued [ ] LITERALLY TOMORROW [ ] IN SIX MONTHS, AND YOU CAN EXPORT YOUR DATA BUT IT'S IN SOME COMBINATION JSON+XML FORMAT WHICH THE DEVELOPERS THINK IS TOTALLY HIP BUT PROBABLY YOU SHOULD JUST WAIT FOR SOMEONE HIPPER THAN YOU TO WRITE A LIBRARY TO PARSE IT [ ] AND AUTO-MIGRATED TO A SERVICE YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO USE Thanks for your support. Please try out NEW PRODUCT THAT WE ARE INTRODUCING TOMORROW AND SUNSETTING [ ] WHO KNOWS HAHAHAHA See you at http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ ! Love, Google.

This is by far the best shutdown of a service I've seen in recent memory. (Though they're still getting a post on 'Our Incredible Journey'[0]) [0]http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

For fans of the genre, I strongly recommend Our Incredible Journey: http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ We’re now excited to announce the next stage of our journey — we’re joining Dropbox! [ Dropbox will build on their technology. ] The Clementine service however, will be shutting down. The free portions of the app will remain active for current users until August 31, 2015 and we’ll provide plenty of help to regular and premium subscribers as the service transitions. Remind us again why we should take a chance on startups like this??? I wish more people would realize the potential for a vicious cycle. Side note: 5 weeks in the dog days of summer isn't much time to transition; I hope it's longer for paid customers.

They post about what an incredible journey it has been with you, their beloved user, in their unlimited-service-for-ever and that you will have 7 days to grab your data from their 10 MBit/s funnel before it is deleted forever. See http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ for some inspiration. The cloud/butt is not a place to store your data without having everything backed up locally. Look at a random ToS, they all(?) can terminate your service in an instant for zero reasons.

And another story for http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ We believe that iterating on design should be straightforward and free of repetitive work. We’re excited to be joining GitHub to continue to pursue that goal. What does this means to you, our users? Easel continues to run as it has. We’ll continue to provide support and all of our paid plans will continue to enjoy their current benefits. We’re excited to begin this new chapter and hope you’ll love what we have in store. [1] Weird. I checked them out yesterday, even thought about signing up. Good that I didn't go through the hassle. [1] http://blog.easel.io/blog/2014/01/06/easel-acquired-by-github/

Ha ha! I clicked on this article's HN comments thinking "Wow, this sounds a company ready for their Incredible Journey to begin." (c.f. http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com) And lo, the most upvoted comments here are all expressing the same sentiment. I do not recall before today just looking at a new company's elevator pitch and muttering "Best wishes with the acquihire, y'all". Something subtle's shifted in the way we perceive startups, lately... But the above is just my observations at my own behavior. I do wish the best for this company!

This is an incredible post. It takes a high level of strength to weather a terrible storm like this, but an even higher one to be as candid as Erica has been with the world at large. I'm infinitely more appreciative of something like this than what you'd find at http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ or a faceless shutdown page. In a weird, abstracted way, I'm reminded of the fantastic game Glitch's shutdown: http://www.glitchthegame.com/closing/ I don't know Erica in real life (though I've read her blog for a while), and I've gained even more respect for her. I can only hope she finds the success befitting her passion and integrity that the folks at Tiny Speck did.

Love that they've taken inspiration from http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Not my article, but this satirizes well the various things that can go wrong during a startup, such as - not once thinking about the customer but only the technology (technology is a means to the end of generating revenue, not the end itself) - wasting time rewriting if it's not critical to the customer (sure, it will be 1.2x faster each time but that doesn't matter if no one uses your product) - overengineering in the beginning with microservices etc and only talking to developers, again, not customers - focusing too much on hiring and not enough on what they were actually hiring for - spending 10 hour days with no weekends - thinking launching is only a one-time thing while even YC says to consider launching again and again [0] - thinking marketing consists solely of launching whereas marketing encompasses a much wider range, with cold calls, cold emails, SEO, content marketing, etc being critical parts of getting customers - writing a big v2 that no one uses, again - shutting down the startup with an Our Incredible Journey post [1] - and of course, not learning the lessons of failure. This comment by SwellJoe on HN is truly one of the best I've read on here regarding this [2] It is truly astounding to look at the ratio of things wrong to word count this article satirizes, it seems straight out of a Mike Judge / Silicon Valley show playbook. Given the current VC funding and economic climate however, I doubt many future startups will continue to operate this way,…

It gives me hope for the future to see commenters on HN, a forum made by a VC company to talk about VC funding, dunk on companies for taking VC funding. Any tech enthusiast who has been around long enough has seen VCs and acquisitions eventually destroy everything they've ever loved. Our incredible journey, indeed: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ The question is, can we organize around alternatives to the VC model, and build communities with control over their own destiny, instead of having the rug pulled out from under them repeatedly due to the whims of capital (and founders securing the bag)? The concept of "exit to community" appeals to me, but unfortunately I see crypto grifters / DAOs trying to take over any "decentralization" narrative. Unless the crypto crash wipes those scammers out, I fear the community may flee from VC scammers into the arms of crypto scammers, new boss same as the old boss. I hope that we can build some sort of cooperative movement that can avoid the "world domination or acquisition" pressure from VCs, while also avoiding weird technocratic "fixes" like DAOs. There's no replacement for organizing and community, tech cannot replace that difficult and necessary work of marshalling people to pull together in the same direction, accept no substitutes or "shortcuts."

>"We're thrilled with the match, and we're excited to be working on security that affects everyone we know." https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ Argh, yet another for the list. Certain cycles in the tech world are both extremely predictable and regrettable, yet for most of them the sting seems to fade a bit as the decades go by. But the acquisition-for-the-talent/IP-now-great-product-is-toast one somehow never, ever manages to lose its capability to be depressing. On the contrary new ones just make me think back on previous dearly departed that never got an equivalent replacement. It's part of what's made me particularly suspicious about new non-OSS "free" offerings, because that's generally just not sustainable. And the better it is the more I beg them to have some sort of decent paid tier. I guess some though just plain are aiming for a buyout from the start and that is in fact their planned profit/exit strategy, and fair enough but still ouch each time.

What a cruel joke! That was a really great product. I've completely given up hope of anything I love in technology lasting unless it's a paid product from a company that doesn't rely on advertising for revenue. Even then it's not perfect, but fuck if this isn't CLASSIC GOOGLE BULLSHIT. Sometimes it's killing a perfectly good product (ala Reader) after getting everyone to emotionally invest in it, and then there's the equally frustrating aquihire. Sell the lie that the beloved product will continue and that the team is so excited for the Incredible Journey[1] ahead and then bam, bullet to the head. Product killed. I still have scars from Reader, Sparrow, and Songza. And Mailbox! Looks like I switched to Fastmail just in time to avoid another heartbreak. Not too fancy but reliable AF and not going anywhere. Money well spent. Between this and Apple's post-Steve product decisions I'm becoming a curmudgeon in this current world of technology, wishing we could turn the clock back the clock nine years to when things made more sense. But honestly, in my fantasy world you know what I'd love to see? Some sort of statement that went along with an app detailing what their future plan is for cashing out or shutting down. Like, "If we don't survive as a business we will open source our product and provide an avenue for you to continue using it". Or, "We're building a sustainable lifestyle business and are not interested in being swallowed up by Google and being shut down" Or "We're…

first of all, how do you evaluate what is going to be around in 3 years given this data? haven't you seen ANY of the recent acquisition/shutdowns by google, yahoo, facebook, etc? you're fooling yourself into thinking anything has any longevity based on who just bought who, or invested in whom. quite frankly this line of thinking is naive. and ultimately no, they do not have the 'right' to know who owns your business, they can use their best judgment based on availability of data, or no data. you think corporations have rights? are you sure your thinking is internally consistent with the rest of your beliefs about corporations/companies? they could force you to divulge, or not sign a contract, just like a business partner or a bank. that's as far as the rights should extend... the extent of their leverage in negotiating. forcing individuals/sole proprietorships/partnerships/LLCs to reveal how much revenues and who owns them they have is not good, in my opinion. you can feel free to disagree. you've probably never bootstrapped a company or sold anything for a living so i get why you feel that way. http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Flowise was acquired by Workday in August 2025 [1]. At the time, they posted "Flowise isn’t going anywhere, we’re doubling down. In fact, we’re only just getting started!" [2] I wonder if "keep the platform running for >= 1 year post-acquisition" was part of the terms! Ah well, another one for Our Incredible Journey [3]... [1] https://newsroom.workday.com/2025-08-14-Workday-Acquires-Flowise,-Brin… [2] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/flowiseai_were-thrilled-to-share-that-f… [3] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

There are so many it's a meme: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com

Really wish there was a link to the site they tried for every "dead" site, if only to see the goodbye notice that pages put up. Sites like "Our Incredible Journey" [1] really highlight just what happens to so many of these companies, but an unreachable domain is definitely not a main criteria to base a graveyard off of. [1] https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

> And it would be extremely value-destructive to bring in a team like ours and then undermine what made us valued and successful. It would be, and yet: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Just because it's a slow motion rugpull doesn't make something not a rugpull. I did not watch any keynote and frankly place exactly 0% faith in the words of the people behind this move. The rugpulls we have seen so far have all been shady business moves mostly by dishonest people, so that is my expectation. It's like every acquisition ever, they say nice words at the time it happens, reality unfolds later: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ I see nothing here but yet another Open Core project that will be utterly irrelevant in 1-3 years.

Everytime i see someone writing "journey" i instantly feel repulsed by a... tech bro VC vibe maybe? https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com

Soon, from the acquired party: "Our incredible journey" ... https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ In earlier years, many of them literally had those words in their final blog posts or emails to their users. Now some of them seem to have got wise to the Tumblog above, so are changing their words, though not their meaning.

Welcome to our incredible journey: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

> We’re extremely excited to accelerate our mission by joining forces with Notion’s world-class team. We sincerely hope that the Skiff community will join us for this next stage of our journey. Yet another entry for https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Why would you expect anything different than all the other "our incredible journey" notices? https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com