Oh Hey World has been a long, hard journey.  I wrote the “Almost Eulogy of Oh Hey World” a few months ago. Following another 9 months of neglect for the product due to lack of resources/money as well as further Facebook API deprecations causing login functionality to cease, the decision to pull the plug was made.  Thus, today is the real eulogy of Oh Hey World (OHW). The final chapter. The shutting of our digital doors.

Note: Legally, Oh Hey World, Inc lives on in Horizon.

While OHW found its mark helping travel bloggers update their current location on their travel blogs more efficiently — ultimately, it didn’t solve an urgent or frequent problem for a large enough addressable market to grow and survive in the world.

For that, I’m incredibly sad.

That said, I’ll forever be grateful for the experience — I wouldn’t trade the journey, experience, learnings, hardships, stress and friendships for the world. It goes without saying — without OHW, there would never have been a Horizon. On that front, we’ve recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to enable supporters to fund continued product development of the best community building tool that’s ever existed. If you’re a community builder with an interest in strengthening a global membership base, manage a home stay network with email and spreadsheets, host or stay with trusted connections regularly, or simply believe life’s magical moments occur face to face, not staring at a screen — please head over to support our Horizon Patreon campaign.

Back to OHW…

Thank You

Thank you, Eric Roland. It took me 7 months of searching to find you — but your skill and efficiency was worth the wait. You made engineering seem easy; sorry I forced us down the path to building a bloated piece of software. Thanks Will Moyer for designing the gorgeous application that OHW was. I’m still bummed the iOS version you designed never saw the light of day. Thanks Shannon O’Donnell for your faith in the company’s mission throughout. Thank you Jessica Na for your design work to bringing my initial concepts to light.

Thank you to all our advisors — Jeff Turner, Spencer Rascoff, Jerry Ostradicky, Andrew Mattie, Matt Duncan, Matt Zito, Ian Ord, and Todd Sampson. A special thank you to Seann Birkelund and Eric Marcoullier for pushing me through the rut. Without all your support, well…I have no idea where I’d be, and Horizon would likely never have been created.

Thank you to all OHW’s passionate supporters — specifically Anna Zalazar, Annie Cheng, Jessie Spielvogel, Dave Dean, Lori Bee, Jan Riedel, Peter Parkorr, Mike Derzko, Martin Bergstrom, and Kristin Henning.

To all my friends & family, and specifically Brandon Matson, thanks for constantly putting up with my thoughts, updates, and ups & downs. Thank you to my mom and step dad for putting me up with food, shelter, and support throughout the early journey.

Shutting it Down

From selling/swapping candy, baseball cards, and used nintendo64 games to offering services such as mowing lawns, house demolition and website creation — I’ve been an “entrepreneur” my whole life. In the “digital” world, I’ve embarked on lots and lots of projects, mostly blogs (Geek Estate, Carnival of Real Estate, myKRO.org, ESM, etc). Oh Hey World was the first real functional “startup” that I forced upon the world.

When I FINALLY finally clicked the delete/cancel account in EngineYard (our website host), it certainly was a weird feeling.

How does it feel? Frankly, I’m at a loss for words. It feels like a small piece of my soul just died. Like I abandoned my first (startup) baby because they couldn’t grow up. Sad I couldn’t provide the direction and capital needed for my baby to reach adulthood.

Why Now?

I grew weary of the $150-$200 per month burning a hole in my back pocket every month continuing to push my credit card farther in the red.

Weary of the mental stress and bandwidth associated with OHW existing in the world.

Weary of asking myself, “Should I keep OHW going next month?”

Weary of not knowing whether a developer would come along to put new energy into the product.

Weary of contemplating which company might acquire the assets.

Weary of wondering who might sponsor the site (with little traffic).

That combined weariness, and stress, could only go on so long before insanity crept into the equation. At some point, I had to decide enough is enough.

RIP, Oh Hey World.