Taking a break
LunchTable will be going on vacation next Wednesday, March 1. We've been quietly running the background, silently carrying messages back and forth, and remaining the snapshot of an idea sparked back in 2013. But today that idea of seamless, privacy-protecting software is evolved, refined, and alive in the much more successful platform that is Write.as.
Our small team makes the most of what we have. But ultimately we are still aiming for profitability as a company, and thus have to be as lean as possible in order to survive as a bootstrapped enterprise. Right now LunchTable costs us at least $250 per year, resources on our infrastructure from outdated (and memory-hogging) Node.js code, and occasional time out of our day for routine maintenance. We need to regain those resources to further the mission of our flagship product, Write.as, until we have the capacity to start expanding our suite of products again.
We also make this decision because of the objectively tiny number of users on LunchTable today. If you depend on it, let us know. But we're assuming we won't hear from anyone. :)
So on Wednesday we'll be turning off many of the backend systems for LunchTable. This means:
- The web app won't work anymore
- New users won't be able to download the Android app
- The app will be broken for existing users
The future
I (Matt) want an anonymous group chat application that's as seamless as LunchTable is / was. But today, we need something more robust. We need apps across all platforms. We need a slick experience with end-to-end encryption.
In all likelihood, LunchTable will eventually be revived as a cross-platform app utilizing some kind of open, secure chat protocol, instead of our own. The clients might be open source. It'll definitely have some kind of business model.
But today, we regain some focus. Until our resurrection, keep writing.