Maybe it is just because it had a really bad name. Or maybe it is because nobody really likes their neighbors. Or, if they do, they actually prefer to talk to them in person. Whatever the reason, FatDoor, a social network for neighbors, is closing its doors. We are placing it in the deadpool. Visitors to the site, which sadly never even emerged out of private beta, can now see nothing but unintelligible gobbledy gook.
While the site is dead, the company behind it that raised $7 million in venture capital—$5.5 million of which it collected just last November from Keynote Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners—is not. It is rebooting as Center’d, an event planning and neighborhood search site that is still in stealth mode. But don’t worry, I snuck in and took pictures (see below).
Fatdoor’s CEO Jennifer Dulski (a former Yahoo exec) and CTO Chandu Thota (a former Microsoft engineer) are still running Center’d. In the “about” page, they acknowledge that “Center’d evolved from a concept (formerly called Fatdoor) that aimed to bring neighbors together in an online community environment.” They also lay out what they hope to accomplish with Center’d:
At Center’d, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat . . . to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning . . ..
Hear us out. We can give you the tools you need to easily organize people, places, and times. Using the latest space-age technology, we have concocted features such as:
• Polling tools: Enable your guests to take some of the burden of coming to consensus on the place and time to meet.
• Task Management and Volunteer Sign-up: Now you can easily get the team you need to do the stuff you need.
• Connection management and calendar sharing: Now that you are suddenly so organized, and ready to pull off the perfect girls’ night out/summer camp/grandparents day/birthday party/first date/last date, let’s make sure those who are important to you can view your calendars. But not everyone, and not every event. We can keep a secret.
• Explore neighborhoods: We’ll even help you out with finding other places and events. How would you like a view of your world filtered by the recommendations of people you trust? How would you like to be at the center, and have the people, places, and plans you care about revolve around you, just waiting to be experienced? We like that idea. In fact, we like it so much, we built it.
Center’d is both a local search engine and an event-planning application. You can search places for restaurants, hotels, schools, museums, stores, etc., and the results appear on a Google map. There is also a calendar view. Once you connect with friends on the system their events pop up in your searches. And you can also create your own events and get your friends to help decide the details. For instance, things like the location and date can be voted on. Want to have a party by the sea? Ask your invited guests if they’d rather go to Stimson Beach or Montaro Beach, and if next Sunday is better than this Saturday. You can also assign tasks for them to sign up for: bring lobsters, bring wine, bring volleyball.
The site is perfectly serviceable and looks like it will do a decent job with both event planning and local search. The interface is heavy on Ajax, with the screen telescoping open as you go through the options. It is very similar to Pingg in that regard, except it is much more limited in what it can do. But Center’d is also not doing anything appreciably different from many other startups on the event-planning side, including Pingg, Socializr, and MyPunchbowl. It does have the local search piece, but so does Yelp, Yahoo, and Google.
Still, when you are starting out with FatDoor, anything is an improvement.
Welcome to the party.
How can a company like this get 7 million dollars? And better yet, it never even launched.
“I hear it’s fun to start a company. Let’s start a company.”
“Cool, what does this company do?”
“I don’t know. But I really want a company! Let’s just brainstorm and we’ll start a company based around the first idea we come up with.”
“Awesome!”
Maps, ratings, events, photos from flickr. Didn’t you just cover this already?
Not sure if Centerd is much of an upgrade over Fatdoor.
Good rule of thumb when naming your company: avoid references to “terd”.
why would you give these guys another post before they even launch? they just finished failing.
my question (and i would appreciate an answer) - what pr firm did they spend some of that $7M with?
#6 - best comment ever.
with rising foreclosures your neighbors could change every month!! lol
Fatdoor? Centard? Who comes up with these names??
Scratching my head here.
From the people who invented a website for me so that I can meet my next-door neighbors…
“How would you like to be at the center, and have the people, places, and plans you care about revolve around you, just waiting to be experienced?”
LMAO. Seriously. Those folks need to get out more and meet some neighbors - or someone, anyone.
They have a very tough road ahead of them. A road littered with the corpses of failed startups with the same idea. To quote Paul Graham:
Best of luck to them, they’ll need it.
Fatdoor was a good concept but should have been a facebook/myspace app not a full site. Hopefully they will open up the source code for fatdoor and post it on the net.
They should run a poll on TechCrunch to see which reader can come up with the best new name. I think it has been definitively proven by comments 5, 6, 8 & 10 that the name must change - its only a matter of to what will it change. I’m sure TC would not mind having penning the disclosure “NEWCOMPANY is an advertiser” in their posts!
Any name proposals to kick it off?
Jesus - who wrote post 14? Nice grammar and sentence structure dude.
I like the change of focus for them. Event planning is an area that could use some innovation. Evite and the other alternatives haven’t offered many new features in years. It won’t be easy, but I’m optimistic and I’m rooting for them. Jennifer Dulski is a smart, capable leader. I’m sure her team will bring some interesting things to the space.
“Still, when you are starting out with FatDoor, anything is an improvement.”
nicely put. good one MA.
Sorry, I meant Erick !
I used Fatdoor when it was in testing, played around with it and everything. I found out about it because I know some of the guys there. Like Joe said, they have some new leadership as well as a solid base to start from. I think it will be cool to see what they do with taking what they learned from Fatdoor and move forward with Center’d.
I am not sure events focus is good idea, it is really really hard to make people switch from evite…….many startups are trying but I do not see any success story yet!!
Shouldn’t that be ” is closing its fat doors”?
Are you sure it’s not built on Virtual Earth? Are you sure it’s using Google maps?
The big issue I see is distribution. It may be a great idea, but how do you get millions of local residents on board? It’s essentially a marketing problem.
However, I worked a bit with Jenn Dulski at Yahoo, and I agree with JoeLaz (#16) - she’s pretty amazing. I look forward to seeing what comes of it…
I think this is a case of bad venture capitalists and poor engineering execution screwing up a great idea. The original concept was better. This idea around making plans is useless. Lots of startups in this space, this idea is destined to flop faster than webvan.
just tried to go in, private beta. I personally hate company doing PR before public release, i will never go back to sites that were in private beta when I first visit. last one was dropbox, won’t go back even they are now public. why I have to wait to try their products?
Wow. I don’t have a word to describe VCs motivation for funding some startups. Why are VCs funding teams consisting of former large Internet company executives before they prove that their entrepreneurial concepts as worth anything?
This is the age of founding companies on the cheap and proving that they scale… then funding to accelerate growth and further product development.
Not funding to the tune of $7 million before the company has proved anything. I don’t care what corporate credentials the founders have… in fact, corporate credentials are not a good indicator entrepreneurial aptitude. In many cases, they are an inhibitor to success.
There are plenty of web 2.0 startups that are not yet funded that will emerge as significant businesses within the next 24 months. Why? Because they are building scalable businesses based on early customer traction and feedback.
CollectiveX is one such business. And guess what, we haven’t raised a dime of institutional funding yet.
“How would you like to be at the center, and have the people, places, and plans you care about revolve around you, just waiting to be experienced?”
Sounds more like self-centered.
i personally prefer http://www.rottenneighbor.com . and no i’m not affiliated with them in case some of you are having dirty conclusionary thoughts
I head up marketing at Center’d and wanted to share our point of view about the company’s evolution and let everyone know that we’re excited about the recent interest in our site.
To paraphrase Samuel Clemens, the rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated.
The work done while we tested Fatdoor has provided a great foundation and infrastructure for us to build upon – indeed, much of the functionality still exists in the new Center’d site. Based on consumer research and feedback from our experience, we have enhanced our product concept and added tools that help address everyday needs like planning. To reflect how the product and our vision for the company have evolved, and in response to consumer input, we changed our name to Center’d.
We are currently in a closed beta (our “first draft,” if you will) while we add new features and put the finishing touches on the site. We will start sending invites to the site in a few weeks.
F L O P, but you did manage to get on TC.
Meh. Did a community events/reviews project, then a community business reviews project, then a community real estate referrals system, then a…
I learned that the web 1.0 model of selling stuff to people for money is WAY easier. My ceiling might be in the tens of millions instead of billions, but I think I can sleep knowing that. Oh, and I GET to sleep. It’s neat, I highly recommend it.
the post from the “head” of Marketing at centerd is bs. Who needs a head of marketing for a prelaunch web concept company anyway? how many people are working there?
on another note, who wants to start a company with me to help get to know my neighbors?
Looks like Centerd has abandoned that concept.. email me if you do, seems like a good opportunity still.
ps… I am really serious about starting a new company to help me get to my neighbors, given that this company is dazed and confused about what is a good idea. Email me if you have the technical talent to work with me at : gigs-643121488@craigslist.org. Just posted on craigslist gigs http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/cpg/643121488.html
I live in the bay area, we just need a couple of us to make this happen…
#33, there is no need to start a new one. We already started one in the East Bay, and is ready to expand to the Bay Area and internationally later this year. BTW, we’d really like to have a small fraction of that 7 millions!
All the activity in this area indicates the potential that Activity Oriented search has to take search from “what” to “why”. None of the players trying to unseat evite have shown any indication that they know how to go beyond the few core users to the general demographics of evite users, and then move beyond invitations.
Someone will figure that out sooner or later.
There is already a company out there prior to FatDoor that has been extremely successful in the residential space. LifeAt (http://www.lifeat.com) is a modern twist on the building bulletin board, the self-proclaimed neighborhood gossip, the welcome wagon, and the earmarked local business guide, LifeAt keeps residents in touch with everything their community has to offer. CHECK IT OUT!
odd that CTO is a MS mapping guy but they now use google maps.
there have too much money and dont know what to do with it.
so why not build new site. it will fail