Trusera, a health 2.0 community where users can share their stories about how they’ve dealt with health conditions, is officially closing its doors on May 27, according to a blog post on the site. We originally reported on Trusera’s possible shutdown in March, when the startup was nearly out of money.
Founded by former Amazon exec Keith Schorsch, Trusera launched almost a year ago. Trusera sought to bring users together who were suffering from similar health conditions. The site also took other personal information into account when connecting people, including a user’s hobbies, location, and age. Trusera would then match people up according to all of these factors and allowed users to receive email updates whenever a new match submitted a story or tip, which meant that users didn’t have to worry about constantly searching the site for new information.
In the blog post, Trusera’s site manager wrote that the startup had run out of funds and could not sustain operations. Although the site was innovative and had steadily attracted a growing and dedicated set of users over the past year, it was still a small community. The health 2.0 space is a competitive landscape to survive in—there are a number of websites, including Medpedia and PatientsLikeMe, devoted to online forums for people to share their health-related stories.
After the close, Trusera will keep a landing page with information about the site and its mission but will disable all other functionality. Trusera says that the content of site will be secured so that it can be preserved in the event that the startup is able to raise additional funds in the future.
Always sad to see any startup go. Good luck next time!
Yeah, I imagine Ning’s free niche social networks didn’t help much
It is always sad to see soo many Health 2.0 sites go under. Which is next? ZocDoc, MyDocHub etc? It is hard to make money in the Health 2.0 business.
i cant feel sorry for someone who blew 2 million.
Goes to show, just because you are “rock star” (former exec) in the eye of a VC, doesn’t mean your startup is going to fly.
But still, sad to see a funded startup fail.
Yup. Too many businesses these days go down the path of funding, and because of that they “forgot” (oops) to try to make their site earn money.
Same thing with revolutionhealth, and many others. Revolutionhealth started with 100Million buckaroos and are now down to less than 300K uniques per month.
My own site — medications.com is not sexy, has no funding, but we make a comfortable 6 figure living from it without some VC breathing down our necks. Expenses are almost zero (except for hosting and editing) and when we feel like it, we make improvements as our users suggest.
There’s something to be said about building a business that’s dedicated to making profits as a “feature”, not a desired outcome.
I would like to talk to someone about advertising with your website but the “advertise” link is broken.
You must be happy with the 6 figures you are already making?
How to get in touch with Keith? Does anybody have his email or phone number? We are doing something interesting and way beyond what Trusera was doing. May be in the position to help them out.
Thanks
MedGoline Team
Zocdoc’s traffic is twice higher than MyDocHub, even a bit higher than Medpedia’s.
Patientslikeme is twice more popular than ZocDoc, yet no comparison to WebMD that beats them all 100X
It should be something way beyond revolutionhealth and everything else out there to win.
I dont understand why some of these sites that seem to be able to run with little or no costs except for bandwidth, would be shut down. The major costs seem to be already spent and now it is just hosting. that can be done for very inexpensive especially for their traffic figures. What is the cost of continuing? a couple hundred bucks a month.
The site seems to be community based, it should be able to grow viraly.
Good luck on your next endeavor!
Sorry to hear about Trusera…..liked the concept.
Onward and upward….
What are all of you on? Seriously, are you all crazy?
What was really new or innovative about Trusera? What on Earth did they spend $2M on???? What, a bunch of over priced employees??
The site looked amateuristic. I was not impressed by it in the least. They had ZERO business model too.
Seriously, the site was a joke. However, the real joke is on the idiots who invested in it.
Trusera Users,
MedGoline invites you folks to come and join MedGoline. We are building a new platform that will help you create and control your medical information. Take control over your health. Understand what it means and where you are on your health. Work on improving it after understanding it. Search for newer services, medications and practices that will help you reach your goals. Discuss with others who are experiencing similar conditions and find out what out what is helping them get better and healthier. Make it work for you.
Be a MedGoliner!
http://www.medgoline.com
MedGoline Team