The hardest decisions

Today I sent an email that broke my heart.

Today I annouced to our 15 loyal subscribers that Dfend would cease operations on 31 March 2018.

Today is a sad day at SafeStack.

We just want to help people

This morning I watched the launch of the Falcon Heavy on the live stream. Sitting with millions of others around the globe while engineering history was made. It was a beautiful moment that made me incredibly excited for the world that could be built from the technology being developed today.

At SafeStack we were never destined to build our own digital cathedral. We just wanted to help others build their magnum opus and stay safe and secure when they do so.

Dfend was our little way of doing this. Simple security solutions sold to anyone who needed them with as little fuss and expense as we could.

We are proud of what we built and we know it is useful

We are not sales people, we are engineers

Trouble is, Software as a Service is not the same as professional services. SaaS needs sales teams and a different type of person. After recruiting for over 8 months to find our help with this, we have to admit defeat.

We are not the right people to get a SaaS product (even a good and useful one) to the world, and we simply can’t find someone who is.

Dfend needs the right home

The technology we built is good.

The code is clean and well tested, the deployment infrastructure uses modern AWS devops techniques. I owe a lot to the tiny tech team that build Dfend. They are fantastic engineers.

But on 31 March 2018, we will turn it off and pack it away.

Unless we can find it a new home.

If you know of an organisation or group who you think could use this technology for good, we would love to hear from them. As partners, new owners or just as channels to market.

At 15 subscribers we won’t ever been called a unicorn or a rocketship. We built something good, some people used it and supported it. That’s not a bad legacy, just a small one.

So, today we hold our heads up and say goodbye to something we poured a lot of love into.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m not smiling.