Update on Offskip

First of all, Happy New Year!

Some people might have seen the word "Offskip" in my bio on socials etc. and wondered what it is. If you guessed a company, you were close.

The Story so far

To understand what Offskip is and where it came from, we have to go back in time to around late 2014 or 2015. The story of Offskip is tightly interconnected with 5Degrees GmbH, the company I founded with a dear friend (Rest in peace, buddy) in late 2014.

5Degrees was originally intended to be a small web agency, taking on client projects for small and medium sized businesses. However, less than a year into our activities we recognized client work is not really what we wanted to do long-term. Like many entrepreneurial software engineers, we wanted to create our own product, something in the B2C space. Problem was, we did not have the funds for such an undertaking. Anybody who has started a company that creates its own product(s) knows there are only so many ways to get off the ground:

Taking on loans/debt (private, VCs etc.)
Bootstrap

Since we already had a running business with paying customers, we chose option 2 and it failed spectacularly. While we did get some support from various programs intended to help startups get off the ground, we struggled with balancing client work and making progress on our own product. It was just impractical with the resources we had. So we decided to outsource our client business to places with lower rates, invest our time in development of our own product. Sounds great and like a logical step, right?

Lack of cost control and underselling of our services
Insufficient management (both on the client and vendor side)
Lack of quality control

Needless to say our customers were not happy with our services, delays and quality issues were common. Often we had to step in and put out fires, fixing issues and generally invest time in something that should have been taken off our shoulders. On top of that, some of the vendors were not even that affordable at the end of the day.

After just about 2 years, we gave up on the idea of bootstrapping our business and shifted to the first approach. And while there were some attempts to get some external fundings, most of the funding came in the form of private loans from us, the founders. This raised the stakes in the undertaking considerably, but we agreed to go all in. And so we hired people in the hopes to get something out the door as soon as possible.

After a year or so, we finally were close to having a release candidate. We released a Beta in late 2019 and then the world changed...

The dagger to the heart & shelving

After many setbacks we finally had something to show for all the time and money we thew at this project and we were thrilled about it. We invited beta testers and enthusiastically gathered feedback. As we all know, the world shut down beginning of 2020 due to the rapidly spreading Corona virus (COVID-19). If you are wondering how bad of an impact that had on our product, all you really need to know that Offskip was a travel booking/companion/planning application.

Since nobody knew how long everything would take, we decided to postpone the release of the app while polishing it some more. But the longer the shutdown dragged on, the worse the situation became financially. Remember, the running costs of the whole company including all salaries were paid out of the pockets of the founders. This was ever meant as a temporary stopgap measure, and we were already a year beyond what we agreed on. And so with running red numbers and shifting priorities in the private lifes of some of the founders, the decision to shutdown the operation was made.

I remember the day I had to let go of the engineering team as one of the worst I ever had. It was admitting defeat. Though in hindsight I can confidently say we made many mistakes and should probably have shut down the operation much earlier or taken a different approach right from the start, it was definitely an important learning lesson and we still managed to create a product, even though it never really saw the light of day.

The revival attempts

When we decided to abandon the project and shut down the company, I felt frustrated having a basically finished product that was essentially just about to be thrown away. Having written most of the code myself over the course of many years, there was of course some personal attachment to it as well.

So after some negotiation with the other founders, I took over the project, not as representative of a business or legal/entity, but as private person. My plan was to shelve the project for a while, wait for the world to recover and then decide what to do. I remember the first 2 months after taking over Offskip working on it with a strange renewed motivation, but as COVID dragged on with no end in sight, I gave up on the project for the time being.

When the world finally started opening again, I revisited the project and weighed different options against each other, such as releasing the product on my own, looking for partners to help development and other tasks without setting up a company first, or setting up a company. I remember having talks with some people to collaborate on the development and operation of Offskip, but due to different circumstances it never really went further than that. So the project ended up being shelved and revisited a few more times over the past 3 years, and while I always had in the back of my mind, I also started doubting the business model/product itself. I found the scope to be too broad and with only me working on it, I wanted something more lean and focused but I struggled with finding that specific niche and use case for a while.

Pivoting

In late 2024, I started teaching and mentoring a student learning web development. Since I had no space or office for that purpose, we would meet somewhere in a cozy coffee shop that had Wifi (and ideally outlets), but being in Tokyo, it was always a gamble if they had free seats, Wifi etc. Sometimes you would get the information for the available amenities from either Google Maps or their website directly, if they had one, but it was unreliable and we had to switch locations often.

The situation got worse when Japan started experiencing a remarkable influs of tourists after Japan had finally lifted all restrictions related to COVID-19. A lot of shops would start to introduce a time limit you could stay. This made it impractical for our use. I wished I had an application tailored for people who are looking for a temporary place to do some light work, studying etc. such as Digital Nomads.

And then it hit me. I could use the master data and some of the API's of the original Offskip project. I already had the geographical data I would need. And so I revisited the project once again, did a thorough analysis fo the idea and the current codebase and drew up a new plan.

Current state

So, where are we now?

To be fair, most of the functionality of the original application was useless in its original form, and in fact, the current application is a complete rewrite, but I am getting close to have the basic functionality to launch an Alpha/Beta version soon-ish. The scope and functionality is much smaller and simpler, but this is just fine for the beginning and has been one the goals of the pivot anyways.

Currently I am setting up the infrastructure and expect to be able to start some closed testing soon.

The Roadmap

On the feature side there is good progress, but the challenge is the data, or rather its quality and consistency. There is some more polishing required on that front for sure.

Nevertheless, I do intend to launch Offskip in 2026 in one form or another. It might be an Alpha/Beta version first for a while, but my goal is to have something out there and get feedback on it.

I also plan to update the progress on a regular basis. I am not sure if I will go the "Build in public" road completely, but you can expect to hear about the project from time to time.

"We must ship." - Taylor Otwell

And with that, I am closing 2025 and hope to meet lots of great people next year too!