New York City-based social discovery startup Shelby.tv will be going dark over the weekend, the CEO Reece Pacheco alerted users in a blog post today. But don’t write it off and add it to the deadpool just yet — management says that it’s working on a new and improved version that will be coming soon.
Shelby.tv was founded to provide a platform for discovering and watching interesting videos shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The startup therefore launched a website and iOS app built to provide a continuous stream of videos, and let people in turn share them to their own networks of friends.
The company, which was part of last year’s TechStars class, says that the shutdown is being done so that it can focus its full attention on the next version of Shelby.tv. Rather than continuing to support a product that it will soon replace, the Shelby team will be focused 110 percent instead on creating “an entirely new build” of its social discovery platform for watching online videos.
According to CEO Reece Pacheco, the new version promises to be faster and have better processing power and more videos. The company will also be focused on improving community aspects of the platform, providing new ways for its users to share videos with friends. In the meantime, all the auxiliary tools that the team has built — its Chrome extension, iOS apps, bookmarklet, and weekly emails — will also be shut down.
Shelby.tv has raised about $1.75 million since being founded in early 2011, including a $1.5 million seed round last July. Despite temporary shutdown, Pacheco says there will be no effect on headcount, which has nearly tripled since last year, from four employees to 11 today. Users who wish to be alerted when the new version goes live can add their email address to gt.shelby.tv.