Seems like his main mistake was raising $3.6M before getting any traction. Remember Color? Really, it shouldn't cost 3.6M to build a relatively simple ipad app.
0.5M MAU is a pretty decent user base, and would bring in a few thousand bucks a month in advertising. The problem is that once you've raised $3.6M you really need to have a plan for earning big bucks, and that never seemed likely with this app.
The other mistake is making it ipad-only. It would make more sense to have an html5 version.
Just out of curiosity: how much are the AWS server costs? You should be able to run this site for $50/month, but my gut tells me they might be paying a lot more.
0.5M MAU is a pretty decent user base, and would bring in a few thousand bucks a month in advertising. The problem is that once you've raised $3.6M you really need to have a plan for earning big bucks, and that never seemed likely with this app.
The other mistake is making it ipad-only. It would make more sense to have an html5 version.
Just out of curiosity: how much are the AWS server costs? You should be able to run this site for $50/month, but my gut tells me they might be paying a lot more.