3 ms·

Thank you, that looks good! While I appreciate them releasing their stuff at all, why do companies usually also shut down at the same time as they are gaining

Thank you, that looks good! While I appreciate them releasing their stuff at all, why do companies usually also shut down at the same time as they are gaining a really cool differentiator over their competitors?

vikramkr 3y ago
Is that actually a thing? I don't think I've heard of a pattern like that
- kristopolous 3y ago
  Because people are more willing to be take audacious risks when things look like they will inevitably fail. It gives a sense of freedom to a project. Giving up is the first step to success. That's when you stop trying and start doing.
  - vikramkr 3y ago
    That's an interesting mechanism. If you know if there are any numbers on how often that happens?
    - kristopolous 3y ago
      This is pretty anecdotal. We'd have to come up with ways to quantify it. The story of the failing company taking a moonshot or making risky bets is pretty common. This sounds like something that there'd be an HBS logo on, it likely already exists. It's a fairly easy thesis project. There's an LLM that does conceptual searching of scholarly literature https://consensus.app/search/ https://consensus.app/search/ but it looks like just a classic IDF/bag of words style approach labeled "ML"
perlgeek 3y ago
I guess the reasoning goes: * I can't make enough money out of it * do I keep this as a side project? * if yes: development mostly stops * if no: OK, shut down * now that I don't fear competition, I can Open Source it (not commenting on how valid each of these is, which is probably very hard to judge without the founder's perspective).
notpushkin 3y ago
I love the Chatwoot success story: > [Chatwoot] was a product we started building in 2017. It failed due to a couple of obvious reasons. [...] It was in an inactive mode for around 1 and a half years. Recently we thought of putting it out instead of letting the code to rust. Our idea is to make it something like Gitlab/Mattermost where people can host their own version and we will provide a hosted version for people who don't want to self-host. > After we open-sourced, we received contributions from 30 developers all around the world. And then they proceeded to raise $1.6 million in seed round. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21559139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21559139

vikramkr 3y ago

Is that actually a thing? I don't think I've heard of a pattern like that

kristopolous 3y ago
Because people are more willing to be take audacious risks when things look like they will inevitably fail. It gives a sense of freedom to a project. Giving up is the first step to success. That's when you stop trying and start doing.
- vikramkr 3y ago
  That's an interesting mechanism. If you know if there are any numbers on how often that happens?
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    This is pretty anecdotal. We'd have to come up with ways to quantify it. The story of the failing company taking a moonshot or making risky bets is pretty common. This sounds like something that there'd be an HBS logo on, it likely already exists. It's a fairly easy thesis project. There's an LLM that does conceptual searching of scholarly literature https://consensus.app/search/ https://consensus.app/search/ but it looks like just a classic IDF/bag of words style approach labeled "ML"

perlgeek 3y ago

I guess the reasoning goes: * I can't make enough money out of it * do I keep this as a side project? * if yes: development mostly stops * if no: OK, shut down * now that I don't fear competition, I can Open Source it (not commenting on how valid each of these is, which is probably very hard to judge without the founder's perspective).

notpushkin 3y ago

I love the Chatwoot success story: > [Chatwoot] was a product we started building in 2017. It failed due to a couple of obvious reasons. [...] It was in an inactive mode for around 1 and a half years. Recently we thought of putting it out instead of letting the code to rust. Our idea is to make it something like Gitlab/Mattermost where people can host their own version and we will provide a hosted version for people who don't want to self-host. > After we open-sourced, we received contributions from 30 developers all around the world. And then they proceeded to raise $1.6 million in seed round. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21559139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21559139