7 ms·

Noteable.io is shutting down

67 points by josephjrobison 3y ago

Southland 3y ago
Effective immediately is surprising. Why such a sudden shutdown?
- BlackjackCF 3y ago
  Wonder if they were really cutting it close with funding, were in talks to raise another round, and then the conversations all fell through.
  - smlavine 3y ago
    Interesting this in comparison to Signal's recent post about their finances. An honest organization that actually cares about providing value to its customers would be able to make a frank appeal about the situation the company is in, in hopes that it could turn around. But a company whose real customers are VC has to keep up the act that everything's fine even if it isn't.
    - lijok 3y ago
      When push comes to shove inexperienced, proud or slightly arrogant leadership can make the silliest of mistakes, such as, not appealing to the community.
    - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
      Signal publishing detailed finances is part of their brand. It's not advantageous for most companies to do that because if there's signs of trouble, everyone takes it as a sign to get the hell out of there and makes a troubled situation confirmed death.
      - smlavine 3y ago
        Exactly, because most companies like it or not don't have "honesty" as a core value.
- devjab 3y ago
  Shutdowns are rarely sudden. Companies aren’t going to be public about their financial struggles unless they’re legally obligated to do so. I imagine that Notable have been facing the same slowing investor interest and increased interest rates that most of has for the better part of at least a year. So it’s likely that the only sudden thing about this, is that they now failed to secure anymore money after a long struggle. Some companies may give customers a little longer to get off the sinking ship, but if you’re just looking at the cost, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to do so instead of running on fumes (and hope) for as long as possible. Sucks for the employees though.
- galaxyLogic 3y ago
  But it's not immediately, they say January 5th
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    The service is already shut down, except to let you export.
4ndrewl 3y ago
1st May or 5th Jan?
- williamstein 3y ago
  I think it's real. When I sign into my account, kernels don't run. Noteable is one of a couple of realtime collaborative Jupyter notebook environments, including Deepnote and Cocalc (my site). I know from chatting with Kyle Kelley earlier this year that they were investing strongly in ChatGPT integration, but evidently this didn't fully ship, since their "Upgrade to Pro" dialog says "COMING SOON: NoteableAI!" in bold. Kyle regularly posted a lot of exciting work they were doing on AI integration on Twitter (e.g., [1]). [1] https://twitter.com/KyleRayKelley/status/1727430546354233763 https://twitter.com/KyleRayKelley/status/1727430546354233763
  - lars_francke 3y ago
    Your parent is refering to the reference of "1/5/24" in the post which is the date until which you can download data. Most of the world would that interpret as 1st May 2024, some parts of the world might call it 1st January 2024. It's not entirely clear what's meant here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
  - thih9 3y ago
    Grandparent asked for clarification about the date format, currently article asks to export data before 1/5/24. I don’t think they wanted to suggest it’s not real.
  - andrelaszlo 3y ago
    https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      In 1988 :cry: This is why we can’t have good things.
  - 3y ago
milliams 3y ago
I thought it was this (https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/ https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/) Noteable for a minute. They two similar services in a similar space with a similar name.
- captn3m0 3y ago
  And I was confusing it with https://notable.app/ https://notable.app/
andrewstuart 3y ago
Must be hard to be in such a position.
rogerthis 3y ago
What comes to my mind is this rhetorical question: How a service with such a wonderful home page suddenly die?
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  Beautiful pages alone don't bring money. Sometimes ugly pages bring money. It's whacky.
samhuk 3y ago
In a way I understand why, however I still am always perplexed when a "we are kaput" announcement drowns the message in praise for all the amazing super awesome they have done whilst not including a single character as to why, uh, perhaps the entire company/project/venture is ceasing. To me, it only communicates that the issues were embarrassing, inconvenient, or otherwise do not shine a good light. Am I reading too much into this, or does this kind of pithy announcement usually hide skeletons? Genuinely curious here.
- ska 3y ago
  No knowledge of the specifics here, but usually the underlying cause is the same: we are running out of money, the business model doesn't work, and we don't have enough time, ideas or both to try anything else - at least no with any confidence of success.
  - samhuk 3y ago
    I wouldn't expect such a sudden death from "business plan just didn't work out" though. Take Docker for example. Curious. Competition perhaps?
    - zinekeller 3y ago
      Side-effects of higher interest rates are usually drying up of "easy money" (low-cost loans). Combined with the fact that VCs had a sudden shift (due to the loss of "easy money") and are now actually evaluating whether a startup is actually viable before committing funding to it, it is not surprising that investors demand existing companies that are no longer viable to orderly wind up in order to have some money than the real possibility of losing it all. Docker is different: it has a name already so it can bleed a lot of money (à la Twitter while it was a public company) and there is generally a significant holding in large enterprises. I'm guessing that Notable didn't have significant notable enterprises using it that will make investors more relaxed with their red sheets.
    - Kye 3y ago
      It's hard to accept something you've poured your life into and had such high hopes for isn't working out. This is why every company that gets bought has an optimistic blog post talking about how they can finally get things done with the support of the acquiring company. They really believe it. They just proved it's nonviable, and they still believe they'll be able to keep trying.
bgibson 3y ago
Reddit comment from a Notable employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/comments/18jbj32/does_anyone_know_why_noteable_is_shutting_down/kdjist1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/comments/18jbj32/does_an... TLDR: market conditions not conducive to their business at this time. (Ed: founding team probably wants to quickly pivot to something else, not take the time to for a sale)
lmeyerov 3y ago
Brutal news, the Graphistry team would point to Noteable internally as an example of good execution on notebooks-as-a-service For folks impacted, we've been pursuing a similar-but-different product & technology vision for making data analysis easier, and may have relevant openings for specific staff: * Graphistry side - visual graph AI: connecting GPUs in the cloud to GPUs in the browser, automating data science for tricky data, ... . We helped make Apache Arrow a thing by bringing it to the web for most new visual analytic frameworks, helped start the GPU data frame movement (led to Nvidia RAPIDS), and are on the next generation of technologies here (GNNs, another 100X in viz scale, ...) and use cases (global supply chains, cybersecurity, finance, misinfo, fraud ...) . Biggest opening in WebGL/infoviz, and then in AI / security / federal solutions. * New - Louie.AI conversational analytics platform: Flipping the data analysis default from Python/SQL/etc in today's notebooks => natural language for the default case . Basically making it so anyone can use all the cool stuff above, with early customers again in supply chain, fraud, cyber, gov disaster management, etc. Openings on core team, GIS, AI solutions, marketing, etc, mix of part-time & full-time More info @ https://www.graphistry.com/careers https://www.graphistry.com/careers , and easiest is to just chat
frogamel 3y ago
I think companies in this "data analytics platform but with LLM integration" space are going to struggle in the next few years. The pain points of analytics are completely different than traditional software engineering, and things that LLMs help the most with (writing boilerplate code, bouncing between different frameworks, handling tests and docs) aren't serious issues in analytics work. I use copilot religiously for webdev work but find it completely useless for analytics.
- broken_clock 3y ago
  Can you elucidate why specifically? I'm imagining something like an GPT-4 agent that has connections to your Databricks, Snowflake, Salesforce, etc. You ask it a question and then it iteratively queries your data and produces some an answer/some code/ a graph. Or it generates a plan that you can edit a bit and then it executes. That sounds like it would be pretty useful copilot for me? I'm not very familiar with the intricacies of analytics work though.
manicennui 3y ago
But... they have no-code AND AI! And like 5 awards from... someone... right on their front page! Maybe they needed to add more bullshit.
Rapzid 3y ago
Three weeks notice with a deadline right after the New Year holidays.. Ouch, that's not a landing it's a crash.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rightisleft 3y ago
a Series-A company failing is not news let alone noteable...
T3RMINATED 3y ago
[dead]
esafak 3y ago
Bummer! Shame I just heard about it today. It looked decent; I might have used it.
tehlike 3y ago
Would the project financially make sense for an indie developer or developers to continue building?
volf_ 3y ago
Cool. How about you open source the application? Let the community take over if they want to.
reuven 3y ago
I've been using Jupyter to teach Python and Pandas to a lot of companies over the years, and Noteable made it so much nicer and easier. I'm very sad to see them shutting down, but I have to assume they would have kept going if they could.
PeterZaitsev 3y ago
This is unfortunate. I find it interesting, there did not seem to enough revenue to shink business to ride through the tough market riding on existing revenue only... This is why I love SaaS based of Open Source projects a lot - even if things do not work out and company has to shut down, customers may have more options.

Southland 3y ago

Effective immediately is surprising. Why such a sudden shutdown?

BlackjackCF 3y ago
Wonder if they were really cutting it close with funding, were in talks to raise another round, and then the conversations all fell through.
- smlavine 3y ago
  Interesting this in comparison to Signal's recent post about their finances. An honest organization that actually cares about providing value to its customers would be able to make a frank appeal about the situation the company is in, in hopes that it could turn around. But a company whose real customers are VC has to keep up the act that everything's fine even if it isn't.
  - lijok 3y ago
    When push comes to shove inexperienced, proud or slightly arrogant leadership can make the silliest of mistakes, such as, not appealing to the community.
  - stuartjohnson12 3y ago
    Signal publishing detailed finances is part of their brand. It's not advantageous for most companies to do that because if there's signs of trouble, everyone takes it as a sign to get the hell out of there and makes a troubled situation confirmed death.
    - smlavine 3y ago
      Exactly, because most companies like it or not don't have "honesty" as a core value.
devjab 3y ago
Shutdowns are rarely sudden. Companies aren’t going to be public about their financial struggles unless they’re legally obligated to do so. I imagine that Notable have been facing the same slowing investor interest and increased interest rates that most of has for the better part of at least a year. So it’s likely that the only sudden thing about this, is that they now failed to secure anymore money after a long struggle. Some companies may give customers a little longer to get off the sinking ship, but if you’re just looking at the cost, it probably wouldn’t make much sense to do so instead of running on fumes (and hope) for as long as possible. Sucks for the employees though.
galaxyLogic 3y ago
But it's not immediately, they say January 5th
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  The service is already shut down, except to let you export.

4ndrewl 3y ago

1st May or 5th Jan?

williamstein 3y ago
I think it's real. When I sign into my account, kernels don't run. Noteable is one of a couple of realtime collaborative Jupyter notebook environments, including Deepnote and Cocalc (my site). I know from chatting with Kyle Kelley earlier this year that they were investing strongly in ChatGPT integration, but evidently this didn't fully ship, since their "Upgrade to Pro" dialog says "COMING SOON: NoteableAI!" in bold. Kyle regularly posted a lot of exciting work they were doing on AI integration on Twitter (e.g., [1]). [1] https://twitter.com/KyleRayKelley/status/1727430546354233763 https://twitter.com/KyleRayKelley/status/1727430546354233763
- lars_francke 3y ago
  Your parent is refering to the reference of "1/5/24" in the post which is the date until which you can download data. Most of the world would that interpret as 1st May 2024, some parts of the world might call it 1st January 2024. It's not entirely clear what's meant here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country
- thih9 3y ago
  Grandparent asked for clarification about the date format, currently article asks to export data before 1/5/24. I don’t think they wanted to suggest it’s not real.
- andrelaszlo 3y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    In 1988 :cry: This is why we can’t have good things.
- 3y ago

milliams 3y ago

I thought it was this (https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/ https://noteable.edina.ac.uk/) Noteable for a minute. They two similar services in a similar space with a similar name.

captn3m0 3y ago
And I was confusing it with https://notable.app/ https://notable.app/

andrewstuart 3y ago

Must be hard to be in such a position.

rogerthis 3y ago

What comes to my mind is this rhetorical question: How a service with such a wonderful home page suddenly die?

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Beautiful pages alone don't bring money. Sometimes ugly pages bring money. It's whacky.

samhuk 3y ago

In a way I understand why, however I still am always perplexed when a "we are kaput" announcement drowns the message in praise for all the amazing super awesome they have done whilst not including a single character as to why, uh, perhaps the entire company/project/venture is ceasing. To me, it only communicates that the issues were embarrassing, inconvenient, or otherwise do not shine a good light. Am I reading too much into this, or does this kind of pithy announcement usually hide skeletons? Genuinely curious here.

ska 3y ago
No knowledge of the specifics here, but usually the underlying cause is the same: we are running out of money, the business model doesn't work, and we don't have enough time, ideas or both to try anything else - at least no with any confidence of success.
- samhuk 3y ago
  I wouldn't expect such a sudden death from "business plan just didn't work out" though. Take Docker for example. Curious. Competition perhaps?
  - zinekeller 3y ago
    Side-effects of higher interest rates are usually drying up of "easy money" (low-cost loans). Combined with the fact that VCs had a sudden shift (due to the loss of "easy money") and are now actually evaluating whether a startup is actually viable before committing funding to it, it is not surprising that investors demand existing companies that are no longer viable to orderly wind up in order to have some money than the real possibility of losing it all. Docker is different: it has a name already so it can bleed a lot of money (à la Twitter while it was a public company) and there is generally a significant holding in large enterprises. I'm guessing that Notable didn't have significant notable enterprises using it that will make investors more relaxed with their red sheets.
  - Kye 3y ago
    It's hard to accept something you've poured your life into and had such high hopes for isn't working out. This is why every company that gets bought has an optimistic blog post talking about how they can finally get things done with the support of the acquiring company. They really believe it. They just proved it's nonviable, and they still believe they'll be able to keep trying.

bgibson 3y ago

Reddit comment from a Notable employee: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/comments/18jbj32/does_anyone_know_why_noteable_is_shutting_down/kdjist1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPTPro/comments/18jbj32/does_an... TLDR: market conditions not conducive to their business at this time. (Ed: founding team probably wants to quickly pivot to something else, not take the time to for a sale)

lmeyerov 3y ago

Brutal news, the Graphistry team would point to Noteable internally as an example of good execution on notebooks-as-a-service For folks impacted, we've been pursuing a similar-but-different product & technology vision for making data analysis easier, and may have relevant openings for specific staff: * Graphistry side - visual graph AI: connecting GPUs in the cloud to GPUs in the browser, automating data science for tricky data, ... . We helped make Apache Arrow a thing by bringing it to the web for most new visual analytic frameworks, helped start the GPU data frame movement (led to Nvidia RAPIDS), and are on the next generation of technologies here (GNNs, another 100X in viz scale, ...) and use cases (global supply chains, cybersecurity, finance, misinfo, fraud ...) . Biggest opening in WebGL/infoviz, and then in AI / security / federal solutions. * New - Louie.AI conversational analytics platform: Flipping the data analysis default from Python/SQL/etc in today's notebooks => natural language for the default case . Basically making it so anyone can use all the cool stuff above, with early customers again in supply chain, fraud, cyber, gov disaster management, etc. Openings on core team, GIS, AI solutions, marketing, etc, mix of part-time & full-time More info @ https://www.graphistry.com/careers https://www.graphistry.com/careers , and easiest is to just chat

frogamel 3y ago

I think companies in this "data analytics platform but with LLM integration" space are going to struggle in the next few years. The pain points of analytics are completely different than traditional software engineering, and things that LLMs help the most with (writing boilerplate code, bouncing between different frameworks, handling tests and docs) aren't serious issues in analytics work. I use copilot religiously for webdev work but find it completely useless for analytics.

broken_clock 3y ago
Can you elucidate why specifically? I'm imagining something like an GPT-4 agent that has connections to your Databricks, Snowflake, Salesforce, etc. You ask it a question and then it iteratively queries your data and produces some an answer/some code/ a graph. Or it generates a plan that you can edit a bit and then it executes. That sounds like it would be pretty useful copilot for me? I'm not very familiar with the intricacies of analytics work though.

manicennui 3y ago

But... they have no-code AND AI! And like 5 awards from... someone... right on their front page! Maybe they needed to add more bullshit.

Rapzid 3y ago

Three weeks notice with a deadline right after the New Year holidays.. Ouch, that's not a landing it's a crash.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

rightisleft 3y ago

a Series-A company failing is not news let alone noteable...

T3RMINATED 3y ago

[dead]

esafak 3y ago

Bummer! Shame I just heard about it today. It looked decent; I might have used it.

tehlike 3y ago

Would the project financially make sense for an indie developer or developers to continue building?

volf_ 3y ago

Cool. How about you open source the application? Let the community take over if they want to.

reuven 3y ago

I've been using Jupyter to teach Python and Pandas to a lot of companies over the years, and Noteable made it so much nicer and easier. I'm very sad to see them shutting down, but I have to assume they would have kept going if they could.

PeterZaitsev 3y ago

This is unfortunate. I find it interesting, there did not seem to enough revenue to shink business to ride through the tough market riding on existing revenue only... This is why I love SaaS based of Open Source projects a lot - even if things do not work out and company has to shut down, customers may have more options.