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The title makes it sound like they just did a seed round, but the seed round was announced in August of last year [0]. Their website landing page is now also
by LeonM 4mo ago
The title makes it sound like they just did a seed round, but the seed round was announced in August of last year [0].
Their website landing page is now also showing the software is no longer maintained. No mention of why they made this decision, my best guess is they burned through their seed money and were unable to attract further investments.
[0]: https://www.tensorzero.com/blog/tensorzero-raises-7-3m-seed-round-to-build-an-open-source-stack-for-industrial-grade-llm-applications/ https://www.tensorzero.com/blog/tensorzero-raises-7-3m-seed-...
- hoppp 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- realsarm 4mo agoYou can call it a bait but where is VCs due diligence for this. Most VCs where out there defending their infra layers investment. Just look at YC batches and see the inflated number of infra startups.
- ajross 4mo ago"Failure" is the expected median though. You can't due-diligence your way out of "startup ran out of runway"! The discussion here isn't about funding, it's that there's a presumptively useful community tool which got abandoned because its owners took their toys and went home when the money ran out (instead of making a sincere effort at transitioning to community governance). That's on the IP owners being selfish jerks and/or grifting losers. It's not the VC's fault.
- singpolyma3 4mo agoIt's not on anyone to set up your favourite "governance" system. If anyone honestly wants to keep maintaining or using it the code is still there.
- ajross 4mo ago[flagged]
- skeledrew 4mo agoNo, there is no social contract here. Microsoft gives free hosting because it's cheap and also provides a path to their paid offerings. People share stuff they work on for fun, to help flesh out their resume, to get help, etc. There's no reason for a maintainer not to drop a project in a heartbeat if it becomes the slightest bit of a burden.
- marssaxman 4mo agoThere are no maintainership obligations unless someone pays you for them.
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoSorry but this is an outrageous perspective, at no point does git init / git push am I committing myself to a social contract, in fact there’s probably a license that states no warranty and no support is to be expected… maintainership obligations gtfo if you’re not here paying for support
- Verdex 4mo agoNo it's not. Also read the link. This is apache 2 licensed. Even in whatever imaginary world where there is such a social contract, there is thankfully a legal contract that includes disclaimer of warranty.
- thih9 4mo agoWhich toys exactly were taken? The repo seems open source, is any component missing?
- ajross 4mo ago[flagged]
- skeledrew 4mo agoThe project is Apache2 licensed. You can literally do anything you want with the code. Stop trying to push guilt on people for no longer providing free services.
- thih9 4mo agoI suppose you can ask them for a refund.
- em-bee 4mo agothe only reason to ever fork a project in earnest is because the original project owners are not willing or able to cooperate or accept patches. in other words you fork because you have nowhere else to go. exactly the situation we have here.
- kaonwarb 4mo agoIn response to sibling: > It's still open source because you can fork it if you really want Yes, that's exactly what it means!
- jnovek 4mo agoWhile most startups fail eventually, failure in less than a year with over 7 million dollars is not the expected median. It’s the exact sort of thing that due diligence is supposed to prevent. Also the whole project is open source. If you want, you could take it over.
- gwerbin 4mo agoAre there cases when VC investors actually went after founders for fraud or embezzlement or misrepresenting the business or something like that?
- realsarm 4mo agoThat's why either VCs confused moat with bot farms and farmed stars over solving genuine problems or they just blindly invested based on founders track record no matter what. To me both are really by product vibe coding hype and chatgpt killing wrappers.
- skeledrew 4mo agoAt least the repo is still available. Anyone can fork and carry on, create a community, etc.
- hoppp 4mo agoIf the creators could not do anything with it after raising funds, then why is it expected that somebody will fix it for free? Forking only makes sense if the creators are also monetising it successfully.
- skeledrew 4mo agoIf people are complaining then it means that they must've found it to be of value. If they found it to be valuable enough that they really want work done on it again, they can always do that work themselves (or hire someone to). There is 0 connection between forking and successful monetization.
- jnovek 4mo agoRight? I’ve been through due diligence and it’s neither a quick nor simple process, even for seed.
- root-parent 4mo ago[flagged]
- CuriouslyC 4mo agoOnly if the CEO is the first man to step foot on mars. He gets to be immortalized, we get to watch him die living his best life.
- DiggyJohnson 4mo agoPlease follow the HN guidelines.
- DiggyJohnson 4mo agoPlease follow the HN guidelines.
- ant6n 4mo agoFollow them uself
- Noaidi 4mo agoA great way to launder money then?
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoWhich step of “VC firm with millions to invest” and “fresh grads blow millions on AWS bills, sushi delivery and ketamine” is dirty money being washed?
- jnovek 4mo agoWere the thousands of commits and hundreds of feature branches over the last 9 months just to keep up appearances, then? Were the 850 people who forked it in on the scheme, too?
- pqtyw 4mo agoWell.. if that's it it's not really much to shown for if you spent $7 million on it.
- dpkirchner 4mo agoIt's not even clear they spent all the money. Maybe it just wasn't a viable product.
- GabrielBianconi 4mo agoYeah exactly. We didn't spend the majority of it.
- armchairhacker 4mo agoDid Claude make the commits and branches? (Honestly I don’t think so here, but I predict that will happen eventually)
- Blackthorn 4mo agoSometimes things just fail.
- sailingparrot 4mo agoDo you understand that when you raise money it doesn't go into your personal account? Its not like you can move this money in your retirement account and sail into the sunset.
- RobotToaster 4mo agoBurning through $7m in 9 months? That's an impressive amount of avocado toast.
- yett 4mo agoAnd AI tokens
- mmaunder 4mo agoAnd poached eggs.
- user_of_the_wek 4mo agoDon’t forget the candles
- RobotToaster 4mo ago[flagged]
- Noaidi 4mo agoPlease don't bring Reddit brain here...
- api 4mo agoThat would be a lot still. That’s a lot of money. I’d bet on extreme irresponsibility.
- raverbashing 4mo agoThose Claude tokens are not cheap you know /s
- rfgplk 4mo ago$7m actually isn't a whole lot, especially if they hired a (larger) engineering team. Assuming their cali based, that's easily 150-200k per engineer, a team of 20 easily eats through that. Idk the specifics, but I don't the organization was fradulent, it could also be that they're going commercial and no longer want to maintain their oss stack
- pnw 4mo agoThe company was started in January 2024, so the seed financing is likely a roll-up of two years of fundraising. $7m for ~30 months of running an AI startup in NYC is not that unusual.
- zem 4mo agothanks, that was really confusing me!