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Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

techcrunch.com

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Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#11

Post by puppetmaster3 »

duiker101 wrote: post #2

I am quite baffled by all this. I heard of Famo.us, but didn't give it more than 1 thought. I thought it was just another framework, I would have never thought that they had employees, let alone that many and raising that much money. I watched the video in the article, and I can't believe that people are throwing money at someone with a pitch like that. I feel like everything about Famo.us is all the wrong things tha…

"I can't believe that people are throwing money at someone with a pitch like that".

+1

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#12

Post by puppetmaster3 »

ThomPete wrote: post #6

Famo.us to me was always a platform/framework or even a language more than it was a product or service. I have no idea how they could have raised $31M on that. This could have been an amazing framework built by the open source community instead it's now just another growth before revenue scheme that went wrong. Sad.

"I have no idea how they could have raised $31M on that."

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#13

Post by bpicolo »

drcode wrote: post #3

> What makes our product offering unique is that our apps can be built without coding Oooh... that's going to be a tough argument to sell to people.

Sounds not hard to sell to the technically-unsavvy at all. Their new product actually seems much smarter than the old.

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#15

Post by ThomPete »

jrbedard wrote: post #9
ThomPete wrote: post #6

Famo.us to me was always a platform/framework or even a language more than it was a product or service. I have no idea how they could have raised $31M on that. This could have been an amazing framework built by the open source community instead it's now just another growth before revenue scheme that went wrong. Sad.

Famo.us founder was a Powerset co-founder, which had an highly successful exit to Microsoft. This pattern often explains generous funding of outlandish ideas.

Interesting I didn't know that. Thanks.

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#16

Post by tptacek »

Famo.us’ 15 minutes of open source fame have come to an end. JavaScript rendering engine Famo.us has pivoted away from its hardcore open sourced engineering platform which had raised over $31 million. It’s now refocused on commercializing the idea of powerful mobile web apps with a content management system for branded marketing apps.

Yikes. If ever I wanted a paragraph printed on a poster to scare me into working harder, this is probably the one.

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#17

Post by iamleppert »

Can someone please explain what an "app engine" is? Is it 4-stroke or straight 6? Does it come with a cat back exhaust?

In all seriousness, to me a framework is just an opinoited way of doing things that makes a bunch of decisions for you so you have less to think about. It hinges on the fact someone has uncovered some useful abstractions that make the act of coding less tedious.

I checked out their demo and while it looked fancy, I didn't see any compeling reason to use it over plain html/css or three.js if you need fancy 3d stuff.

Also, calling your product "shitty" isn't the best strategy. Geeks see self-deprecation as a sign of weakness.

Re: Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

#18

Post by eli »

tptacek wrote: post #16

Famo.us’ 15 minutes of open source fame have come to an end. JavaScript rendering engine Famo.us has pivoted away from its hardcore open sourced engineering platform which had raised over $31 million. It’s now refocused on commercializing the idea of powerful mobile web apps with a content management system for branded marketing apps. Yikes. If ever I wanted a paragraph printed on a poster to scare me into working ha…

I would be wary of assuming the problem was that they didn't work hard enough.
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