Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ClusterHQ is shutting down

clusterhq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 230 posts

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#101

Post by martincmartin »

tlb wrote: post #88
gtirloni wrote: post #76

Oh the immediate shutdowns! After going through the immediate Nebula shutdown, I'm glad we weren't depending on ClusterHQ. Same question I had for Nebula: you had no idea that a month ago you'd have to shutdown, right? I've started to follow these ex-CEOs so we avoid their next companies. This kind of shutdown is just terrible.

Many -- probably most -- ultimately very successful companies had near-death experiences. They aren't usually written about. Apple's near-death in 1997 is well documented. Tesla's is described in Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk. http://foundersatwork.com/ has firsthand stories about some others. They would have become full-death experiences if the CEO had said, "Hey everybody, we're near death, just FYI". So in the…

The founder of FedEx once saved the company by taking its last $5,000 and turning it into $32,000 by gambling in Las Vegas.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#102

Post by rsync »

acidbaseextract wrote: post #20
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8

How many people were employed at ClusterHQ? Honestly I never even heard of the company but I had heard of some of the open source projects. Maybe I'm just out of the loop. Also any information as to lessons learned, etc? Basically why it failed? Looking at the marketing material I didn't see anything really remarkable about it (nothing that stood out as a "oh this is why I would give them money") so I'm curious. > I’…

Ed Catmull, Pixar cofounder and inventor of the Z-buffer, has a great take on mistakes and failure in his book Creativity, Inc. Here's a pretty decent summary: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-c... Essentially, we're going to fail. It happens. Might as well get it out of the way. Secondly, failure averse cultures don't actually prevent failures, and they have a tendency to squash innovation.

"Essentially, we're going to fail. It happens. Might as well get it out of the way. Secondly, failure averse cultures don't actually prevent failures, and they have a tendency to squash innovation."

That's a very interesting philosophy ... I wonder how that idea, in general, relates to clusters ?

I've seen organizations pour lots of time and resources and brain power into chasing nines on their uptime and they all have outages. And those outages are particularly painful due to the complexity that had to be added - complexity that sometimes grows non-linear in relation to the "nines gained".

I've always leaned towards building dumb things that failed simply. They're going to fail anyway ...

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#103

Post by alex_hitchins »

Could this be in any way akin to the shutdown of Lavabit? I know it's not the same type of company, but if there was pressure to put back doors in or any sort of compromise, I would support the action.

If not, then it's a really bad way to shut up shop. OK the source is out there but given the holiday season people might have appreciated a little warning.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#104

Post by ryao »

calgaryeng wrote: post #63

- December 22, 2016: ClusterF *ed - December 15, 2016: Reflecting on a Year of Change and What’s to Come in 2017 ("All in all, 2016 was full of tests and triumphs and I can promise that 2017 will also be a big year for the company.") I'll be the first to admit I don't know anything about this company, but that's an interesting change of heart.

As a former ClusterHQ employee who had been with the company longer than our CEO, I should be able to shed some light on this. The plan was to raise round A funding two years ago (which we did) and then raise round B funding now before becoming profitable 2 to 3 years from now. Venture capitalists have become far more risk adverse. We all thought that round B funding would happen, but it fell apart at the last minute and instead of announcing round B funding, Mark announced a shutdown.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#105

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

hoodoof wrote: post #95
schmichael wrote: post #90

If we're going to celebrate failure can we at least fail with respect, humility, and maybe even a tiny bit of class? The word "sorry" does not appear in this post. Instead of apologizing to investors, users, and employees for letting all of them down the CEO writes a contentless self-aggrandizing post. The CEO also doesn't bother to thank anyone despite being literally and metaphorically indebted to investors, users,…

Unless an investor additionally gave a loan, there is no debt owed in any way to investors - that's the point, they made a decision to invest at risk and presumably did due diligence based on accurate information.

Errr, wait what?

Firstly, to say there's no debt, monetary or otherwise, to someone who believed in your company enough to hand over their own money (or money in their control) to back you is just pure arrogance.

Secondly, there absolutely is debt. When a company goes into administration the assets are sold to pay out those who hold equity in the company. They're literally owed debt.

EDIT: To clarify for those responding saying that equity does not constitute debt...

Creditors and investors are different, absolutely. It is also correct that investors are typically paid last during administration (although investors may form agreements to come before other investors). Nonetheless, during administration, the administrator determines how much money the investors are "owed", which is literally the definition of debt.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#106

Post by ryao »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #8

How many people were employed at ClusterHQ? Honestly I never even heard of the company but I had heard of some of the open source projects. Maybe I'm just out of the loop. Also any information as to lessons learned, etc? Basically why it failed? Looking at the marketing material I didn't see anything really remarkable about it (nothing that stood out as a "oh this is why I would give them money") so I'm curious. > I’…

There were many factors, but the largest one was lack of sufficient venture capital funding to follow through with plans.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#107

Post by cookiecaper »

schmichael wrote: post #90

If we're going to celebrate failure can we at least fail with respect, humility, and maybe even a tiny bit of class? The word "sorry" does not appear in this post. Instead of apologizing to investors, users, and employees for letting all of them down the CEO writes a contentless self-aggrandizing post. The CEO also doesn't bother to thank anyone despite being literally and metaphorically indebted to investors, users,…

I think he's trying to keep his employees optimistic and happy. Like the investors, surely they knew that getting involved in an early-stage company was risky, but they were willing to do it because they were excited by the prospects, committed to the vision, or similar. While it is clear that the post was not written by a management professional, as a completely uninvolved individual, I personally didn't find the authentic, human tone jarring. I understand more directly involved people may feel differently.

I don't know what ClusterHQ did, but presumably they may have some users for whom the abrupt shutdown is inconvenient at best, especially if their company depended on whatever this is in production and now they have to try to fix it 3 days before Xmas with 40% of the company's staff on leave and the remaining 60% mentally checked out. I think that's the only group that this post disrespects. It would've been nice if he could have at least offered some alternatives, announced the shutdown ahead of time, or given some sort of migration path.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#108

Post by ryao »

jimjag wrote: post #42
ferrantim wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Flocker will remain open-source and my hope is that the community continues to improve it. Fli too, btw, for creating and managing ZFS snapshots https://github.com/ClusterHQ/fli

Maybe donation of the code to an FOSS foundation, like maybe Apache, might be a way of ensuring the community continues. Or, at least, gives it the fighting chance to do so... DM me if curious

I raised that question during the final company meeting yesterday. The ownership of the code is in limbo until the investors decide what to do with it at least a few months from now.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#109

Post by ryao »

mangeletti wrote: post #39
Johnny555 wrote: post #32

It seems a little odd to do this 3 days before Christmas. Holiday depression is already a real problem, and making people unemployed a few days before the holiday sounds like a bad thing. And it's a terrible time to be job hunting. Why not hold on a few more weeks, let employees enjoy the holidays and announce in mid-January when employees can actually talk to hiring managers and get some good job prospects instead o…

It's likely that people within the organization already knew things weren't going well. So, the bright side of this is that: A) employees can spend the entire holiday week or two with their families, and B) employees can start out their new year unencumbered by the stress of working for a failing company Personally, I'd rather have it this way than come back from whatever fun holiday adventure I'm on to find out a we…

I am not sure if even the CEO knew that sufficient venture capital to succeed was unavailable until all avenues had been exhausted. I had a hint that things were not going well when my request for equipment was denied until round B funding was raised.

Re: ClusterHQ is shutting down

#110

Post by pritianka »

gtirloni wrote: post #76

Oh the immediate shutdowns! After going through the immediate Nebula shutdown, I'm glad we weren't depending on ClusterHQ. Same question I had for Nebula: you had no idea that a month ago you'd have to shutdown, right? I've started to follow these ex-CEOs so we avoid their next companies. This kind of shutdown is just terrible.

I know how you feel as a customer. I felt similarly surprised when I read this post because I'd done an interview with The Newstack at KubeCon with the VP at Cluster. They were talking about their future plans as if there was indeed a long future. I remember thinking at the time how a company like Cluster will survive in the peak chaos of the container landscape at the moment but definitely did not expect to hear of such a sudden demise.

Regardless, I think giving customers a large amount of time to migrate over, etc. should be a priority. I personally really like the way Runscope handled their change in fortunes. Screw VC trajectory and build a strong personal business.

Post reply on HN