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So Close

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Re: So Close

#131

Post by _aarti »

austenallred wrote: post #122
angel_j wrote: post #90

What a garbage post from a garbage project that wasted lots of time. Locks keeps honest people honest, they don't stop a determined burglar. A digital, key-less system with new gears to move the same deadbolt, is providing zero innovation, b/c it's still just a little deadbolt securing all ~inch of door-perimeter to the frame (unless I missed something and they also re-invented the door hinge). So much business BS in…

Respectfully, fuck this attitude. Trying to recreate something each of us uses every day and make it delightful is a completely worthy goal. To say that a “keyless lock” isn’t a new user experience makes zero sense whatsoever - it’s a new UX by definition. The fact that it wouldn’t stop a SWAT team from breaking the door down is beside the point - they never claimed it would, and that wasn’t the goal. Why is their pa…

Agreed!. They took a chance on hardware

Look at all the companies building the same old SAAS products doing the same old stuff and getting tons of investment.

Re: So Close

#132

Post by bambax »

Casseres wrote: post #81
bambax wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Also, the video about the product https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsT5xvoaHBo was kind of disturbing, talking about "those we love". To the people you love, you don't send a code or some app or procedure. You greet them at the door. If you need to send people a code to enter your property, you're not loving them, you're running a business. Which is fine -- just don't pretend it has anything to do with "love". Or…

Love ≠ Trust For example if I love a junkie, I wouldn't want to enable that person to easily enter my house to steal something to pawn for drugs.

If you love someone you should be willing to give anything up. Anything. Morals, country, God, anything -- let alone, property.

If not, that's ok but it's not "love" in my book.

Re: So Close

#133

Post by exergy »

austenallred wrote: post #122
angel_j wrote: post #90

What a garbage post from a garbage project that wasted lots of time. Locks keeps honest people honest, they don't stop a determined burglar. A digital, key-less system with new gears to move the same deadbolt, is providing zero innovation, b/c it's still just a little deadbolt securing all ~inch of door-perimeter to the frame (unless I missed something and they also re-invented the door hinge). So much business BS in…

Respectfully, fuck this attitude. Trying to recreate something each of us uses every day and make it delightful is a completely worthy goal. To say that a “keyless lock” isn’t a new user experience makes zero sense whatsoever - it’s a new UX by definition. The fact that it wouldn’t stop a SWAT team from breaking the door down is beside the point - they never claimed it would, and that wasn’t the goal. Why is their pa…

Irreverently, fuck this attitude instead.

Silicon valley is chock full of know-nothing delusionals who love the smell of their own farts a little too much. People who're convinced that their idiotic pilgrimage towards delivering a "magical" "experience", while completely divested from common sense and lacking any semblance of an answer to "but why?", will nevertheless change the world and "delight" users.

Fuck all of it.

Here's what this genius has to say: "...the software team challenged themselves to complete the full user experience so that our customers would fall in love with the way they engaged the product and actually experience joy as they used it."

Huh?

Whatever. Let's put a chip in it.

I've never EVER had an interaction with a motherfucking lock where the lock was even the subject of my consideration, let alone worthy of delighting me. Usually when I'm unlocking shit, I'm focussed on what lies beyond the lock.

There really IS such a thing as solving the wrong problem. I'd say all the engineers who joined this foolhardy project deserved what came their way, but unfortunately most of them were probably young engineers desperate for experience or a chance to work at a "startup".

This fucking internet of shit trend cannot fucking die soon enough.

Re: So Close

#134

Post by kevinburke »

ams6110 wrote: post #93
danso wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some tweets from Christmas Day : https://mobile.twitter.com/clickyspinny/status/9451788438908... > @joshelman do something. Help us. Two days notice before a holiday with no compensation for the fact that not a soul hires during these weeks. You have the $ to pay severance when you terminate 70 people. So you decided on letting us all get screwed. You need to help us.

Okay, there's possibly some reason for sympathy here. But how much were these 70 people being paid? How much did they save? How many of them could have been in a position to have a month or more of cash saved as an emergency fund? It's smart in any situation to save for a rainy day but especially so when you're working for a startup.

At least the employees were paid for each day that they worked. At least five contractors were not paid for work dating back two months.

Re: So Close

#135

Post by kevinburke »

3cham wrote: post #15

I just couldn't understand it all, how could a CEO decide to sell his startup without any plan for the interim period, at least let the production can continue in that time and several months afterwards?

They have literally zero dollars in the bank. They have not had enough money to cover their liabilities since at least October.

Re: So Close

#136

Post by siddharthdeswal »

It's good this happened, else we'd have another Juicero on our hands.

Ridiculous price, beautifully over engineered product, a slight update to a centuries old problem, but at least they didn't get the opportunity to burn up as much investor money as Juicero.

Re: So Close

#137

Post by greglindahl »

ikeboy wrote: post #21

So they had people willing to pay for the product, but not enough runway to launch? Why not get people to pay in full ala Tesla and use that money to launch?

This is not what Tesla has ever done. Only a small fraction of people pay a large deposit for super-premium cars that come out first, and the rest pay a limited deposit.

On the other hand, just about every Kickstarter ever has a ton of people who've paid in full. Yet these Kickstarters frequently fail, because it takes a lot more money than entrepreneurs expect to ship a quality product.

Re: So Close

#138

Post by twblalock »

_aarti wrote: post #126
twblalock wrote: post #10

If I understand the sequence of events properly, the company entered acquisition negotiations and agreed not to solicit other bids during that time. When the acquisition fell apart, the company was out of money and had to stop operations. If that's correct, it seems to me like it's something they should have known in advance -- if they knew they would be out of money by the end of the year, why would they enter acqui…

The employee never worked on the actual product. He joined as a contractor 1 month before launch to work in the IT department on the website. He had been with the company only 3 months. So, I disagree with his comments about the product. His points about management should be taken into consideration. The shutdown was mismanaged. The core engineering team had folks with 3+ years working on Mechanical, Electrical, Firm…

So what if he wasn’t there the entire time? Why are you trying to attack his credibility?

Re: So Close

#139

Post by _aarti »

kevinburke wrote: post #130

I worked on Otto's server side software as a contractor for five months. The company had some servers written in C and exchanging messages using a custom binary protocol, designed for millions of transactions per second, when they needed only 2-3tps, readability, and the ability to make fast changes. We rewrote those servers in Go, found and fixed consistency errors in them, and actually got to the point where you co…

Thank you, Kevin, for everything you did.

Re: So Close

#140

Post by taberiand »

Stratoscope wrote: post #85
mikeash wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, they really said “addictive.” Maybe this acquisition fell through because the acquirer finally came to their senses.

And this: "Not to be outdone, the software team challenged themselves to complete the full user experience so that our customers would fall in love with the way they engaged the product and actually experience joy as they used it."

Seems like that's the goal of all companies today - turn everything into a skinner box aimed at directly stimulating the pleasure senses while stimulating a stream of money from your bank account. Maybe it failed because the lock was sold as a one off payment instead of a subscription model, and didn't sync (yet) with a dopamine-dosing brain implant.
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