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Weaveworks is shutting down

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Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#111

Post by gangstead »

catherinecodes wrote: post #61
gangstead wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> smaller consultancies that have awesome developers that build customer tooling on the side I've worked at a couple consultancies and they were always chasing after that recurring product revenue. I grew to believe that it isn't possible under that business model. When you are running a consultancy you are in the business of marking up developer hours: find a client to sign a contract for $150 / hour and hire a cons…

Right. I wonder what their cost structure was like. $10 million in revenue is enough to support a decent-sized team.

Since they raised $61 million (source https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/05/cloud-native-container-man...) they probably had way more team than $10 million could support. Since they raised the VC money I guess that downsizing to a team that the business can sustain is not an option.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#112

Post by arccy »

pmig wrote: post #90

Flux for me was always superior to ArgoCD from a technical point of view, but they over the years ArgoCD became the more popular tool. I wonder if it was marketing, the missing UI or something else? But super sad to see weaveworks shutting down I hope that the open source projects will continue to evolve.

there was a ui, and they fumbled their flux -> flux2

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#113

Post by arccy »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #49
coding123 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The product is so good you found out about it from someone else and had to have it also... Kinda like docker or python or something. They actually had that when the first started.

So, how did the other person find out about it?

hn

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#114

Post by arccy »

yencabulator wrote: post #79
mousetree wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the B2B SaaS world, it means they're signing up new customers (e.g. including some who might have well known logos).

Outside of bizdev brotalk, isn't that called "new clients"?

not just new clients, recognizable clients who are willing to be associated with you

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#115

Post by marcinzm »

gk1 wrote: post #89
break_the_bank wrote: post #17

> The company was turning over double digit revenue and had more than doubled the number of new product logos in 2023. From the LinkedIn post. Does this mean $100 MRR / ARR ?

Maybe it was edited later, but the post now says "(>$10M)". I interpret that as $10–19M. That's not great for a product that's been around for 9 years. I consulted a similar company in their space ~5 years ago. What I found was that the way to make money in K8s automation/monitoring is to position it as a security solution. That's what Snyk did and they've been killing it, reaching $7B valuation as of last year. Both…

I've been thinking about this for a bit.

Productivity is a hard sell for a company that is tech focused. Since a client basically can't measure the impact there is little external difference between a true solution and a fake solution. As a result even if you convince someone of the value a company that focuses on marketing to those paying the bills will win out against one that focused on building a better product.

Security has fairly proscriptive compliance requirements (ie: SOC, etc.) which provide a benchmark against which to measure impact. Not impact on security but impact on meeting the compliance requirements.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#116

Post by mihaitodor »

slgeorge wrote: post #86
mihaitodor wrote: post #9

Sometime last year, they had someone cold call me from the US to sell me stuff. I’m not sure where they got my number from, but I don’t think that’s a good strategy for trying to sell B2B solutions.

Sorry that annoyed you. One thing to bear in mind is that at Weaveworks we made massive contributions and did our best to be part of the community in the right way: * Flux * Flagger * Cortex * Ignite * Weave Net * and a whole host more Oh and there's a load of people without jobs tonight - wondering about their futures - hopefully people will see the talent and the contributions and find roles for them.

And that's a huge bummer since I know people who rely on those products and they're getting value out of them. However, I don't think the company failed because it didn't use more aggressive advertising.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#117

Post by axiak »

propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

If they received $36 MM in a fundraise 3 years ago, you better believe that those investors put pressure on the business to grow fast or die trying. Those investors are not looking for a somewhat risky medium % return, they're looking for each company to have a small % chance of being a unicorn.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#119

Post by ssharp »

KaiserPro wrote: post #103
propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

> According to the CEO's linkedin post, they were basically trying to keep up appearances of being a 200 person company until some greater fool bought them out, which appears to have failed. Because that is what startups do. 80% of startups that are "successful" follow this pattern You shoot for the moon, if you don't take massive risks, then you won't be rewarded. It sounded like they were about to be bought out or…

"Shoot for the moon" seems like a reasonable strategy when you're making the investment.

However, certainly at some point while they were burning through that $36 million it became evident that "moon" was no longer a viable destination. Why wouldn't everyone be aligned with making the adjustments needed to get back to default alive? Something is clearly better than nothing.

Now if it got to the stage where the CEO no longer wanted to operate at the reduced scale (and nobody else would take the role) or the product couldn't support itself at the reduced scale, then closure may have been the only option. It's just that the "moon or bust" mentality doesn't seem like something that should be set in stone for the life of the company.

Re: Weaveworks is shutting down

#120

Post by [deleted] »

axiak wrote: post #117
propter_hoc wrote: post #83

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a lo…

If they received $36 MM in a fundraise 3 years ago, you better believe that those investors put pressure on the business to grow fast or die trying. Those investors are not looking for a somewhat risky medium % return, they're looking for each company to have a small % chance of being a unicorn.

[deleted]
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