Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees

The folks focusing on the techcrunch cribs video and drawing damning conclusions from it are, rather predictably, chasing a red herring.

For what it's worth I actually felt more productive, focused, and relaxed (in a good way) in that office than in any I've ever worked in before or since. The high ceilings made a remarkable difference. The mix of open and private spaces worked. Going to work in a place that felt like a higher-class version of your home but where you could collaborate with your coworkers was pretty amazing. It was basically what co-working spaces always try to be but can never fully pull off. It doesn't make sense to complain about the damage open plan offices are doing to productivity and then get angry at someone who does the opposite. Granted, you don't need a semi-luxury penthouse. :) But I think the office was an under-appreciated reason why they were able to get (and retain) a lot of great engineers. It was in general a very sane, reasonable environment to do good work in, in contrast to most offices.

jondubois, aikah, and others are on the right track. Making money off a front-end framework is a long shot. The monetization plan (to the extent there was one) was always heavy on optimism and reliant on a lot of things going very very right.

That's not to say it was impossible, though.

The reasons famo.us failed are the reasons most startups fail: 1. They didn't do nearly enough to truly understand their users and meet their needs 2. They didn't communicate or collaborate well or consistently enough internally.

I could say more about both 1 and 2, but I'll wrap it up there. The real narrative of what went wrong is one that's familiar and pretty generic. The subplots of what they were trying to build and who was involved just makes it all a bit more interesting to speculate about.

p.s. dmvaldman is the man – you should check out his framework and say hi.

And why on earth would I finance ceiling tile purchases for some random company? There's something wrong with you.

ps -- while it's fine to be surprised at companies lighting money on fire, gloating about a company laying people off is all class.

When you run an unprofitable company that subsists on investor money, every single hour of leadership's time is invaluable.

> I dunno, should their office be a hovel?

So the choice for startups is a) a swagged-out office in one of the most expensive commercial real estate markets or b) hovel? What world do you live in?

> Because you appear to have some sort of issue with this founder outside his attempt to make their office a nice place to work.

You're free to believe this office represents a modest attempt at creating "a nice place to work," but outside of bubbleland, most people will see excess.

By the way, "a nice place to work" is just as much about how people are treated and interact with each other than it is about all of the "stuff" that gets put in the office. Unfortunately, leadership teams at many early-stage startups today don't seem to recognize this.

> And why on earth would I finance ceiling tile purchases for some random company?

It's only "THOUSANDS!!!" of dollars. You seemed genuinely concerned by the noise levels.

> while it's fine to be surprised at companies lighting money on fire, gloating about a company laying people off is all class.

I started my career at a dot bomb in the first boom/bust, so I have been on the other side. It taught me one of the best and most profitable lessons of my life: don't work for people who seem better at spending money than making it. Hopefully some of the younger folks who get laid off for the first time in this cycle will come away with lessons of their own that will help them avoid being fooled again in the future.

Finally, you seem to be missing the fact that lots of people are not surprised startups today are lighting money on fire. We see it every day, and many of us frequently point it out. What baffles me is that folks like you are surprised at where this leads and indignant when somebody points out that a bad outcome was more than likely. Shouldn't your indignation be directed at the people who are responsible for the incompetence, excess and waste?