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Fable is winding down

fable.app

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Re: Fable is winding down

#31

Post by ignoramous »

jwr wrote: post #19
invaderzirp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be surprising anymore. This has happened every week since 2010. This is the VC cycle, and it happens over and over and over and over and over again. In fact, I'm sure there's some flashy new thing on the front page right now that will have its own corresponding "goodbye" thread in 2-10 years, and everyone will get screwed by that, too. We can lament the current state of affairs, but let's not pretend i…

I run a solo bootstrapped SaaS. When people sometimes ask me whether I think this is a stable business, I tell them that with a VC-funded company, it's almost certain that there will be an outcome in several years that will not be good for customers. VC-funded companies go bankrupt, get acqui-hired, or get strategically acquired most of the time, and all these outcomes are bad for customers. The only outcome which is…

> Self-funded sustainable businesses can be much more stable in the long term.

Can even grow at a progressive pace by expanding into adjacent segments: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024

Re: Fable is winding down

#32

Post by tombert »

SoftTalker wrote: post #7

It always amazes me how many of these "we're winding down X" stories hit the front page here and I've never heard of X. We really do work in silos, even if it doesn't seem that way.

Yeah, I thought it was the F#-to-JS compiler, and I was sad for a moment. I've never heard of this app so it's hard for me to be too upset over it.

Re: Fable is winding down

#34

Post by gus_massa »

webstrand wrote: post #16
sentientslug wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says in the article “the Fable file format is not transferable to other platforms.”

So export a structured dump of all relevant data and leave it up to someone else to decipher.

I agree. I deciphered a few weird formats, for example the raw format of an old camera, the save files of drawings in WinWord 1. It's easier if you can make a few custom small examples, for example in the drawings use only one line, then two, then tree. They were binary formats, so the trick was to use an hex editor and look at them for a long time and make a few guess. I never deciphered them 100%, but I had enough info to read the files I care about and create new files.

Sometimes you get a riff format and a big chunk of the guesswork is solved.

And most modern formats are just a bunch of xml files inside a tar.gz , so now the first step is to change the extension to .zip and cross your fingers.

Re: Fable is winding down

#35

Post by parsimo2010 »

turnsout wrote: post #22
parsimo2010 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it's that you're well informed and X wasn't well known... When a product shuts down it's usually because it wasn't profitable (or not profitable enough). Either they didn't get enough paying customers or they set their pricing too low. For whatever reason- but there's probably some correlation between a product shutting down and many people not being aware of its existence. Even without being well known, the…

When a VC-backed company shuts down, it's usually because they weren't growing. You can only get to the next round of funding if you're still growing—otherwise you run out of runway. I don't think profit plays a big role.

Profit plays the biggest role, growth is secondary. Another round of funding is only necessary if they aren't profitable enough to sustain themselves on their own.

Although, as I think about it, maybe as an AI company nobody ever expected them to ever get to profitability so the only way to continue their existence was through continued funding.

Re: Fable is winding down

#36

Post by iLoveOncall »

SoftTalker wrote: post #7

It always amazes me how many of these "we're winding down X" stories hit the front page here and I've never heard of X. We really do work in silos, even if it doesn't seem that way.

The very best example of that is the Kagi search engine which, if you spend on time of HN, looks very widely used, but actually has less than 10,000 customers.

Re: Fable is winding down

#37

Post by MichaelZuo »

jwr wrote: post #19
invaderzirp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be surprising anymore. This has happened every week since 2010. This is the VC cycle, and it happens over and over and over and over and over again. In fact, I'm sure there's some flashy new thing on the front page right now that will have its own corresponding "goodbye" thread in 2-10 years, and everyone will get screwed by that, too. We can lament the current state of affairs, but let's not pretend i…

I run a solo bootstrapped SaaS. When people sometimes ask me whether I think this is a stable business, I tell them that with a VC-funded company, it's almost certain that there will be an outcome in several years that will not be good for customers. VC-funded companies go bankrupt, get acqui-hired, or get strategically acquired most of the time, and all these outcomes are bad for customers. The only outcome which is…

Wouldn’t the low credibility VCs, who don’t care about customers being thrown under the bus, be displaced by higher credibility VCs over time?

Re: Fable is winding down

#38

Post by masto »

ratedgene wrote: post #20

Huh, it's interesting the supposition is that AI tools are the future, therefore they're unable to compete in time especially when they seemed perfectly poised to adopt that strategy. Why wouldn't they use that to sell another round to bridge?

I was just looking at motion graphics (I guess it's called motion design now) tools yesterday. I have a small YouTube channel and I was noodling around with the idea of making a little intro screen that just does some kind of swishy flooshy thing. I am very good at operating technical software, but I have no graphic design skills, so as much as I am concerned about and skeptical about AI "art", I thought I'd see what's out there. Maybe instead of starting from a template, it could generate an idea that I could finish my own way.

To get to the point: I didn't find anything that looked usable. Maybe it's telling that I didn't find Fable/Prism at all. But from what I can make of their site, it seems to be about adding (to my eye, unpleasant and unnecessary) textures, rather than generating new animations.

This looked like a nice piece of software with a lot of functionality and a meaningful customer base. It sucks that everything is grow, grow, grow, grow, exit, or die. I've been contemplating starting something, but I don't know if there's any oxygen left for the idea of simply making something people want and selling/operating it at a reasonable profit.

Re: Fable is winding down

#39

Post by tptacek »

oidar wrote: post #5

The app is built, why not just let it simmer for awhile. Are the costs of running it greater than the money it brings in?

Keeping an app running requires personnel, personnel is expensive, and good personnel is unlikely to cool their heels on an EOL'd app at an EOL'd company.

Re: Fable is winding down

#40

Post by thewebguyd »

unshavedyak wrote: post #29
oidar wrote: post #5

The app is built, why not just let it simmer for awhile. Are the costs of running it greater than the money it brings in?

It's a great reason why webapps suck. A licensed local app would be great here, as the customer wouldn't lose value when Fable disappears. Yet now customers lose all value. Great. So frustrating as a user.

Yep. I lament the loss of native, local apps all the time (and the prevalence of "always online" local apps - I've seen LoB apps that were promising, native apps only to find out they won't run offline because the app does a license check online at startup and will refuse to launch without a connection).

Everything as SaaS web apps is just yet another chapter in the enshittification of tech.

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