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

Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#41

Post by tempsy »

bradlys wrote: post #38
tempsy wrote: post #18

I think anyone considering a job at a company founded by a serial entrepreneur should heed this as a warning. These founder raise pre product market fit because they can, and often raise too much money. Having too much money when you don’t really have a viable product that people want can easily turn your company into a zombie, where people are just sort of going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do…

I had the opportunity to interview with Atrium over a year ago. It was very clear that they weren't doing well. Their founding team had opposing ideas about how to do things. Their CTO was fired very early on. Clearly, it hasn't worked out smoothly. To me, it looks like they just rode on the wave of eager investors. I've seen the issue with wealthy enough employees at all the startups I've been at too. Once you get p…

it is late in the cycle so it’s to be expected, but yeah I actively avoid companies by serial founders at this point.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#43

Post by staticautomatic »

birken wrote: post #26
tempsy wrote: post #18

I think anyone considering a job at a company founded by a serial entrepreneur should heed this as a warning. These founder raise pre product market fit because they can, and often raise too much money. Having too much money when you don’t really have a viable product that people want can easily turn your company into a zombie, where people are just sort of going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do…

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the su…

"It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense"

I've spent my whole career in the legal field and built a number of legal tech automation tools with varying degrees of sophistication and commercial success, and I genuinely have no idea how he thought Atrium was going to work.

From the outside, the only audacious thing I see is that Atrium tried to do something that's famously impossible to do.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#44

Post by hinkley »

tempsy wrote: post #18

I think anyone considering a job at a company founded by a serial entrepreneur should heed this as a warning. These founder raise pre product market fit because they can, and often raise too much money. Having too much money when you don’t really have a viable product that people want can easily turn your company into a zombie, where people are just sort of going through the motions because there’s nothing else to do…

I started at a place that was mid pivot but hadn't made it too official yet. I thought I'd be working on their namesake product, which required a depth of knowledge that I'd been getting pretty close to, but apparently it wasn't selling well. So I worked on an embedded app while a bunch of people worked on something else. It was hard work, the manager was frustrating, but it was very rewarding and the most resource constrained code I'd ever managed to get to work. I didn't quite recognize how much fun I was having until after it was over.

Still not sure if it was a good thing that I didn't know, because I probably would have quit at the end of the beginning of the recession. I'll never know if finding a new job would have been any less stressful than staying, but I'm still feeling the effects of that period.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#45

Post by staticautomatic »

woah wrote: post #27

My company used Atrium to help us think through some very complicated niche legal issues. We were on a flat rate plan, and it was nice to be able to brainstorm without watching the clock. We were pretty happy with their service, but it all came from one attorney, who also was the one who found us and brought us in. Whenever we dealt with anyone else there, it was disorganized and low quality. When our main attorney l…

So much this. I'd arrange to pay an incredibly good and trustworthy lawyer in daily deliveries of wheelbarrows full of rolled pennies if that's how their fee structure worked. Most law firms that have tried and failed at alternative fee structures seem to have made the mistake of thinking that their clients were hiring them because of the alternative fee structure when in reality they were hired in spite of it.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#46

Post by ghego1 »

staticautomatic wrote: post #43
birken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the su…

"It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense" I've spent my whole career in the legal field and built a number of legal tech automation tools with varying degrees of sophistication and commercial success, and I genuinely have no idea how he thought Atrium was going to work. From the outside, the only audacious thing I see is that Atrium tried to do something that's famously impossible to do.

This

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#47

Post by jelling »

I will always remember them for their outreach emails that pretended to be from Justin and included “Sent from my iPhone” to deepen the illusion. After talking to them - and already having competent counsel - it was clear they wanted to turn legal services into a predictable cash flow SaaS business more than they were actually solving anything.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#48

Post by meritt »

mdotk wrote: post #24
orliesaurus wrote: post #11

so what exactly is Atrium now? A dev shop? tech tools it developed for lawyers and law firm clients, and for new areas it will expand into. This press-release feels was very shallow to me, can anyone explain?

Could NEVER understand what the heck they do and how they got $75M. Just sounded like they were a law firm specialising in start ups. Big whoop.

> how they got $75M

Justin Kan sold Twitch to Amazon for nearly $1B after 7 years, Socialcam for $60M in 18 months, and Exec for "under $10M" in 2 years.

That's how he raised $75M. The company/product was completely irrelevant.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#49

Post by tempsy »

staticautomatic wrote: post #43
birken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the su…

"It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense" I've spent my whole career in the legal field and built a number of legal tech automation tools with varying degrees of sophistication and commercial success, and I genuinely have no idea how he thought Atrium was going to work. From the outside, the only audacious thing I see is that Atrium tried to do something that's famously impossible to do.

I’m convinced serial founders develop blindspots because you end up surrounding yourself with transactional relationships where no one is incentivized to give you tough feedback about anything anymore because they don’t want to get cut from your circle if they need you in the future, so you just get a lot of vague positive feedback about everything you do, even if someone you ask for feedback from doesn’t actually think it’s a very good idea.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#50

Post by jimmydddd »

staticautomatic wrote: post #43
birken wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is a doubled edged sword. It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense, and the fact that the founder could raise a lot of money based on name alone probably helped make the gamble on the audacious idea possible. If the startup could have reached escape velocity and be passed off to somebody else then I think you have the best of all worlds. Serial entrepreneur can shift to something else while the su…

"It was an audacious idea that made a lot of sense" I've spent my whole career in the legal field and built a number of legal tech automation tools with varying degrees of sophistication and commercial success, and I genuinely have no idea how he thought Atrium was going to work. From the outside, the only audacious thing I see is that Atrium tried to do something that's famously impossible to do.

I'm an attorney in the Tech field. Most of my income comes from working with large established companies, or very well-funded startups. As for small unfunded startups, from my experience, it's a lot of fun to work with them, but it's hard to pay the bills that way. So, it might be good to work for a company like them if you're a developer, but not if you're a lawyer.
Post reply on HN