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Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

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Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#61

Post by cameronlpmoore »

tempsy wrote: post #37
serf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Honest question, why do companies do this? It seems disrespectful to everyone - employees (both fired and current), customers, and any adult for that matter. generally because it keeps the person who wrote it hire-able post closure, and makes those that lost money or effort on the deal feel as if their loss is actually being spun into something else, like concepts, innovation, future profitable IP, whatever. I agree…

He got the same feedback on his accompanying tweet https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1216896251754450946?s=2... Bigger red flag from his tweet is there’s basically zero engagement from others in the tech community. For someone who is that high profile to tweet something big about his startup and get almost no responses is really strange.

That does seem super strange. Any ideas why that might be the case? Most of his day-to-day tweets seem to get a pretty solid amount of interaction.

This tweet from December 10 seems pretty weird now: Justin Kan @justinkan "Early-stage fundraising: - need a great narrative - can get by with bad metrics - but MUST know those metrics"

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#62

Post by lbacaj »

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…

I disagree with this, like anything else it’s going to depend on the person. It’s really hard to generalize when it comes to people’s ambitions.

There are so many examples of serial entrepreneurs doing it over and over. Likewise of employees of startups going on to do even better in the next startup they join.

Serial entrepreneurs do get to raise more money, markets reward success, and I am with you that it’s not always deservingly. I also think many startups can and do pivot and serial founders aren’t more likely to pivot than the non serial kind.

I would bet on Justin Khan finding a way to success, much more so than not.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#63

Post by tempsy »

cameronlpmoore wrote: post #61
tempsy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He got the same feedback on his accompanying tweet https://twitter.com/justinkan/status/1216896251754450946?s=2... Bigger red flag from his tweet is there’s basically zero engagement from others in the tech community. For someone who is that high profile to tweet something big about his startup and get almost no responses is really strange.

That does seem super strange. Any ideas why that might be the case? Most of his day-to-day tweets seem to get a pretty solid amount of interaction. This tweet from December 10 seems pretty weird now: Justin Kan @justinkan "Early-stage fundraising: - need a great narrative - can get by with bad metrics - but MUST know those metrics"

Digging deeper on Twitter there’s a ton of pissed off lawyers (obviously including the laid off ones) and customers who both felt blind-sided.

The corporate legalese speak made things worse, of course.

I guess I underestimated the anger this would cause, so makes sense people are not going to touch it.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#64

Post by Waterluvian »

choppaface wrote: post #39
anotherfounder wrote: post #23

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/ For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point: > Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network. Simple…

I’m not sure the author is giving much consideration to the critical thinking skills of the public—- that’s more of a big company CEO thing. A lot of founders are genuinely happy to escape a failure and are already emotionally in the future by the time the blog gets written. Save the stress for the next thing. And this is Justin Kan. Not somebody who ruminates, and somebody who went through a ton of pivots with Justi…

Wait. Is that the guy I remember seeing forever ago first person streaming his life for a while?

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#65

Post by aesopsfable »

Waterluvian wrote: post #64
choppaface wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure the author is giving much consideration to the critical thinking skills of the public—- that’s more of a big company CEO thing. A lot of founders are genuinely happy to escape a failure and are already emotionally in the future by the time the blog gets written. Save the stress for the next thing. And this is Justin Kan. Not somebody who ruminates, and somebody who went through a ton of pivots with Justi…

Wait. Is that the guy I remember seeing forever ago first person streaming his life for a while?

Yep he did that.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#66

Post by aesopsfable »

anotherfounder wrote: post #23

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/ For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point: > Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network. Simple…

At CES a Ford EV on display had this printed on its window "Doors are locked for your protection". Instead of being honest and saying "it's an early prototype"

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#68

Post by sitkack »

aesopsfable wrote: post #66
anotherfounder wrote: post #23

https://www.atrium.co/inside-atrium/the-future-of-atrium/ For someone who has spent so much telling founders to cut buzzwords and speak in plain and simple English, this blog post by Justin Kan is something special. Case in point: > Similarly, at Atrium, we’ve made the tough decision to restructure the company to accommodate growth into new business services through our existing professional services network. Simple…

At CES a Ford EV on display had this printed on its window "Doors are locked for your protection". Instead of being honest and saying "it's an early prototype"

Not to get side tracked with galling examples of Corp speak but a grocery store in Seattle has these signs that read,”please allow us to help you at another register” where it used to say “lane closed” or simply “closed”.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#69

Post by kitsune_ »

staticautomatic wrote: post #57

As far as I can tell, Kan fundamentally misunderstood the nature and value of automation in the legal services industry. Kan was quoted in 2018 as saying "The goal with the tech side has always been...to help attorneys spend more of their time on meaningful work and less of their time on crank-turning work." Time spent on "crank-turning work" constitutes a relatively negligible portion of billable time for any attorn…

Yeah, selling TO law firms is very lucrative, I know a story (second-hand) where some lawyers had learned word / excel macro programming to organize their own case work (esp. with regard to appeals, deadlines and reference management etc.) and then started to sell it to their peers.

Re: Atrium lays off lawyers, pivots to tools

#70

Post by Adrienvdb »

rayiner wrote: post #8

> Even lawyers aren't immune to the unpredictability of working for a startup—and the appeal of generating high margins from selling software instead of human services. Companies tend to do the opposite, though, right? Apple could increase its margins by selling iOS and the Ax processor IP. But it makes more “boatloads of money” selling hardware, even at lower margins. Instead of selling IP, Apple uses its superior I…

Conflicts of interest rules make it harder for law firms to scale but it is possible by setting up Chinese walls (https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/3-100-8763?__lrTS...) ensuring lawyers from the same law firm can work in parallel. Ultimately, conflicts of interest rules apply to each lawyers individually, not to the law firm.
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