[mgummelt]

One factor that no one seems to have noticed is that both cofounders, Ravi and Joshua, have already built fairly big companies. Ravi was the co-founder at Heap (he took over my co-founder spot after I left), and Joshua was the CTO at Benchling.

Both of those companies have raised >$100M. After that success, the prospect of continuing to run a middling company in the shadow of Retool isn't very appealing.

[epolanski]

Quite baffling that success is measured in how much you raise.

Company burned more money than it made and winded down, impact on customers have been ultimately negative.

Where's the success?

[marcinzm]

> Company burned more money than it made and winded down

As far as I can tell that applies to neither Heap nor Benchling which were the companies OP cites as successes.

[epolanski]

You are right I might have interpreted the message in a bad way.

[playingalong]

The success is in convincing the investors to give money.

The subsequent execution might or might be another success.

[beezle]

A shame that is what constitutes "success" in the business world today.

[DecentRecruiter]

That's what the stock market is, right?

[rvba]

Crypto or pennystock - no intrinsic value? Not that all srockmarket companies have, but IMHO they should..

[theturtletalks]

Sure, but wouldn’t users be hesitant to use Ravi and Joshua’s products in the future? Businesses depended on Airplane and even paid for the service so having the rug pulled from under them will leave a bad taste.

[codezero]

Airplane was a startup in a competitive market, it wasn't Google Reader shutting down. Anyone using it was an early adopter and in my experience, most early adopters understand the risk. Maybe it's possible that folks will be hesitant, but after multiple successful exits, maybe that's a hypothetical that won't matter any more, often founders move on to be advisors/board members, and I think any board would be lucky to have Ravi's experience on tap.

[Rapzid]

Such a founder perspective.

Here is another; they fucked over their customers. Didn't even open source it on the way out?! Nobody with a memory for this is going use their products without second thought in the future.

But peoples memories are short and a sucker is born every day.

Would a board be lucky to have Ravi on it? Sure, maybe. So their personal success is secured fuck their users; slow clap.

[codezero]

I'm an airplane user, and have already moved our tooling over to retool. Fuck over their customers? I'm sorry, but you have a choice in what tools you acquire, buy, and invest in, if you don't take into account that the company is small, new, and requires VC funding to exist, I just can't empathize with you if you are angry about it not working out. I use new software because it usually gives me access to the team in a way that lets me build with them and get features that a larger incumbent won't provide, but that doesn't mean it will make the company successful, and if they fail it sucks, but it's not like they are actively trying to hurt me.

There are so many reasons it's not easy or straight forward to open source the software of a startup that failed. I don't know what to tell you, I guess since I've only worked for startups I kind of understand what risks are involved when working with them, but there are also benefits, it's a trade off that you should be making when you're informed.

If you want stability, buy from a profitable and stable company that can pen multi-year contracts that include liability clauses, and if your company has the leverage, get source code/on prem written into your MSA.

All that said: please, don't use new software or tools, avoid startups and steer clear of emerging technology, you'll feel less betrayed.

*I'm not a founder, never have been a founder, and never could be a founder.

[mooreds]

> Quite baffling that success is measured in how much you raise.

It's a proxy for size of company, and often one of the two public ones (the other being the number of employees you can count on LinkedIn). It's not perfect, of course; there's always a Zapier which raises 1.3M and then grows sustainably. But for VC funded companies, this lets you compare them, if not perfectly.

I think everyone would agree that revenue, ARR, and profitability are all more important. But those metrics are rarely shared for private companies.

[SmellTheGlove]

How does one take over a co-founder role? Is it a job title now? If he took over for you he didn’t actually found the company, right?

I’m not asking this sarcastically. Trying to understand how this works because I’ve always taken “co-founder” to mean “I was one of the people that started this company from day 1”

[morgante]

The early stages of many companies are pretty nebulous as you're exploring different ideas/positioning and building the basics.

It's reasonable that someone joining <1 year in would be considered a co-founder if they had founder-level commitment.

[htrp]

do you get the $ or the equity as well?

[datavirtue]

You can buy the "co-founder" title. That's how Elon Musk is associated with Tesla.

[codezero]

In this context, Ravi who became cofounder of Heap certainly didn't take that route. He was and is fantastic and if anything I'm surprised Airplane wasn't even more successful because of his involvement.

I don't have all the early context, but my understanding (vaguely) is that Heap went through two different incubators, and after one Ravi came on to be cofounder at YC where Heap raised its seed round.

[Rapzid]

The prospect of screwing over their customers and becoming an also-employee at Airtable is much better? Something isn't quite adding up.

[vasco]

Do you know how Heap is doing these days? I see many similarities to the article we're commenting on.

[ChronosKey]

Heap was bought by ContentSquare late last year. Product is still around but I imagine they're working to consolidate the products.

[typeofhuman]

"fairly big companies" != "amount raised"

[rmnoon]

How did I not know you were an original cofounder at Heap?

[codezero]

I was employee six and didn't know (though I did know there was a history to Heap before it joined YC and there was another cofounder, I just never knew/didn't dig into who)

[mgummelt]

I was only there for a few months!