[czhu12]

I'm always puzzled by stories like this:

Why not just cut staffing to a minimal number of people -- go back to existing customers, and renegotiate existing contracts down (due to reduced support), and try to balance out the revenue with costs to get back to some level of profitability.

2-3 person indie hackers that bring in 400k in revenue are considered wildly successful. I have to imagine airplane.dev was bringing in enough revenue to support a team of 10 - 15 people who could forever be a thorn in the side of companies like retool. Maybe there could even be an exit one day for the people staying behind.

Even the founders could leave, just hand it off to a group of employees who are still interested in working on the problem, will have more control over the company, get better work life balance, etc. Rather than just scrapping it all

I'm sure it isn't this easy, since that seems to never actually happen, but can anyone illuminate me on why?

[gnicholas]

Yeah, it would be interesting if a company like this could be sold to a handful of employees. But I imagine part of the reason this happened is that the CEO felt responsible for finding a landing spot for the Airplane team (pun intended). An acquihire accomplishes this, and is probably better for his resume and/or ego as well. But for customers, yeah it would be better if this were kept as a going concern.

[insane_dreamer]

Likely triggered by investors