Given the funding you got for LT, and the fact that you didn't finish it, what most people are going to read is "we're all in on Eve (both personally and now as a company) until we decide something else is more interesting".
This sort of thing (a pivot) happens all of the time with services, so why is it not ok for pure software?
I backed Light Table and enjoy it (though it is nowhere near my daily editor) but I'm excited about the shift in focus. Sometimes great ideas do not pan out to great products for a variety of reasons, and it would be fiscal suicide for them to keep the focus on Light Table if the team truly does not believe they will be able to reach the product/market fit they were hoping for. This is business, not charity after all.
To put it another way, Eve sounds like a really interesting solution to a hard problem and I'm really excited that this team is trying to tackle it. Stoked to see what the future brings.
Afaik a pivot happens when there's a problem with the current product/strategy. If LT is truly used by "lots of other people" (I believe it is) it shouldn't be difficult to salvage it: just run another kickstarter.
I can understand having ran out of the original kickstarter money, but after enteing Ycombinator I'd expect them to still have resources to avoid being forced to pivot
(trivia/disclaimer: I'm a kickstarter backer and Light Table was my main editor for some months)
I backed Light Table too based on the promising demo video and a fair amount of irrational exuberance. Eventually, my expectations did come down.
And, while Light Table is a polished little editor, it's hard to call Light Table an IDE without offering an apology. Light Table certainly is not what was promised.
In fact, Light Table was my first experience really being burned by a Kickstarter project. Nice that Chris Granger wants to reimagine computing, but he should finish what he starts.
Who would gift his crew with $2.3M given their track record? Atom, which did not promise an IDE has done more work on it's editor in a shorter time than Chris and crew. Buyer beware!
If they don't think that Light Table is going to be profitable for them as a company long term then yes, that's a problem with the current product/strategy. You're making a lot of assumptions about what the company can or can't do when the writing seems to be on the wall - They didn't feel comfortable moving forward with Light Table as a business so they are moving into a space with similar goals but (hopefully) a much larger opportunity.
It's a company full of smart people backed by smart investors, if there was a way to make LT work at scale I'm sure they would still be working on it.
They didn't "feel comfortable"? Is that all? Stated so dispassionately, it would be breathlessly easy to say. But I know the expectation and the agita that belie.
I was taught that when someone gives you even one dollar in consideration of something that you've promised, that taking the money is tantamount to an oath.
Light Table essentially proves the lie, since it is pretty far from the video. From where I sit, Chris and his team broke their oath and I won't be burned twice.
If Andreesen Horowitz believe that computing can be revolutionized for $2.3M, it's their cash to burn. Not surprised at all that they didn't turn to Kickstarter for funding.
I say this out of concern and not as some kind of quip, but one of the first thoughts that came to my mind after reading this was, "Well, I now know not to give the Light Table guys any money until I see a finished product."
I was very much interested in LightTable. If I had given money to the kickstarter fund I would be very ticked to find out that those funds were being redirected to a different project (and I would not give funds to those individuals again).
I am also trying to be helpful by pointing this out (not just taking a cheap shot).
Also, my gut reaction to this is "LightTable is effectively dead". Again, not trying to be mean -- just basing this on a long history of following the industry.
All that being said, it does seem that the LightTable folks are trying to be transparent about all of this, and that much is refreshing.
If they are successful in producing something very useful, my hat is off to them. But I have to admit that it sounds kind of "pie in the sky" to me in this announcement. Please feel free to prove me wrong :-D
Just to be clear: this is not Kickstarter funds being redirected. We worked on LT for 2.5 years, we were given 280K (after KS's cut), around 20k went to shirts/fullfillment. That's 260k for 3 guys in SF over 2.5 years... that money ran out long ago.
Thanks for clearing this up. It was not at all clear from the announcement. I would suggest that you update the original post so that others don't get the false impression that I did.
It would be a shame for that to be the case. The amount given was indeed much more than reasonably used up if it supported 3 people for 2.5 years (especially in SF).
> Just to be clear: this is not Kickstarter funds being redirected.
While that's good to know, I think that the implicit upside gain hoped for from Kickstarter that underlies a lot of decisions to fund through it (especially for software) is that acheiving funding means not just that the thing gets delivered, but that an effort is made to build a sustainable business model is built around it and support the user community. The perception that, having delivered the kickstarted product and spent a couple years on it the team would abandon it and move on to a very different kind of focus (even if in the same broadly drawn domain) understandably reduces the perception that that kind of upside potential is around for a future effort.
Now, one can argue that that kind of upside expectation is somewhat irrational in the first place, of course.
This is very good to know, and something that I was not at all aware of -- I started using Clojure and thus Light Table after the Kickstarter had ended. For some reason I just assumed Light Table had raised a huge amount, and for that I apologize.
