Assembly is shutting down December 6, 2015 | Hacker News Reader

Assembly is shutting down December 6, 2015

assembly.com

77 pointsacadet43 comments

Read more here: http://assembly.com/

I'm interested to see how history treats these first few decades of our commercial internet. We have VCs looking for home runs funding companies that invest thousands or millions of man-hours building products that get scuttled and lost forever. While this may be the very best way for wealthy VCs to get even more wealthy I'm sometimes nostalgic for the years of human effort wasted when things shut down. I'm not one to bemoan our best minds working on "trivial" consumer products. If you're building something people want, that's noble enough for me. But I wonder what the internet would look like if we didn't have a land-grab mentality and instead built companies more slowly and sustainably.

I don't really want to get into the whole "Tax the 1%" issue but it's becoming more obvious that taxing the ultra wealthy will lead to these kinds of sustainable companies. That tax revenue, when streamlined into larger research grants for DARPA projects or NSF stuff would produce technologies and general scientific advancements that startups would be able to develop on. Not just cool new ways to serve advertisements.

The ultra wealthy are desperate to find new ways to double their money through investments [1]. However, they are not desperate enough to start their own research labs, from which great advancements are made. Thus, I feel money could be more efficiently allocated for future sustainable scientific and technologic advancements if the government utilized increased tax revenue from 1%'ers to create more opportunities for such companies.

[1]: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21678215-world-enteri...

Edit: typo

You seem to be under the misconception that you would be allocating the money.

Midbrow dismissal.

What did Assembly do, and can we have their domain name?

I, too, have never heard of Assembly till today. Here's their CrunchBase profile page: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/assembly

Here's an archived link to their FAQ:

https://archive.is/20150520215548/https://assembly.com/help/...

In case the above's contents are lost to the ravages of entropic bitrot, here's the first paragraph:

    "How does Assembly work?

    Assembly enables products--from software and hardware, to
    online communities--to be built like open source projects.
    Contributors earn a part of a product (in App Coins) when 
    they complete a bounty made by that product's core team."

Edit: FAQ also found in Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20150319201513/https://assembly....

Assembly was a system of tools for developing applications via crowd contributions. Coderwall (https://coderwall.com/), Firesize (http://firesize.com/) and Helpful (https://helpful.io/) were a few of Assembly-made projects that were built with Assembly.

To make a long story short, projects were pitched to an idea board, and were up or down-voted on by community members. Ideas that got traction were "green-lit", which basically meant that the Assembly company would provide resources for it like hosting, DNS, email services, git repositories, etc., etc.

Apps that were greenlit could create bounties for work that needed to be performed, and any member of the community could collect on those bounties. Need design work like logos and icons? A designer (or many designers) could grab the work and submit their entries. Each unit of work would be awarded a pre-determined amount, and those payments amounted to a blockchain allocation -- e.g., submitting a logo might be worth 100 points, while submitting the accepted logo might be worth 1,000 points. That 1,000 points equated to ownership. If there were 10,000 points awarded to date, your 1,000 points were worth 10% ownership.

If the product was developed, completed, marketed, etc., and turned a profit, Assembly would collect a rake to cover expenses, and all the profits were paid out based on allocation.

It was a good system, really, and resulted in some pretty neat projects. That said, I'm not surprised to see it being shuttered. A while back they pivoted most of their tools into being some kind of community changelog, and as a fairly active participant, I literally stopped using it after that, as I had no idea how to use it, saw no instructions, and all the chatrooms that had existed previously had been shuttered in favor of the changelog.

I assume, but have no inside knowledge, that between participation dropoff, and the other end -- that many projects were either never completed, never marketed, never got traction, or not really good, they were outlaying too much and getting too little success on the other end.

For a (probably) better description of what they were, this article is handy: http://tech.co/assembly-basically-group-projects-adults-2015...

Coderwall wasn't built on Assembly, it was owned by one of the Assembly co-founders and they brought it onto the platform, but little work happened to it once it was on the platform.

    It was a good system, really, and resulted in some 
    pretty neat projects. That said, I'm not surprised 
    to see it being shuttered. A while back they pivoted 
    most of their tools [...]

Their platform was very good. The pivot only happened quite recently, it seemed like a last ditch attempt to build a product that could generate interest rather than a mistake that caused the death of Assembly.

My take is that Assembly (the original platform) failed because for a project (being developed on the platform) to succeed it needs passionate people heavily invested in a vision for the project: the majority of projects created on Assembly didn't have this, they had people who thought "this is cool" and were willing to contribute an hour or 2, but they lacked passionate leaders. 100 people who think "this is cool" aren't worth 1 that thinks "this is the future, I'm putting everything I have into this". Most projects on Assembly effectively limped from contributor to contributor.

Buckets was a good example of a project being built on Assembly that had the chance to succeed because there was a lead developer who was driving it forward, he was very passionate, had a vision and invested a lot of his time into it, and others were providing value even if they just dedicated an hour or so.

Assembly (the company) probably would have had a better chance of succeeding if they had built the platform and then had their employees focused on leading projects, being the passionate leaders projects need and giving the community a few years to grow to the point where it was self sustaining. Firesize is a good example of what was possible, but unfortunately that was only one of a few projects that had passionate people involved.

I really liked Assembly and it's a shame it didn't work out. I think the idea has a chance one day but it needs time to grow organically, I don't think it can work as a VC backed company that is expected to grow however many percent month on month...

>"I think the idea has a chance one day but it needs time to grow organically, I don't think it can work as a VC backed company that is expected to grow however many percent month on month..."

I think that is the key. The open source process just works on a much slower time frame then what is required of what was pretty much a VC business model.

>"...if they had built the platform and then had their employees focused on leading projects, being the passionate leaders projects need and giving the community"

I do think a platform like this could work, they would have to incorporate what is essentially a match making service between founders and the existing open source projects. Once a project finds a critical mass of clarity, it gets infused with purpose and direction by a founder.

Thank you for this writeup! They sound like great people who definitely would be happy to give their domain name to an assembly-language project of great promise like ours. Someone ask them!

I sent you an email with some (hopefully relevant) contact info.

The Verge did a big write up on Assembly here http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/21/7258667/assembly-collabor...

What is the lesson here?

My take is that loosely assembled teams never really perform well unless there is social connection and a clear, fully shared vision with the team.

That's obviously important but it seems more likely the business model was just not viable. The company was VC-funded [1], so they were looking for something that would either generate solid profits or be strategic for potential acquirers within some reasonably short period of time.

From reading the Crunchbase profile it's somewhat hard to see how they would have achieved those goals. I would say their chances would have been a lot better if they were piggy-backing off an existing community rather than building the community and platform simultaneously. Maybe based on their experience somebody else will be able to pull it off. It's a reasonable idea. You can't fault them for trying.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/assembly#/entity

I wish things like this had a nonVC funding option! The pressure is almost guaranteed to break a fragile, new start. If ideas are seeds and humans are soil, VC acts like Monsanto poured all over it: Grow our way fast or shrivel up and die.

I really liked Coderwall, one of the first product these guys made. But suddenly their focus was on something bigger and much more ambitious. Coderwall had a nice growing user base and I really liked using it. Maybe building simple useful things and focusing on improving them could have been the goal for this team.

However, would like to thank them for their efforts.

As someone creating a similar platform (Kicklet.com), I'm curious. Historically, are failures like this reliable indicators that competitors should reconsider their business as well?

Well, look at the opposite case. If you're in a market where your competitors are IPOing left and right, then most likely you'll be doing pretty good as well.

Possibly, but that seems to make the assumption that there's a direct correlation between your competitors' success and your own. I'm not certain that there is one.

If you believe you can do better consider acquiring Assembly. It is better to start with a community that understands the goals & potential for failure than to start from scratch with a community that does not understand the risk. Moreover, their branding is very good.

Unfortunately we're bootstrapped, so acquiring them doesn't seem feasible right now.

Yes, there's absolutely a correlation with competitors. You're all in the same market after all, pulled by the same market forces.

I'm not saying it's a 1:1 correlation, of course. But in a market where your competitors are extremely successful, it proves that it's possible you can be successful as well. That's not always the case in every market since many markets out there just won't be viable for a successful company.

in this scenario I'd ask wtf they're doing that cost so much that they couldn't sustain it. It seems like a business that could be run with 1 or 2 people, and it seems like they were making enough to support that. Why wasn't that enough?

I'm not saying you'll fail. Please understand that.

That startup playbook that just came out, and countless other sources, anecdotes, etc all say the same thing : work with people you know, that you know well. Friends, former colleagues, etc.

It is quite a barrier to meet someone and jump on a project with them as a co-founder. Especially as a side project where the commitment level is low. I think you should think seriously on that.

You make a good point, though the ability to work with people you already know seems to at least partially depend on where you live. Having lived in several places, I've always found finding collaborators to be considerably easier on the coast than elsewhere (in the US).

I think the reason why these venture-backed companies are shutting down is because they can't live up to their investor's (as well as their own) expectations, EVEN IF they're doing pretty well. It's kinda crazy thinking about it. Nowadays if you don't get hundreds of millions of users AND if it's not growing exponentially, people call you a loser. Look at companies like Dropbox and Twitter. It's not like they've failed but people compare them with the newest hot startups like Snapchat and Slack and call them "the next Unicorn that will probably die". But I don't think that's true. You should keep working on what you believe in, and whenever you see something like this, congratulate yourself for staying in the game and keep going. You never know what will happen in the future, markets change and things change, and as a result your product can become very attractive to certain groups of people, and when that happens, if you're the only one standing in the arena, you win.

There is a history of these types of crowd-sourced-product-creation companies going under. I personally think the reason is because it is relatively easy to build a product. But it is incredibly difficult to build a business around a product. It is very difficult to get traction and you have to really focus on and refine your product. So you have a startup who's concept is to crank out product after product, and then just throw them into the wind, hoping something will take off. Even businesses with one amazing product don't take off that way. A huge corporation can afford an R&D lab where 1 out of 1000 products might take off. (You might even say ycombinator is such a concept) A startup with a little bit of funding cannot afford to crank out dud after dud. They're betting that they will hit the jackpot after, say, 5 or 10 products, depending on the amount of runway they have.

Then again, there's a lot of businesses that were successful because they found the magic sauce that all of their predecessors were unable to find. If you think you've found it, then definitely go for it! If you think your concept is pretty much a rehash of Assembly, then I would probably start thinking seriously about how you are going to succeed where they failed.

I wasn't aware of assembly, and just checked out your site. As a developer, I'm wondering, what would drive me to use your site. Am I looking for a project to collaborate on? If I want to offer a bit of my time, I go to SO and answer some questions, or write a blog post, etc. etc.

On the other side, I'm about to release an open-source project. Obviously, I hope to get people really excited about it. I want people to contribute and I want to spread the word about my project.

I guess I WANT something like Kicklet to work, but what I'm missing is you showing me that it does.

Dare I say, I think the login wall is a barrier. I can't see what other projects are on Kicklet so I have no idea how active your community is.

What if, rather than having to sign-in, you listed a bunch of projects. Let me know about them, help me get interested in them. Then, maybe for commits that I make for projects, the project owner gives me a rating. I earn points. As I gain points, it is a signal to the community of the value and quality of my work. Maybe some people want to do code-reviews, let them get points. Lets help us all become better developers.

Maybe this is what happens now, but I have no idea because I can't see it.

I have no idea what the business model would be. But at the current state, I can't see that you're adding a large enough value, and I think that is the statement that comes out of Assembly. They didn't quite nail the product/business model equation.

Failure CAN be reliable indicators of a bad market, but that doesn't mean successful companies can't exist in that market. I'm thinking about not that long ago when everybody and their dog were creating playlist sharing sites. I worked in the music industry and that time, and saw copy-cat after copy-cat with minor tweaks and you knew they were all going to fail. Even when Spotify came out, it was kinda like, are these guys really thinking they can sort out this whole music industry mess. But, they did. So, I think failure in a market can be a sign that someday, somebody will figure this out. Maybe we'll be saying that about Kicklet, but you've got some work to do.

It may not sould like it, I'm cheering for you.

No one has cracked that business yet. CambrianHouse, Assembly. My own attempt. Goodwill doesn't pay the bills.

Many people in communities can't contribute much work besides moderation or testing.

If you have something that isn't really interesting for hundreds of people, you will struggle to get a handful of working bees. Even less people who will pay anyone to do the work.

I simply can't imagine that there is any real money in "that business" :\

> CambrianHouse, Assembly

There was also dndy.co. Though I still believe the idea is great, the problem is in the implementation.

I never understood why projects like this shut down. Why not just turn them over to a community member willing to run it out of pocket or something? I get that its not going to turn a profit, but if someone was using it why not just give them the reigns?

Such a waste.

If only it were that simple.

They were processing thousands of dollars of payments for projects that people had started - who would administer that side of things?

All the source code and public data is still available. Some teams might still choose to run the software.

They've raised millions of dollars, and with investment comes all kinds of headaches https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/assembly#/entity

Will Coderwall continue to exist, or is that shutting down as well?

Oh, for a second there I thought Assembly was shutting down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_(demo_party)

This is some unicorn that just imploded.

I thought unicorns were valuations >=$1B

Assembly is still kicking here http://www.assembly.org/.

I've always wanted to go to Assembly and was super worried for a second.

For a second I thought this meant General Assembly.

I found this a little ironic: https://web.archive.org/web/20150202013149/http://blog.assem...

What's the irony?

Assembly's platform is now open source, as are all the products the community built. The blog post you linked highlights a certain ethos we had as a team, and the way Assembly was shut down is right in line with that ethos.

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