Kohort, a social network for groups, launched last month jam-packed with friends of founder and former venture capitalist Mark Peter Davis.
But less than a month after launch, Mr. Davis took to the company’s blog to announce that they have decided to “decided to run Kohort with a smaller team, a leaner approach.”
AllThingsD‘s Peter Kafka expects the company to lay off almost all of its 15 employees. Dwolla founder Ben Milne announced yesterday via Twitter that Kohort builder Shane Reisner has already started working at Dwolla.
Users are certainly feeling the pain too. This week, a user in the New York Venture Community group (the group was in fact founded by Mr. Davis), University of Washington professor Brian Rowe posted an announcement titled “Has Kohort Died”:
I know that “fail fast” is a mantra these days, but I always figured it was followed by “fix quickly”. Seems like the site’s been broken for a while and not much in the way of communication indicating when these things will be fixed. Not sure how you keep customers this way.
As a comparison github is really good about communicating when things go wrong and keeping everyone abreast of the status.
Mr. Davis quickly responded in a post called “Kohort is Alive & Kicking”:
In response to the prior message, we’re aware of the few bugs on the site & we’ll be working to address them as we continue to push forward with new features.
More to come.
– Team Kohort
Before launch, the company netted $3 million from a investors like IA Ventures, RRE Ventures, ff Venture Capital, David Tisch and David Cohen, so they probably have a bit of cash to burn out. Once the user base starts checking the site for signs of life, however, it’s hard not to hear the pivot sirens blaring in the distance.
