

Assembly is shutting down December 6, 2015 - acadet
http://assembly.com
Read more here: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;assembly.com&#x2F;
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encoderer
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.

~~~
dev1n
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...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21678215-world-entering-
third-stage-rolling-debt-crisis-time-centred-emerging)

Edit: typo

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

~~~
woah
Midbrow dismissal.

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

~~~
bmelton
Assembly was a system of tools for developing applications via crowd
contributions. Coderwall ([https://coderwall.com/](https://coderwall.com/)),
Firesize ([http://firesize.com/](http://firesize.com/)) and Helpful
([https://helpful.io/](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...](http://tech.co/assembly-basically-group-projects-
adults-2015-03)

~~~
asmel
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...

~~~
brianclements
> _" 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.

------
reilly3000
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.

~~~
hodgesrm
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](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/assembly#/entity)

~~~
reilly3000
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.

------
mundanevoice
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.

------
yuska
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?

~~~
whistlerbrk
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.

~~~
yuska
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).

------
alain94040
No one has cracked that business yet. CambrianHouse, Assembly. My own attempt.
Goodwill doesn't pay the bills.

~~~
k__
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" :\

------
aakilfernandes
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.

~~~
nedwin
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?

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

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

This is some unicorn that just imploded.

~~~
trengrj
Assembly is still kicking here
[http://www.assembly.org/](http://www.assembly.org/).

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

------
timdavila
I found this a little ironic:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150202013149/http://blog.assem...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150202013149/http://blog.assembly.com/our-
incredible-journey)

~~~
awwstn
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.

