from Hacker News

An End, and a Beginning

by spiralganglion on 8/29/23, 3:55 PM with 14 comments

• by gcr on 8/29/23, 4:47 PM

  As an academic researcher, I really like the idea of Muse. I see it as an organized workspace to read and annotate a bunch of semi-related PDF files. Here's hoping the core idea of the product can thrive with the incoming team.

  Muse's spatial organization is hand-down way better than Notability/Goodnotes where each PDF lives separately in tabs. I also find it more intuitive than LiquidText and MarginNote 3.

• by RcouF1uZ4gsC on 8/29/23, 4:50 PM

  > In that time our team has built a one-of-a-kind thinking tool and the world’s first large-scale local-first sync system.

  I wonder if building "the world’s first large-scale local-first sync system" was a distraction from the core mission.

  This is one of those things that developers love doing. There are a ton of cool algorithms to explore and CRDTs are really amazing algorithmically.

  However, I would guess that most users, especially the users who will pay for this, really don't care about "local first". They care about working sync, and as a bonus, it would be nice if it works offline. Even enterprises probably want central on-premise sync, more so than local first.

• by antidnan on 8/29/23, 5:19 PM

  Bummer, they have always been (and I think will continue to be) an amazing resource for companies pushing the boundaries of productivity software.

  I hope they can make it work as a smaller team.

• by tobr on 8/29/23, 7:07 PM

  That’s unfortunate. Good to hear Adam will continue as podcast host. Metamuse has been fantastic.

  I’m not an iPad user so I never got a real chance to try the product. The messaging here is a little unclear though: “we did not manage to make Muse into a sustainable business” carries a sense of finality, like it’s too late now.

• by mj4e on 8/29/23, 9:38 PM

  The podcast is a fantastic listen (I started from the beginning recently).

  And the product had so much promise - one of those I wanted to use but it practice found the gesture’s challenging.

• by debone on 8/29/23, 4:38 PM

  It sounds like the Gumroad story.

  On the other hand, despite amazed by their UX thinking, I tried to use Muse and the lack of structured content (tasks, lists, connections) was a deal-breaker.

• by swyx on 8/29/23, 5:26 PM

  bummer but love the ambition and the podcast. hope to see you continue pushing local first in your next endeavors, adam!

• by itsoktocry on 8/29/23, 4:50 PM

  >Longtime listeners of our podcast will know that we didn’t want to go fully into the world of venture-funded startups, since we believed that would create incentives that might steer us away from these ideals and core mission.

  I don't listen to the podcast, but it sounds like they did end up taking the VC money, and that crashed the business?

  You can pretend you only have "one foot in" all you want, but once you take money you are no longer bootstrapped, and no longer in charge. Unfortunately.

• by aphroz on 8/29/23, 5:56 PM

  Maybe they should make an Android version and open to the rest of the world.