SocialBias :: a Digital Abstraction of Michael Parkatti

Ok. Quite the controversy was caused by this week’s pronouncement by TechCrunch that Cambrian House is deadpooled (additional coverage here and here). It’s not obvious what’s going on right now… though recently it was brought to my attention that even though the post is over three days old, there continues to be a steady stream of comments added every day. Sure enough, you can find plenty of opinions on why the current model failed. And yes, most of them are anonymously posted. Screw it, I’m going to ball up and give my opinions.

I worked at Cambrian House for about 8 months as a contractor. I’m not going to be talking about proprietary information, nor providing slanderous fodder, nor giving away any precious intellectual property information (whatever the hell that is…?) — rather I’m going to stick to generalizations that anybody with any sort of connection to the company could have also concluded. I keep getting pinged by former employees, current employees, old community members, and investors, and I’m seriously sick of pretending that Denmark smells nice. This is the one and only time I’m going to talk about this stuff.

What follows is a review of what they did right, what they did wrong, and a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

What Cambrian House Did Right

1. Stimulating work environment - it always had the feeling that you could be working on something revolutionary and you were doing it with some of the most creative and intelligent people possible
2. Professional Trust - no one questioned your work, while you were doing it. They trusted people like adults to finish the work.
3. Fierce Debate - once work was finished, it was open to public debate by almost the entire company. This really made everyone feel like they had a voice.
4. Transparency with the community - weekly meetings were broadcast across the internet.
5. Not playing smallball - trying to spark a mass movement across the world makes everyone feel like they’re part of a mission
6. Making noise - you can say a lot of things about CH, but we certainly made a lot of noise wherever we went on the marketing front
7. Anything is possible - set a lofty goal, and try to reach it. Traffic, business development, partnerships, whatever. You’d be amazed what you can do when you think big. For a few months, CH was magic, in every sense.

What Cambrian House Did Wrong

1. Not having a simple, compelling product plan from Day One - what is the one hook that keeps people coming back?
2. Never finding product-market fit - spending too much time guessing what the world changing product is rather than actually understanding what the market wants or demands.
3. Changing ’strategies’ too much - this confused the community who joined under a certain product expectation
4. Raising too much money - this forced CH into a 9 figure exit expectation right off the bat. Instead of living frugally and scraping by with nothing, CH started with a massive bankroll.
5. Hiring too many people - the mythical man month? For some products still awaiting release, it’s the mythical man year.
6. Over-reliance on marketing and gimmicks - after awhile, the fun conference displays, swag giveaways, and community-owned messages wear really thin. What people actually want is a product that keeps them coming back again and again.
7. A Gossip Culture - It’s hard to trust the mission if certain people don’t trust each other.
8. Acting like a large corporation - having the corporate inertia of a company ten times our size didn’t exactly pan out well for communication across all levels … two guys working in a garage don’t really have that problem.
9. The belief that you’re one mainstream press article, viral video, or linkbaited blog post away from making it big - sure, these things are all important, but what’s the point of attracting traffic if people weren’t entirely sure what they were supposed to do when they got there? Build the compelling product first, and promote yourself, second.
10. Being “built to flip” and advertising ourselves as such - I can’t think of one way to turn off potential acquirers better than to suggest your company is not interested in creating long-term value.
11. Following other people’s advice too easily - one suggestion from a community member or ‘person-in-our-world’ could take us off on a variety of tangents that almost always took our eye off the ball.
12. Extraneous side projects - too much time and money were blown on cute projects that were greenlighted by nobody and eventually went nowhere. If you’re not working on the main product, you’ve got to ask yourself: what are you doing this for?

I’ve got great admiration for some of the people that work at Cambrian House, and I’m really excited to hear about their new direction. I think the TechCrunch article was a little heavy-handed, but probably not entirely off-base. The truth always lies somewhere in the middle with sensational headlines. I enjoyed my time working there, and I learned a lot while cutting my teeth in the startup world. And yeah, I still want us all to win in the end. Good luck.

A Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.