a critical post about cohost's problems
I know there's a big "well if you could do it better, why don't you just do it then???"-type defense towards people who criticize Cohost, as if they're trying to critique the work of a football player or an artist. But I don't think those are fair comparisons because many, many white-collar, nine-to-five workers have to navigate the same issues the Cohost staff did, which validates some of these arguments (not all, I'll admit).
This isn't a blog post about Cohost paying themselves salaries, but more about the actual work prioritization and team management skills. I'm not really interested in talking about their salaries because I understand they have to eat obviously, and if they weren't willing to work on Cohost as a side-project while having full-time jobs, then there was really no option left but to pay themselves with investor money.
My biggest gripe about Cohost is that despite the fact they knew social media sites were historically not profitable, and they were working with limited cash income, they continued to ignore or pause money-making features again and again.
obviously, tipping is going on in the background. we’d decided internally to make some staffing changes there (jae and colin are going to switch places, so jae will return to cohost development and colin will switch over to tipping and subscriptions). -- source from @staff
In February 2024, Jae takes extended leave so they pass the big money-making feature, tipping and subscriptions, to Colin.
as we talked about a few weeks ago, we’ve swapped places and jae is now full-time on cohost development, while colin is moving over to tipping and subscriptions once he wraps up what he’s currently working on -- source from @staff
1 month later, Colin is still working on some stupid shit, but will be on tipping right after!
colin is getting close to finishing the rewrite of the post editor to allow for inline attachments — just a few bugs left to squash — and we hope to start testing it by April 5. after it’s stable, he’ll be working on tipping full-time to get it over the line. -- source from @staff
1 month after that, Colin still hasn't started working on tipping yet.
I mean this is just basic incompetency. If you're borrowing money from a friend, and you have to work quickly to make him his money back, then why are you spending entire months working on the post editor that works perfectly fine as is? I would pull my money out so quick if I was an investor reading these updates.
I probably can't hit a home-run against a 90mph fast-ball, but I absolutely, without-a-doubt can initiate a conversation with a coworker about what the most logical next piece of work to complete is. In fact, I have done it before! These are just fundamental communication skills you need at work, and if you're trying to run a whole-ass company without them, you're already doomed.
Stripe recently updated their Prohibited and Restricted Businesses list to ban tipping and restrict most types of “content creator” subscriptions -- source from @staff
Finally, on June 12th (5 months total), they realize Stripe doesn't allow for tipping on content creation. So now the whole thing is scrapped and basically any tipping-related code is useless. (Mind you people have been warning them of this rule prior, but they just didn't see it I guess).
To their credit, they introduced a feature called Artist's Alley during this time
are you an artist, musician, game developer, or other creative? got something you want cohost users to know about? get an artist alley listing! only $10 per week!
The issue was they didn't really advertise this anywhere except in @staff posts, and nobody seemed to know this existed. So despite this effort, it was already too late to save the company.
I want to keep this post short, so to wrap things up, I don't think Cohost was a disaster because of income and spending, but purely because it doesn't seem like the team had much experience holding themselves accountable and most likely not communicating as much as they should have.
The highlighted issues with Cohost and others (such as Cohost staff missing extended periods of work consistently) are very common workplace issues and frankly, I just don't think they had any idea what they were doing outside of writing code.
like this post? discuss it on the forums at the basement community cohost thread. Or you can also send me an email!