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.<p>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.
> 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.<p>I wonder if building "the world’s first large-scale local-first sync system" was a distraction from the core mission.<p>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.<p>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.
Bummer, they have always been (and I think will continue to be) an amazing resource for companies pushing the boundaries of productivity software.<p>I hope they can make it work as a smaller team.
That’s unfortunate. Good to hear Adam will continue as podcast host. Metamuse has been fantastic.<p>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.
The podcast is a fantastic listen (I started from the beginning recently).<p>And the product had so much promise - one of those I wanted to use but it practice found the gesture’s challenging.
It sounds like the Gumroad story.<p>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.
>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.<p>I don't listen to the podcast, but it sounds like they <i>did</i> end up taking the VC money, and that crashed the business?<p>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.