Interesting interview with Gabriel Benmergui (ConanBatt)

[illluck]

Just randomly came across this today and thought those who were around back then might be interested. Glad to hear that Gabriel is doing well, despite a couple of slightly heated interactions with him on this forum, I believe he had very good intentions and just underestimated the challenges of such an ambitious project.

https://www.failory.com/interview/kaya-gs

[bogiesan]

https://www.failory.com/interview/kaya-gs

Thanks for the link. What I read was the description of a project doomed from inception due to ignorance and hubris. Ignorance is curable but stupidity is often fatal. Character defects like hubris can only be removed after terrible and demoralizing experience. If there is an infinite supply of money, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, for instance, hubris is never cured. Capitalism is an easily studied thing. Startup failure modes are easily categorized and easily researched. Startup successes are not so easily pigeonholed because they are exceeding rare.

[illluck]

That's probably a bit harsh. I think the main thing was that Gabriel was too optimistic in terms of trying to expand the western player base to a point where a Go server is financially viable as a full-time for-profit enterprise. You can hardly blame someone who really loves the game (he was quite strong, among the top players in South America) for that kind of optimism when he was young and relatively inexperienced.

[Kirby]

I have mixed feelings, but generally speaking, I have apprehension when folks are using kickstarter, in general. The person doing the project gets a lot of money up front to do what they promised, so there's some sort of feeling that they should follow through. That being said, kickstarter backers willingly give their investment, knowing it might not work out. So I guess it's not a big deal.

On the plus side, without folks that have these kinds of dreams, you won't get new software and projects. So there's that.

[skydyr]

I have mixed feelings, but generally speaking, I have apprehension when folks are using kickstarter, in general. The person doing the project gets a lot of money up front to do what they promised, so there's some sort of feeling that they should follow through. That being said, kickstarter backers willingly give their investment, knowing it might not work out. So I guess it's not a big deal.

On the plus side, without folks that have these kinds of dreams, you won't get new software and projects. So there's that.

It's good to remember that this occurred much earlier in the lifecycle of kickstarter, and I think a lot of disappointment at the time stemmed from different sets of expectations between the backers and the project people. My sense was that backers often (and sometimes still do) thought of themselves as purchasing a product that is mostly complete. The project teams often thought of it more as "I have a source of funding to try to do X, even though I don't have a lot done on it yet".

This disconnect inevitably led to disappointments and hurt feelings on all sides. I am glad, though, that he seems to have gotten some good takeaways from its failure and isn't just bitter about it, as I've seen with other non-go projects in the past.

Edit: "complete" was missing.

[Kirby]

For sure - I was also disappointed at the time.

[spook]

As a go software developer, this interview is extremely inspiring !

I love the way he talks freely about what went wrong
and how it could have been avoided.

Hats off for that.

[SpongeBob]

As a go software developer, this interview is extremely inspiring !

I love the way he talks freely about what went wrong
and how it could have been avoided.

Hats off for that.

I am feeling the same way about the interview. These were exciting times, watching the guys trying to create something truly great for us Go players. I also was a supporter and Gabriel even played a game with me on kaya.

The problem that kaya was busy with implementing bells and whistles and neglected stabilizing the core experience was quite obvious from the outside. However, being a software developer myself, I understand all too well that this is trap that is not easily avoided.
Also, the assumption that a Go server could provide enough income to be a profitable business had always seemed unrealistic to me.
When kaya.gs was started, I was so excited to see some movement in a space where we only had KGS and equally sad when it was stopped.
Luckily we now have OGS which provides most of the experience that I was hoping to get from kaya.gs.