I loved Roam, but it was so expensive for what I wanted to use it that I really couldn’t justify it.
I only wanted some of the basic functionality.
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I do think that is a little cynical. And there are no decisions that need to be made. Some people are concerned or angry so they are rushing into decisions (their right.) I’m in a position where I get to just see how it goes with both products. Tana’s always been a fun side thing for me; I like the ideas behind it, I liked the dream of Google Wave, and I also like the people who work for Tana.
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But for those where Tana isn’t a side thing, but a key work component it raises real issues. By bringing out a new product they are signalling that their current product is no longer their real objective. Outliner is no longer their main focus. Most companies who do this drop the legacy product at some point. I don’t think that’s cynical. It’s also difficult to trust a company that makes such a large shift. Will a dedicated team really work on a legacy product when they need to get the new one out the door?
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Agreed - plus the passion for their deeply designed original product is so self-evident from their Youtubes.
I have to believe the individuals who built Tana Outliner intensely want(ed) it to work- but the numbers likely just were not there for it to be viable commercially. That is only going to get worse with their own internal competition. If Tana Outliner simply cannot survive economically then at best it will stagnate but they will not use substantial resources to maintain and advance it.
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The situation is different if Tana isn’t a side thing. There are plenty of people who went wholeheartedly into Tanaworld, encouraged by a team a community that offered some tremendous potential benefits. It transpires that the company can’t build a sustainable business on that product- it happens. So they’re launching second product to that end. If you’re all in a product that couldn’t be sustainable with 100% corporate attention, you’re bound to have doubts that it’ll survive with no more than 50% of that attention. This isn’t about team size- it’s about leadership mindshare.
I don’t have to ascribe any base motives to the Tana team: I can (and do) believe they’re genuinely doing the best they can in a market resting on shifting sands. But the sands really are shifting so any committed user should be sceptical about promises for the future, especially given the history. The Tana team can’t offer any reliable assurance that this time is the charm.
So I may be being a bit cynical, but only a bit.
As the old, really cynical, aphorism goes: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
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Alright but do you like the VC firms behind Tana? Do you trust a company who proudly say their press release is not written by actual humans? Or, in a rudely succinct way: do you like the dream of Tana or the reality of the product and company?
Personal knowledge management is never profitable enough to justify a VC presence. So they inevitably have to turn to business customers who gobble down all the AI bloat, like what Notion have done.
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Corporate attention, engineering or resources during a crunch isn’t their bottleneck. Tana Outliner limited by the intractable onboarding cliff. It ended up as a powerful tool that power users mostly use alone, so they’re going to continue letting it be that, rather than ruin it to chase users.
It’s true I’m in a good position to be phlegmatic. 
I would classify Tana users something like this.
- All-in on Tana; nothing else fits their brain: keep using it; see how this summer goes. I just played some large board games yesterday with one of these guys. Destroyed me.
- Teams who use Tana: watch new Tana to see if it’ll work for your team. Wouldn’t keep pushing team adoption of Tana Outliner if some are struggling to get it.
- Want to be all-in on Tana, or considering starting to use it, following Youtubers etc.: I think there are a lot of these folks out there. I wouldn’t recommend trying to keep making Outliner work for you. But I would’ve said that before this announcement.
- Tana part-timers (me): keep enjoying it. Maybe try new Tana later this year.
@meowky That’s a pre-existing issue. Anyone who didn’t like a software company for raising money, or for being cloud-based, for charging subscriptions, or using AI to develop, already didn’t like Tana.
I don’t agree that only a VC-backed company would try to run two products.
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I thought the bottleneck was that Tana the outliner was unprofitable, not necessarily bad as a product. We’ve seen many VC-backed companies forced to ditch a decent/good/great but unprofitable product due to pressure from their backers, Arc Browser being a recent high-profile example. Tana the outliner is obviously (to me, at least) another one.
If you rely on a VC-backed product, you better hope it will be sufficiently profitable in the long run.
It’s more that it’s not working for teams/groups. They’ve always had this “multiplayer” mission (Google Wave roots.) Less success with teams is tied to having less revenue but because the new Tana is trying to accomplish their original goal, I wouldn’t say profit is the driving motivator. It helps that the founders majority own and control the company, not the investors, so they don’t have to fight to keep focusing on their goal.
I do see how it would be assuring for current users if Tana Outliner had become a runaway success.
Multiplayer was a core part of the vision laid out in the 1968 “mother of all demos”. That was nearly 60 years ago. So many teams have tried and failed to realize a “seamless multiplayer”. I doubt Tana is the special one, especially since they have already failed once, and it’s unclear if they have learned any lesson.
I don’t think this is a great argument. It’s like saying that because Apple is trying to make good iPhones and Macs, it’s not driven by shareholder profit. Tim Cook would grin if he hears this.
I’m sure the Tana team is inspired by milestone concepts like Engelbart’s, with their background. It still excites me!
I used Tana for a few months and really enjoyed the fresh combination of its Outliner and Supertags. But they kept pushing AI features while neglecting basic outliner functionality updates, so I eventually switched to Obsidian.
I even voiced my frustrations in their official Slack community and got a fair amount of agreement from others. And now they’re pivoting. What a shame.
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You don’t think profit drove the shift from Tana Outliner to New Tana?
Why did the venture backers invest if there is no mechanism for them to influence the company in this way?
I’m curious why Obisidan would be a better outliner than Tana? Use Bike, or something built as an outliner, not a markdown notebook editor.
Katie
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Investors often take a minority stake if they believe that the organisation is well run and they can help the company continue to grow in the aim of exiting later for more money than they put in. They often don’t want control or to run the company they’ve invested in as they’ll have many companies in their portfolio and they need to “watch” all of them.
Of course they’ll have some form of influence even if it’s not necessarily a “casting vote” or control of the company. Aside from money, growth companies often engage with investors or Private Equity because investor has helped similar organisations scale in the past and can therefore advise and guide the process without being In charge on a day to day basis.
I’ve not doubt that there will be step in clauses and there may even be penalties for not reaching certain goals, but taking control
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Yes, belief in the founders and/or the basic idea/“space” means willingness to take a small seed or Series A early if it means a chance at following on if it becomes something bigger later. Their seed money, at least, came from investors that have put a little into many companies.
They haven’t done a major growth round that would be intended to be spent on headcount—that is where there would be a more direct expectation to hit revenue targets and also where founders would be more likely to be diluted out of control due to the size of the round.
They want to make their vision, and they believe it will be profitable when they figure it out. It’s a bit different than wanting to make money and not caring what kind of software accomplishes it. Does that make sense?
It makes sense but inevitably there is loss of control when you accept venture capital.
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This may well be true when Startup X approaches investors with an idea that looks promising.
Will that remain true two years later, when Startup X has burned through the funds without producing anything remotely matching the original promise? Will the investors not interfere, even as Startup X’s financial situation becomes dire?
What you described could be the initial arrangement. There’s no reason to assume the arrangement will not change over time.
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I said the quote above in the post you quoted. The PE or Investor may have the right to Step In (i.e. take control) contractually if certain targets are not achieve,
Any investor will expect regular management information (or even direct access to the information sources) and also maybe the right to conduct audits, so they’d be able to spot excessive spending which doesn’t match the progress towards goals.
Not every acquisition goes well, but you buy a part of or a whole company not just for the ideas (or sometimes not even), but sometimes for the people. Not every company has a specific product, especially companies which are service providers
What I meant is that I didn’t switch to Obsidian because it’s a better outliner, but I simply moved my PKMS tool from Tana to Obsidian. As an outliner, I think Tana has the most advanced system of anything I’ve used, though it wasn’t perfect.