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Weaveworks<\/a>, a startup focusing on cloud native development tooling, announced today on LinkedIn<\/a> that it would be shutting down, a sad day for any startup.<\/p>\n \u201cI am very sad to announce \u2013 officially \u2013 that Weaveworks will be closing its doors and shutting down commercial operations. Customers and partners will be working with a financial trustee whom we shall announce soon,\u201d CEO Alexis Richardson, who helped launch the company in 2014, wrote.<\/p>\n The company ran into the issue of uneven sales, a big problem for startups, but especially for ones in Weavework\u2019s position. When it launched in 2014, cloud native was barely on anyone\u2019s lips. Kubernetes wouldn\u2019t launch until the following year, and they were early to market.<\/p>\n But over time, they faced growing competition from companies like Harness Labs and CircleCI, which were much better capitalized. Richardson says while they saw double digit growth in 2023, sales were \u201clumpy\u201d and they were running short on capital and a chance to be acquired fell through, he said.<\/p>\n With few prospects, the company had little choice but to take the step of shutting down. Richardson apologized for the company\u2019s predicament in the LinkedIn post. \u201cI can only apologize to everyone for this difficult turn. I could say that this should not have happened, but I know that we are not alone in this market. Bigger vessels have gone astray,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n Weaveworks raised a substantial amount of money along the way, over $61 million, per Crunchbase<\/a>, but its last round was $36 million at the end of 2020. As the economy turned in 2022, as Richardson pointed out, the market got rough for many startups out there. His is only the latest victim<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company leaves behind some open source software that he says will continue, but the details on how that will happen are not available yet. \u201cThe story does not end here \u2013 our open source software is used everywhere. I am working with several large organizations to make sure CNCF Flux is in the healthiest state. More on that soon,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n