{"id":41307,"date":"2023-12-05T13:55:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T18:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=41307"},"modified":"2024-01-12T14:54:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T19:54:51","slug":"filmics-entire-staff-laid-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/05\/filmics-entire-staff-laid-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Filmic&rsquo;s Entire Staff Laid Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/petapixel.com\/2023\/12\/01\/filmics-entire-staff-laid-off-by-parent-company-bending-spoons\/\">Jaron Schneider<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=38502586\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/petapixel.com\/2023\/12\/01\/filmics-entire-staff-laid-off-by-parent-company-bending-spoons\/\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.filmicpro.com\/\">Filmic<\/a>, or FiLMiC as written by the brand, no longer has any dedicated staff as parent company Bending Spoons has laid off the entire team including the company&rsquo;s founder and CEO, <em>PetaPixel<\/em> has learned.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Considered for years as the best video capture application for mobile devices, the team behind Filmic Pro and presumably <a href=\"https:\/\/petapixel.com\/tag\/filmicfirstlight\/\">Filmic Firstlight<\/a> &mdash; the company&rsquo;s photo-focused app &mdash; has been let go.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsshooter.com\/2022\/09\/04\/filmic-bending-spoons-join-forces-changes-to-subscription-model\/\">The company acquired Filmic in September 2022<\/a> in what was framed as a move designed to provide much-needed support to further build out the company&rsquo;s capture apps, which made sense given Bending Spoons&rsquo;s focus on post-production.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@film_girl\/111511852206684988\">Christina Warren<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@film_girl\/111511852206684988\">\n<p>This sucks but is sadly not at all surprising. If you pay for a Filmic subscription, I would cancel now and start migrating to the Blackmagic Design camera app. It is free b\/c it is a loss leader, and is actively developed. But I hate this for the Filmic team who I truly believe erred in underpricing their app for close to a decade before selling\/moving to a very unpopular subscription model.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/17\/more-stack-overflow-layoffs\/\">More Stack Overflow Layoffs<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/03\/epic-games-layoffs-and-bandcamp\/\">Epic Games Layoffs and Bandcamp<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/10\/evernote-acquisition-and-layoffs\/\">Evernote Acquisition and Layoffs<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"filmics-entire-staff-laid-off-update-2023-12-08\">Update (2023-12-08): <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/05\/filmic-staff-laid-off\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/05\/filmic-staff-laid-off\">\n<p>Filmic was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.apple.com\/newsroom\/search?q=filmic\">featured by Apple<\/a> in numerous iPhone keynotes and App Store promotions over the years&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;for a long stretch it was undeniably the premier &ldquo;pro&rdquo; video camera app for iPhones.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/impassionedmoderate.substack.com\/p\/ryan-reynolds-didnt-pay-close-enough\">The Impassioned Moderate<\/a> (2022):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/impassionedmoderate.substack.com\/p\/ryan-reynolds-didnt-pay-close-enough\"><p>The problem? Bending Spoons is the one the most predatory actors on the entire App Store - they&rsquo;re terrifying in a completely different way.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>So what most likely happened is that Bending Spoons raised ~$50M in equity from all these various celebrities, and a much larger debt facility (~$300M) that they can draw on to pursue the &ldquo;acquisitions&rdquo; they refer to. It&rsquo;s highly misleading for the company to foster the narrative that this was a $340M equity funding round[&#8230;]<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Now, lest you think this critique an ad hominem one, let&rsquo;s talk about Bending Spoons&rsquo; business model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Via <a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/05\/bending-spoons-impassioned-moderate\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2023\/12\/05\/bending-spoons-impassioned-moderate\">\n<p>Bending Spoons&rsquo;s business model is to buy successful apps, change them to a <em>weekly<\/em> auto-renewing subscription model that perhaps tricks users into signing up, and using the revenue to buy more apps and repeat the cycle. Filmic, for example, now defaults to a $3\/week subscription&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;over $150\/year. To be fair, there&rsquo;s also a $40\/year subscription.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn&rsquo;t seem like a scam, per se, but it doesn&rsquo;t seem like a product-driven company. Apps seemingly don&rsquo;t thrive after acquisition by Bending Spoons&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;instead, they get bled dry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jaron Schneider (Hacker News): Filmic, or FiLMiC as written by the brand, no longer has any dedicated staff as parent company Bending Spoons has laid off the entire team including the company&rsquo;s founder and CEO, PetaPixel has learned.[&#8230;]Considered for years as the best video capture application for mobile devices, the team behind Filmic Pro and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2023-12-05T18:55:21Z","apple_news_api_id":"e8c4053b-71d7-4884-884e-4a3bd0b3d7cc","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2023-12-08T19:35:05Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A6MQFO3HXSISITko70LPXzA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[66,1421,2532,2514,101,2515,31,2321,26,1968,2385,1451],"class_list":["post-41307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-acquisition","tag-app-subscriptions","tag-bending-spoons","tag-blackmagic-camera","tag-business","tag-filmic","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-iosapp","tag-layoffs","tag-macos-14-sonoma","tag-sunset"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41372,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41307\/revisions\/41372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}