Kenneth Stanley, the former OpenAI researcher who co-founded Maven, the social networking site designed to foster accidental meetings, is stepping down just three months after its public launch.
Stanley wrote on Maven and X that, despite positive feedback on the platform's introduction, Maven "could not achieve the kind of growth curve that investors want to see to justify increasing investment, and there is likely still a missing ingredient for that kind of growth."
In order to expand Maven's runway, Stanley and one of his co-founders, Blas Moros, decided to investigate other options. Jimmy Secretan, Maven's chief technology officer, told TechCrunch that the company had a few months of runway remaining.
"We did what we did because it was a way of becoming very efficient and more of a tight ship," Stanley told TechCrunch in a phone conversation. "I would have wanted to acquire funds and stay, but this will allow us to live and fight another day. Many people believe it is a worthwhile cause, so I felt it was important to protect and continue it."
On social media, Stanley zeroed down on this issue, arguing that the internet requires something like Maven, "something to take us away from the endless convergent popularity contest and closer to serendipity."
Secretan will continue in his role as chief technology officer, driving product innovation and future stages. The creators believed that Secretan was the logical choice to stay because he had constructed the majority of the software.
When Stanley spoke with us in May, he discussed potential ways to monetize to attract more investors, such as a subscription model or advertising.
Secretan informed us that Maven would need to expand its user base before attempting to monetize.
"At Maven, we were very good at getting people into deep conversations about really interesting things and especially unexpected, surprising interests," Secretan told our reporters. "Part of the problem is that those kinds of deep conversations where we excel tend not to be very viral …they make growth a little bit harder because they're hard to share."
Following the co-founder's departure, Maven will hire product design professionals on a contract basis to retain that mindset while also attracting new consumers.
"We're not just sort of taking the easy way out and drowning the feed with just the most popular and lowest common denominator stuff," Secretan told me. "So I think there is a way to thread that needle."
The founder also noted Maven's subsidiary app, Ryff, which uses generative AI art to help users pursue their passions and discover new locations.
Stanley told us that he's searching for "new opportunities