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    Announcement

    Factory removes Chris Degnan as board observer and adviser

    Matan Grinberg attributes the decision to undisclosed recurring Cognition talks. He says Factory does not know how much information Degnan shared.

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    TLDR

    Matan Grinberg announced the removal of Chris Degnan as Factory’s board observer and adviser. He alleges Degnan held recurring talks with Cognition while advising Factory on confidential matters, but says the company does not know the extent of information shared. Degnan separately announced he is joining Cognition as chief revenue officer; that post does not address the allegations.

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    Combined views

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    26 Sources, first seen 12h ago

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    12h ago
    first seen 12h ago
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    Factory has removed Chris Degnan from its board observer and adviser roles, Matan Grinberg announced in a Sept. 30 post. Grinberg wrote that he made the decision the previous day, after Degnan had served for more than a year.

    Grinberg alleges that Degnan initially described a conversation with a Cognition executive as casual and one-off, then disclosed that the talks were formal and recurring. He says Degnan was advising Factory on confidential board-level matters while holding those conversations.

    What remains unestablished

    Grinberg says Degnan was subject to confidentiality obligations, but also states that Factory does not know the extent of information he shared. His account establishes Factory’s stated reason for ending the roles; it does not establish what confidential information, if any, reached Cognition.

    In a separate Sept. 30 announcement, Degnan said he is joining Cognition as chief revenue officer. That post discusses the new role and does not address Grinberg’s allegations.

    Factory
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    Sentiment

    Positive14%86%Negative

    Summary

    Sentiment

    Positive14%86%Negative

    Negative replies slammed Vinod Khosla and Chris Degnan as unethical scumbags over the Cognition allegations and investor ties, while positive replies welcomed the focus on integrity and transparency from the CEO and others.

    Based on 1074 sentiment-bearing replies from 784 accounts across 10 conversations.

    Today's Rank

    #2

    Today's Rank

    #2

    Summary

    Negative replies slammed Vinod Khosla and Chris Degnan as unethical scumbags over the Cognition allegations and investor ties, while positive replies welcomed the focus on integrity and transparency from the CEO and others.

    Based on 1074 sentiment-bearing replies from 784 accounts across 10 conversations.

    Related

    Factory joins the OpenAI B2B Marketplace as a launch partner

    Factory says eligible OpenAI enterprise customers can apply part of their existing OpenAI commitment toward Factory.

    26 Sources

    @matanSFWe are terminating Chris Degnan for unethical conduct involving Cognition. The last few months have seen incredible progress in AI capabilities. San Francisco has flourished as new companies that solve new, more ambitious problems are finding great success. Generally, it is a wonderful time to be building. We at @FactoryAI have seen overwhelming interest in our model-agnostic coding agents and our software factory product. Our team has 10x’d in size, while our revenue has 100x’d year over year. This momentum has been unprecedented. A much larger competitor, Cognition (makers of Devin) has fallen behind us on the capabilities that matter most to customers: cost, quality, and security. Instead of competing in the market, Cognition engineers feigned interviews with us to pry information about our product. Not finding what they were looking for, Cognition has decided to throw their weight and money at people with direct knowledge of our most confidential plans. It feels as though ethics is being thrown out of the window in the AI era. People are willing to do anything, including exploiting privileged information and violating ethical boundaries. I think this is unique to our time, and I don’t think it’s right. Integrity still matters. Yesterday, I made the decision to immediately terminate Christopher Degnan’s roles as a Board Observer and Advisor to Factory, after over a year of service. Prior to this decision, Chris told me he had a casual conversation with an executive at Cognition AI. When I questioned his intentions, he reassured me that ethics aside, he had “made too much money” and was “too lazy to go work for Cognition,” which I trusted and believed. On Monday, Chris spent time advising the Factory team on a handful of confidential board-level matters. That evening, he called me to say that the conversation that was initially described as casual and one-off was actually formal and recurring. For weeks, while he sat in our board meetings and advised our leadership team, he was also confiding with executives of our largest competitor. Chris was subject to confidentiality obligations in connection with his work with Factory. We do not know the extent of the information he shared, but it puts his timely questions about our product roadmap and what the parity gap involves into a new light. It is sad to sever a relationship with someone who has been a trusted advisor - and even a close friend - for over a year. But Chris’s conduct is unacceptable to me. Trust in Board Membership is one of the sacred bonds in the Silicon Valley, one that helps the startup ecosystem thrive. With it comes an enormous responsibility. That trust was violated. Competition is good. I respect and in many cases admire our competitors. San Francisco is a beautiful, singular place where the bold and ambitious go to defy the norms and precedents of the past. But certain principles that must remain. Violating ethics to seek advantage turns what should be positive-sum into zero-sum. We all love technology. And we all love to compete. But we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. The future of software engineering comes with abundance that will impact every person on Earth. Building that future comes with immense responsibility. We must build and compete with integrity.
    @bentossell@matanSF @EnoReyes 🤮
    @shaunmmaguireLessons: 1) avoid people that are coin operated 2) and pay attention to the warning signs along the way
    @MatthewBermanUsually don't get so much detail about something like this
    @dylan522pThat's some snake shit
    @ScottWu46Hey Matan - CEO of Cognition here. I respect the work you have done at Factory but your allegations here about Cognition are not true. We have no interest in Factory’s info and Chris has never brought it up. He has not shared and would never share any information about you or Factory with our team, nor would we ever ask. Similarly, we would never ask our engineers or anyone on our team to collect info about any competitor under-the-table. Chris is an advisor to at least 10 companies, and he told you he was resigning as an advisor on Monday. The truth is we both wanted Chris and for good reason - he is a living legend with an unmatched reputation for results and integrity. Not only is he the only person who has built a sales org from the first sales hire to over 3B, he also has built incredible teams that he cares deeply about. His people love working for him. Again, I have a lot of respect for what you’ve built, but competing with integrity doesn’t include posts like yours.
    @GergelyOroszHot damn, this is some massive drama… Factory AI board member Chris Degnan accused for secretly giving out confential business details to Cognition; terminated from Factory; 50 minutes later announces joining Cognition as CRO… WTH 🤯
    @cwdegnanReally disappointed to see this. Here are the facts: -You did not terminate me. I resigned from my advisor position on Monday and told you I was going to Cognition. In response, you asked me to consider a full time role at Factory. I told you I wasn’t interested. -You claim that I sat through a board meeting while ‘confiding’ in executives at Cognition. The last board meeting I attended was weeks before I had ever spoken to Cognition. -Cognition has never asked about information on Factory, nor would I ever give it.
    @russelljkaplanDylan - Chris told Factory (among ~10 other companies he was also advising) that he was joining Cognition full-time as CRO. In response, Matan asked Chris to consider a full-time role at Factory instead. Only after Chris declined did Matan decide to attack Chris's reputation. In the many reference calls I made before we extended Chris an offer, the thing that stood out most consistently was testimonial of Chris's unwavering integrity. It's disappointing to see people trash candidates after they fail to close them, and not something our industry should support.
    @vkhoslaYou are a struggling second tier competitor that is more unethical and lying just because you have no decency or sense of proper behavior and shows your desperation. Straight out lying about if Chris being fired I thought would be below even you.

    26 Sources

    @matanSFWe are terminating Chris Degnan for unethical conduct involving Cognition. The last few months have seen incredible progress in AI capabilities. San Francisco has flourished as new companies that solve new, more ambitious problems are finding great success. Generally, it is a wonderful time to be building. We at @FactoryAI have seen overwhelming interest in our model-agnostic coding agents and our software factory product. Our team has 10x’d in size, while our revenue has 100x’d year over year. This momentum has been unprecedented. A much larger competitor, Cognition (makers of Devin) has fallen behind us on the capabilities that matter most to customers: cost, quality, and security. Instead of competing in the market, Cognition engineers feigned interviews with us to pry information about our product. Not finding what they were looking for, Cognition has decided to throw their weight and money at people with direct knowledge of our most confidential plans. It feels as though ethics is being thrown out of the window in the AI era. People are willing to do anything, including exploiting privileged information and violating ethical boundaries. I think this is unique to our time, and I don’t think it’s right. Integrity still matters. Yesterday, I made the decision to immediately terminate Christopher Degnan’s roles as a Board Observer and Advisor to Factory, after over a year of service. Prior to this decision, Chris told me he had a casual conversation with an executive at Cognition AI. When I questioned his intentions, he reassured me that ethics aside, he had “made too much money” and was “too lazy to go work for Cognition,” which I trusted and believed. On Monday, Chris spent time advising the Factory team on a handful of confidential board-level matters. That evening, he called me to say that the conversation that was initially described as casual and one-off was actually formal and recurring. For weeks, while he sat in our board meetings and advised our leadership team, he was also confiding with executives of our largest competitor. Chris was subject to confidentiality obligations in connection with his work with Factory. We do not know the extent of the information he shared, but it puts his timely questions about our product roadmap and what the parity gap involves into a new light. It is sad to sever a relationship with someone who has been a trusted advisor - and even a close friend - for over a year. But Chris’s conduct is unacceptable to me. Trust in Board Membership is one of the sacred bonds in the Silicon Valley, one that helps the startup ecosystem thrive. With it comes an enormous responsibility. That trust was violated. Competition is good. I respect and in many cases admire our competitors. San Francisco is a beautiful, singular place where the bold and ambitious go to defy the norms and precedents of the past. But certain principles that must remain. Violating ethics to seek advantage turns what should be positive-sum into zero-sum. We all love technology. And we all love to compete. But we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. The future of software engineering comes with abundance that will impact every person on Earth. Building that future comes with immense responsibility. We must build and compete with integrity.
    @bentossell@matanSF @EnoReyes 🤮
    @shaunmmaguireLessons: 1) avoid people that are coin operated 2) and pay attention to the warning signs along the way
    @MatthewBermanUsually don't get so much detail about something like this
    @dylan522pThat's some snake shit
    @ScottWu46Hey Matan - CEO of Cognition here. I respect the work you have done at Factory but your allegations here about Cognition are not true. We have no interest in Factory’s info and Chris has never brought it up. He has not shared and would never share any information about you or Factory with our team, nor would we ever ask. Similarly, we would never ask our engineers or anyone on our team to collect info about any competitor under-the-table. Chris is an advisor to at least 10 companies, and he told you he was resigning as an advisor on Monday. The truth is we both wanted Chris and for good reason - he is a living legend with an unmatched reputation for results and integrity. Not only is he the only person who has built a sales org from the first sales hire to over 3B, he also has built incredible teams that he cares deeply about. His people love working for him. Again, I have a lot of respect for what you’ve built, but competing with integrity doesn’t include posts like yours.
    @GergelyOroszHot damn, this is some massive drama… Factory AI board member Chris Degnan accused for secretly giving out confential business details to Cognition; terminated from Factory; 50 minutes later announces joining Cognition as CRO… WTH 🤯
    @cwdegnanReally disappointed to see this. Here are the facts: -You did not terminate me. I resigned from my advisor position on Monday and told you I was going to Cognition. In response, you asked me to consider a full time role at Factory. I told you I wasn’t interested. -You claim that I sat through a board meeting while ‘confiding’ in executives at Cognition. The last board meeting I attended was weeks before I had ever spoken to Cognition. -Cognition has never asked about information on Factory, nor would I ever give it.
    @russelljkaplanDylan - Chris told Factory (among ~10 other companies he was also advising) that he was joining Cognition full-time as CRO. In response, Matan asked Chris to consider a full-time role at Factory instead. Only after Chris declined did Matan decide to attack Chris's reputation. In the many reference calls I made before we extended Chris an offer, the thing that stood out most consistently was testimonial of Chris's unwavering integrity. It's disappointing to see people trash candidates after they fail to close them, and not something our industry should support.
    @vkhoslaYou are a struggling second tier competitor that is more unethical and lying just because you have no decency or sense of proper behavior and shows your desperation. Straight out lying about if Chris being fired I thought would be below even you.