Mr. Davis (Photo: twitter.com)

Kohort, a social network for groups, launched last month jam-packed with friends of founder and former venture capitalist Mark Peter Davis.

But less than a month after launch, Mr. Davis took to the company's blog to announce that they have decided to "decided to run Kohort with a smaller team, a leaner approach."

AllThingsD's Peter Kafka expects the company to lay off almost all of its 15 employees. Dwolla founder Ben Milne announced yesterday via Twitter that Kohort builder Shane Reisner has already started working at Dwolla.

Users are certainly feeling the pain too. This week, a user in the New York Venture Community group (the group was in fact founded by Mr. Davis), University of Washington professor Brian Rowe posted an announcement titled "Has Kohort Died":

I know that "fail fast" is a mantra these days, but I always figured it was followed by "fix quickly". Seems like the site's been broken for a while and not much in the way of communication indicating when these things will be fixed. Not sure how you keep customers this way.

As a comparison github is really good about communicating when things go wrong and keeping everyone abreast of the status.

Mr. Davis quickly responded in a post called "Kohort is Alive & Kicking":

In response to the prior message, we're aware of the few bugs on the site & we'll be working to address them as we continue to push forward with new features.

More to come.

- Team Kohort

Before launch, the company netted $3 million from a investors like IA Ventures, RRE Ventures, ff Venture Capital, David Tisch and David Cohen, so they probably have a bit of cash to burn out. Once the user base starts checking the site for signs of life, however, it's hard not to hear the pivot sirens blaring in the distance.

Mr. Davis (Photo: Twitter.com/mpd)

Today, Kohort, the super-stealth social network for groups, emailed early adopters who had registered usernames and asked them to officially join the site. Last year, Betabeat told you that Kohort, founded by former venture capitalist Mark Peter Davis, netted $3 million from a number of high profile investors like IA Ventures, RRE, FF Capital, David Tisch and David Cohen. The supposed "Meetup killer" made its beta version public back in July.

The site is based around public and private groups. Kohort lets group members post to memos to the group, much like a bulletin board. These memos are supposed to help organize meetups and group activities. Original plans called for a way to put similar groups into networks, but that remains to be seen in this early version.

One kitschy feature for moderators is the ability to change the title of group members to anything that they wish. For example, a group named "6AM Club," led by Ben Weller, a senior developer at Kohort, calls all of its six members "Broey Bros":

None of these people look like any bros that we know.

The site does almost everything Meetup.com does, but surprisingly, it has turned out to be a more efficient version of Google+. In order to organize groups, Google+'s forces users to manually place all of your friends into circles that remain private and only seen by you. While this is good for splitting up your friends into friends and frenemies, some people just don't want to put the effort into categorizing their friends. The site has definitely suffered because of this.

But on Kohort, the circles (or "groups" in this case) are the central organizing point--your friends join the groups that they know they should be a part of, or join ones they're interested in anyways. Group leaders can also send out invitations to all of the people that they think should be group members. Add some nice chat capabilities, and Kohort could poach Google's tech industry user base and have something really special on their hands.

It might be more user-friendly that Google since you don't have to do the organizing manually. Of course you still have to rely on organizers to do the heavy lifting for you. It's hard to tell what the site will look like because right now it's all groups related to Davis.

The three most popular and active groups on the site so far are the Columbia Venture Community, the New York Venture Community, and the Harvard Venture Community. Davis is the founder of the first two of those enture communities.

There are definitely some groups on the site not focused on tech which show potential for a really personal user experience. For example, this one:

This fraternity alumni group is one of the site's featured groups and is organized by none other than Kohort's CEO, Mr. Davis. Group members are labeled as "Snus," which is a TFM. Guess you can take the VC out of the founder, but there's no way you're taking the frat out of the boy.

Kohort, the new startup from Mark Davis, just raised $3 million from folks like IA Ventures, RRE, FF Capital, David Tisch and David Cohen. It's going to be offering a suite of tools to help groups do things like organize events, collect dues and enlist new members.

But the secret sauce, says one investor, is the way in which Kohort will help groups to interact with one another. "Meetup is essentially providing a platform for anyone to create a group, but its not tapping the network effect that comes from tying those organizations together."

Kohort will have ways for groups to organize around a shared passion. So the 28 soccer clubs in New York could host a round robin tournament, pool their members and easily split the entry fees between all the participating groups.

When Meetup.com launched its redesign back in January, angry users took to the comment boards and forums to try and find an alternative. Some pointed at Facebook Groups and Groupspaces, but no one seemed satisfied with these choices. Kohort is planning to fill that vacuum, although it shouldn't count on Meetup to drop the ball and drive users its way.

Turns out Kohort is taking aim squarely at one of New York's oldest start-ups, Meetup, with a new set of community management tools.

Interestingly, the lead investor on this business is IA Ventures, which has a thesis built around the value of big data. On the surface Kohort seems to be focused on a platform that helps people organize and communicate--email lists, questions forums, membership directories, etc.

Perhaps underneath the activity Kohort will be working to generate recommendations for how to structure groups based on what they derive from all of the engagement data.

Davis acknowledged that this is a crowded space with a lot of big entrenched competitors. He thinks Kohort's advantage will be its diversity of tools. Seeding the space will be TechStars, Startup Weekend and the enormous Arizona State University.

All curious users get at this point is the name, a landing page and a chance to "stake your claim" on "a new frontier" which Mr. Davis says is relatedto social media. The landgrab is on for good handles, and you can follow Kohort on Twitter.

Before creating Kohort, Mr. Davis was at DFJ Gotham with a focus on IT. He's an investor in companies like AdStruc, Sailthru, Medialets and Yipit.

Erick Schonfeld broke the news, and also notes that Mr. Davis founded a number of VC community groups at universities around town.