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Helio Hangs it Up
Virgin Mobile purchased Helio today for $39 million in equity. Helio is a small MVNO that made its name by selling powerful and high-end telephones aimed at technophiles and, thanks to an investment by South Korea’s SK Telecom, Korean-Americans. As part of the deal, Virgin Mobile is also receiving $50 million to pay down Helio’s debt (half from SK Telecom, and half from its parent company Virgin Group), as well as an additional revolving credit facility of $60 million. Just last September, SK Telecom tried to save Helio by pouring an extra $270 million into it, to no avail.
The Helio brand will be subsumed by Virgin Mobile. All of the Helio stores will close except, it’s reported, the flagship store in New York, and there is a full restructuring of the company going on right now. Thus, after much struggling, Helio enters the deadpool.
Helio had 170,000 subscribers while Virgin Mobile currently has about 5 million. The deal will also give Virgin access to a number of technologies owned by Helio including customer management and cellphone deck applications.
Helio also has received investments from Earthlink, but when Earthlink pulled out last year and charismatic CEO Sky Dayton stepped down it was clear something was afoot.
Peter Ha at CrunchGear wrote a full analysis of the merger:
So what exactly does the merger mean for customers of Helio who have grown to love the hardware and features that Helio is best known for? Well, Virgin Mobile will be keeping all of those goodies in place. If you’ve seen any VM devices, you know they stink. VM is relatively boring and absorbing the technology Helio is best known for will certainly boost the MVNO’s status and appeal to a broader audience. That means future VM devices will include apps such as Google Maps with GPS, YouTube and MySpace… all of which Helio brought to the table before other carriers.
What about the Ocean 2? If you haven’t already figured it out by now, the Ocean 2 has been delayed over the last few months because of merger talks. It’s unclear when the device will actually launch, but it hasn’t been scrapped.
While I hate to see Helio dissolve, this is great for both brands. VM knows how to make money while Helio knows how to create technology that works and is appealing.
With Helio gone Boost Mobile in the only targeted MVNO running in the US right now.
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DocSyncer Merges With The Deadpool
DocSyncer, the service that allowed users to sync their desktop documents with Google Docs, has closed its doors.
At first glance, the move seems surprising. DocSyncer had established a strong user base, having accumulated over 6 million documents since its launch last October. A mere six months ago we reported that the company was “going gangbusters”, and was the web’s largest contributor to Google Docs.
So what happened? DocSyncer CEO Cliff Shaw says that the company simply couldn’t find a viable business model. The team decided that despite DocSyncer’s steady growth, it wasn’t going anywhere fast (the company also faced the looming threat of Google creating its own syncing service). Rather than dwindle more money and time on the service, Shaw and company have decided to move on. The team has begun work on a new photo site called picstreem, and are currently seeking funding.
Last December Shaw’s photo backup company ProtectMyPhotos shut down after losing out to competitors like Mozy and Carbonite. DocSyncer was that product’s successor, leveraging much of ProtectMyPhotos’s technology.
DocSyncer has been added to the Deadpool.
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Microsoft Exits Classified Listings Business
Microsoft Live Expo, their experiment with classified listings that launched in early 2006, will be shut down on July 31, says a notice posted on the site. New listings have already been suspended.
This comes as Craigslist solidifies its position as the top free listings service. Other services like Kijiji (owned by eBay) and Oodle (which recently partnered with Walmart) continue to grow. Recently Kijiji has made waves about their impressive growth rate. And other classified listing startups continue to get funded.
There’s just no room for Microsoft in the classified listings space, it seems. It joins the deadpool.
A screen shot of what it looked like in the good days is below.
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No Griefing: Virtual Currency Market Sparter Shuts Down
Looks like you’re going to have to earn your phat lootz the hard way. Sparter, an online marketplace for virtual game currencies that launched last year, has effectively shut down. The company has issued a notification stating that no further purchases can be carried out, though transactions currently in progress will be fulfilled.
The site, which is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, allowed gamers to sell gold to other players for real-world money in games including World of Warcraft, Eve, and Everquest. This kind of trading has been commonplace on the internet since the emergence of major massively multiplayer games, but it has always been controversial - eBay banned it in early 2007. Such transactions are against the Terms of Service for nearly every online game, and many players believe that they are dishonest and can ruin a game’s economy.
So what led to the shutdown? The site almost certainly folded to pressure from game developers, though it may have also had a hard time gaining traction in a space with countless vendors of virtual gold. The site does still leave some wiggle room for its rebirth in the future, explaining:
“Going forward, we believe the best course for our business is to focus solely on providing marketplaces with the full support of game developers and publishers. ”
For now we’ll be adding Sparter to the Deadpool. Gamers still looking to take the easy way out can head over to competitors like IGE.
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Akimbo Jumps Into Deadpool, Takes $56 Million With It
Akimbo, the online video provider that never seemed to establish an identity, has closed its doors. The sudden move is surprising, given that the site raised $4 million in funding less than three months ago.
Akimbo launched in 2002 as a hardware-based VOD company. Using a hard-drive equipped settop box, users could download a variety of shows from 200 content partners. In October 2005 the company shifted directions and introduced Akimbo for Media Center, which did away with the hardware and allowed users to use Akimbo through a plugin on compatible computers. Finally, last February, the company reinvented itself once more, and became a whitelabel video service provider.
Given Akimbo’s multiple personalities, it’s not surprising that it has run into trouble - but why give up after only three months in a new space? The company has seen management issues (the former CEO left, and disagreements apparently arose after his replacement with Thomas Frank). But that still doesn’t explain why the company would give the whitelabel space such a half-hearted effort.
According to VentureBeat, the entire staff has been laid off, save for three members who are staying on to facilitate the company’s shutdown. The company had raised $56 million over multiple rounds of funding, with investors including AT&T and Cisco. Akimbo has been added to the Deadpool.
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Identity 2.0 Startup Sxips Into the Deadpool
After unsuccessfully trying to sell his startup Sxip Identity to Google or Microsoft, CEO Dick Hardt is now facing a lawsuit over the insolvency of his startup. Hardt is perhaps best known for his amusing slide show explaining his company’s Identity 2.0 system. It typically started with the slide at right asking, “Who is the Dick on your site?” Investors are now asking a similar question.
Hardt is not making funny slide presentations these days. According to a complaint from investors in Vancouver, where Sxip Identity is based, Hardt raised $370,000 as a bridge loan until he could sell the company. According to TechVibes, which covered this last week:
When Hardt’s attempts to sell Sxip Identity failed, he told the plaintiffs that Sxip Identity was insolvent and that their notes has [sic] little or no value. This is where things get messy. The plaintiffs allege that Hardt failed to disclose that there were two separate Sxip entities (Sxip Identity and Sxip Network - he is CEO and President of both) and that only Sxip Identity would be a party to the notes.
Sxip Identity is indeed insolvent with a March 2008 balance sheet indicating that they owed Sxip Networks $4.7 Million and Hardt personally $275K. Sxip Identity’s total assets at the time were just under $1 Million.
That’s a pretty slick move, Dick.
Identity is still a problem that needs to be solved. Unfortunately, Sxip won’t be solving it.
Just because someone can give a good pitch, does not mean they can build a real company. Below is Hardt giving his slide show pitch at eTech in 2006.
Update: After I put up this post, I spoke with Dick Hardt. His biggest issue seemed to be with my opinion that he failed to build a a real company. Fair enough. I suggested that he e-mail me a response, which is reproduced below:
Erick
Thanks for the followup call and the offer to post a response on the article. There are some corrections contained below on facts you state, as well as additional information that I think upon examination, may lead you to change your opinion. As for responding to the lawsuit, I have attached Sxip’s statement of defense so that your readers can see both sides of the story.
– Dick
“Hardt is not making funny slide presentations these days.”
Incorrect. In the past month I gave a keynote presentations at the MySQL conference, an identity conference in New Zealand and a conference on identity management trends in Hamburg. I think the Identity 2.0 message is an important one to given. I also think my presentations are still funny. The deck is now over 1000 slides and people are laughing at the appropriate spots.
“Identity is still a problem that needs to be solved. Unfortunately, Sxip won’t be solving it.”
This is your opinion, but I don’t think it makes sense when you look at the facts. Sxip is working on solving the Identity 2.0 problem. We merged our efforts into the OpenID community a couple years ago, I sit on the board of the OpenID Foundation and am active in the community. OpenID looks to be a real contender for solving the Identity problem … at least that is what I read on TechCrunch.
Additionally, our Firefox add-on, Sxipper (available at http://sxipper.com) supports OpenID and helps users manage their passwords and fill in forms with the click of a button. Sxipper continues to be actively maintained and the user base is growing 5% per week. As the product matures, perhaps you will give it a review?
“Just because someone can give a good pitch, does not mean they can build a real company.”
From comment 33: “No, not too harsh. The company is bankrupt and on top of that there are allegations of self-dealing. If it had been a real business, Google or MSFT would have been more interested.”The company is not bankrupt.
I have successfully built and sold companies (ActiveState the best known). We had a real business with Sxip Access with solid partnerships with SFDC and Google. We sold that business to Ping Identity. Google and MSFT look at lots of real businesses and don’t do an acquisition.
I stand corrected on Hardt’s presentation habits. As for Identity 2.0, Sxip and Hardt may be making important contributions to OpenID (I don’t dispute that), but laying claim to OpenID’s achievements for Sxip is a bit of a stretch. As for my comment referring to the company as bankrupt, that was a mistake due to my misunderstanding one of Hardt’s comments below (No. 26) referring to a “reorganization” of the company and also the fact that I was responding quickly from my Blackberry on a plane ready to take off. I should have said insolvent. His statement of defense to the lawsuit is embedded below the video.
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Anatomy Of A Failure: Lessons Learned
This post was written by guest contributor Paul Bragiel, founder of Meetro, a location-aware instant messaging platform that was DeadPooled last month. Bragiel is also the founder hosted forum solution Lefora. See our coverage of these two companies here, along with our first post on Meetro in August 2005. Also see our post titled What To Do With Failed Startup IP?.
In the spirit of openness, I write this post on what we did wrong at Meetro - a post mortem of sorts. You don’t see this often enough in the startup world even though the majority of startups go belly-up. Hell, there are probably a few today that will go away with a whimper. So much knowledge is lost. If you’ve had similar experiences, I encourage you to share them over at Lefora.
To those of you not familiar with Meetro, we were one of the first location-based social networks. We figured out where you were physically and then we would tell you else was around you in real-time. You would then be able to instant message with them, check out their profiles, and hopefully meet up. Other functionality included telling you about restaurants close by, media created nearby, and various local information that pertained to your location. We also supported all your various instant messaging protocols (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and a slew of other social features.
Even with a robust product we simply couldn’t capture enough market share. So here are the major problems we had that, in the end, we couldn’t overcome. There were, of course, mini fires and random things but every startup goes through those. I have a feeling some of the other location-based startups out there right now are experiencing the same things.
Most importantly, there was a “location problem”. It’s really hard to grow a product that’s 100% focused on where you physically are. Tons of companies have tried this before and most of them have died. We, of course, were cocky and had to give it a try. There was just something so sexy about the idea that you could load up a piece of software and it would tell you about someone nearby who was interesting to you. Someone will crack this and make billions of dollars on it. I can only hope to be involved in some shape or form, since it’s an itch that hasn’t gone away for me.
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Spotplex Suffers Identity Crisis, Stumbles Into DeadPool
We introduced Spotplex in February 2007 as a potential Digg killer that served up popular stories by monitoring how many people read them. Somewhere along the way, it also turned into an Alexa-like analytics service. Unfortunately, neither market worked out for them and they’ve been forced to shut their doors.
The Digg-style service used JavaScript that was embedded on participating pages to track how often posts were read, and top-read posts were featured on Spotplex’s homepage. The service set itself apart from Digg by requiring no intervention on the reader’s part to promote a page. On the other hand, Spotplex only recorded hits on blogs that had embedded the Javascript snippets, which severely restricted its sources of content.
Spotplex’s JavaScript embeds were also used to offer an analytics service that was designed to contend with sites like Alexa and Compete. While the addition of this service marked a shift to a very different market, both of Spotplex’s services leveraged the same backend.
CEO Doyon Kim says that the company’s ultimate failure was due to a lack of adequate funding. The company underestimated the resources that were required to build and maintain its service, and it neglected to seek venture funding after its $450,000 seed round. This is surprising given Kim’s experience in the industry: he co-founded DialPad, which was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.
Spotplex is now in the TechCrunch Deadpool.
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RSS Reader News Alloy To Join The Deadpool
RSS Reader News Alloy is to shut due to a lack of funding. Michael first reviewed the site in January 2006 and it was mentioned again in a round up of RSS Readers later that year.
The following email was sent to News Alloy users:
You received this email because you are registered user of News Alloy Project - Web2.0 based Feed Reader. (http://www.newsalloy.com/)
Bad times finally came, my contract with our hosting provider is over so i will shut down the site in a couple of days, please grab your OPML for your convenience.
Future plans:
If you are interested for project to stay alive and get it under your wing please contact me, we need new dedicated hosting (quite powerful).
In case you want to get full ownership of the domain and grab all sources feel free to ask. It will cost not that much as fat cats are asking.Also i’ve developed new version about 6 months ago which is half ready - News Alloy 2.0.
It looks much brighter, faster, pure Javascript UI, rich featured and impressive look and feel. But to make it complete i need funding. Thats for sure.
If You want to have look - please let me know to get an invitation.If none is interested i will put other project on the top of News Alloy domain.
Please keep in mind that News Alloy project was developed by one single person who was in charge of everything - coding, design, promo and PR.
Now I’m open for interesting contracts and custom jobs in the area of web development and system administration.
Thank you for staying with us,
Volodymyr Danylyuk,
Project Developer and Maintainer
I’ve never used News Alloy before so I’m not sure that it’s worth saving, but it might be a cheap entry into a ready made startup, or a decent value add for an existing company.
Until its saved, News Alloy joins the TechCrunch Deadpool.
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EcoCho Apparently Not Green Enough For Google
Google terminates advertising partnerships regularly based on fraud or consumer protection issues, or just because. They never comment publicly on any particular instance, but it’s usually pretty easy to guess.
The most recent example is EcoCho a new search engine that says they donate part of revenue to carbon offsets. I made fun of them last week when they launched, since the exact connection between their revenue and the carbon offsets was rather vague (they say “up to two trees” will be sponsored for every 1,000 searches on the site, which has exactly no meaning whatsoever).
Google has terminated them, the company says. That leaves EcoCho with only Yahoo to provide search and advertising to the site. You may want to go try out the service before it shuts down, because this thing is doing a belly flop into the deadpool.
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Sonific Heading To The Deadpool: Record Labels Blamed
Sonific, an online music playing servuce similar to Pandora and Seeqpod, is to close May 1 as the company was unable to obtain licensed music rights in a way that made the service viable.
Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO writes:
1) There are countless startups providing access to any and all music streams without any license whatsoever. However, when we approached the major record label decision makers in order to obtain licenses for some of the music in their catalogs we have routinely faced demands for very large cash advances and fixed per-stream minimum payments, pressure to give them ‘free’ company equity, and requirements of utterly bizarre usage restrictions. It seems that the industry’s major stakeholders still prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow real-life, workable and market-based solutions to emerge by working with new companies such as Sonific. This is not the way forward.
2) We therefore had to realize that a company that wants to provide interactive streaming music services must either a) risk the constant complaints of their users, due to the lack of hit content b) proceed to use any and all music (this is routinely done by allowing users to upload their own MP3s) without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, and c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having the content available - permission or not -, and then very quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep.
Unfortunately we don’t like any of these choices.
Sonific joins the TechCrunch Deadpool
thanks to Andrew Watson for the tip
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Deadpool: Red Envelope Files For Bankruptcy
I can’t say we didn’t see this coming. Quirky online gift catalog site Red Envelope filed for bankruptcy on April 17, according to an SEC filing. Its assets will be purchased by Creative Catalogs in exchange for $5.7 million and the assumption of debt. Red Envelope is also getting a $4.5 million debtor-in-possession line of credit from Creative Catalogs and Granite Creek FlexCap.
Two weeks ago, Wells Fargo terminated Red Envelope’s last credit lifeline, and it started to lay off employees. This could be an early sign that other e-tailing sites may be hit hard by the economic slowdown. Or it could just mean that Red Envelope was poorly managed. Either way, Red Envelope will not emerge from the deadpool.
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AllYouCanUpload Slips Quietly Into Deadpool
AllYouCanUpload, the registration-free image hosting site with few restrictions, has quietly been taken down. The site was launched in May 2006 by CNET without much fanfare, but was praised for shedding the bandwidth limits seen on other photo sites like Photobucket and ImageShack. The site was part of the Webshots photo service, which was sold by CNET to American Greetings in October 2007.
The site has apparently been shut down for over a week. It offers no explanation for the departure, but it is likely tied to the change of ownership. It appears that images that have already been posted to the site will remain available for the time being.
AllYouCanUpload has been added to the Deadpool.
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Mowser Founder Says Mobile Web Is Dead. It’s The Opposite: The Mobile Web Was Born Only Yesterday
The Mobile Web is dead, says entreprenuer Russell Beattie, and it’s time for him to deadpool Mowser. Read the details in Duncan’s post from earlier today.
Now I certainly think that the day of creating specialty stripped down version of web pages for mobile devices is coming to an end (and that’s what Mowser did). Small screens with poor bandwidth equals an unusable product. In the U.S. today almost all mobile browsing occurs on smart phones with big screens and full keyboards. The iPhone in particular is browsing friendly as users can simply move the screen around with their fingers, and zoom in or out on the extremely crisp screen.
In short, the gains in hardware have made a special markup language for phones redundant. More and more people will be getting true smart phones in their hards that can open and view normal webpages quickly. and see the entire screen. We no longer need middleman software to convert normal websites into stuff that lesser phones can understand. It will be much better to push prices down so that todays iPhone is available for next to nothing in the third world. The First world will have moved on to increasingly better devises.
So I disagree that The Mobile Web is dead. For many of us it is just coming alive. Given the speed at which these devices are evolving and price dropping, I don’t think it’s worth people’s time to build sofware that optimizes the experience. Rather, they should use their expertise to build exciting new applications that will run directly on these new platforms.
So don’t think of this as the death of your startuup, Russell. Think of it as an opportunity to let your creativity fly while you imagine how you can change the world. My guess is you’ll land somewhere very interesting, and start building software that will be used passionately by your users.
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FatDoor Closes Its Doors. Reopens as Centerd.
Maybe it is just because it had a really bad name. Or maybe it is because nobody really likes their neighbors. Or, if they do, they actually prefer to talk to them in person. Whatever the reason, FatDoor, a social network for neighbors, is closing its doors. We are placing it in the deadpool. Visitors to the site, which sadly never even emerged out of private beta, can now see nothing but unintelligible gobbledy gook.
While the site is dead, the company behind it that raised $7 million in venture capital—$5.5 million of which it collected just last November from Keynote Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners—is not. It is rebooting as Center’d, an event planning and neighborhood search site that is still in stealth mode. But don’t worry, I snuck in and took pictures (see below).
Fatdoor’s CEO Jennifer Dulski (a former Yahoo exec) and CTO Chandu Thota (a former Microsoft engineer) are still running Center’d. In the “about” page, they acknowledge that “Center’d evolved from a concept (formerly called Fatdoor) that aimed to bring neighbors together in an online community environment.” They also lay out what they hope to accomplish with Center’d:
At Center’d, we’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat . . . to the large fundraisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of meticulous planning . . ..
Hear us out. We can give you the tools you need to easily organize people, places, and times. Using the latest space-age technology, we have concocted features such as:
• Polling tools: Enable your guests to take some of the burden of coming to consensus on the place and time to meet.
• Task Management and Volunteer Sign-up: Now you can easily get the team you need to do the stuff you need.
• Connection management and calendar sharing: Now that you are suddenly so organized, and ready to pull off the perfect girls’ night out/summer camp/grandparents day/birthday party/first date/last date, let’s make sure those who are important to you can view your calendars. But not everyone, and not every event. We can keep a secret.
• Explore neighborhoods: We’ll even help you out with finding other places and events. How would you like a view of your world filtered by the recommendations of people you trust? How would you like to be at the center, and have the people, places, and plans you care about revolve around you, just waiting to be experienced? We like that idea. In fact, we like it so much, we built it.
Center’d is both a local search engine and an event-planning application. You can search places for restaurants, hotels, schools, museums, stores, etc., and the results appear on a Google map. There is also a calendar view. Once you connect with friends on the system their events pop up in your searches. And you can also create your own events and get your friends to help decide the details. For instance, things like the location and date can be voted on. Want to have a party by the sea? Ask your invited guests if they’d rather go to Stimson Beach or Montaro Beach, and if next Sunday is better than this Saturday. You can also assign tasks for them to sign up for: bring lobsters, bring wine, bring volleyball.
The site is perfectly serviceable and looks like it will do a decent job with both event planning and local search. The interface is heavy on Ajax, with the screen telescoping open as you go through the options. It is very similar to Pingg in that regard, except it is much more limited in what it can do. But Center’d is also not doing anything appreciably different from many other startups on the event-planning side, including Pingg, Socializr, and MyPunchbowl. It does have the local search piece, but so does Yelp, Yahoo, and Google.
Still, when you are starting out with FatDoor, anything is an improvement.
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Google Rips Down HuddleChat
Google showcased HuddleChat, a real-time chat application, as one of many test applications (directory here) to show off their new Google App Engine platform last night.
Some bloggers noted that the application was a rip off of Campfire, a 37Signals product. And 37Signals CEO Jason Fried used HuddleChat as a PR opportunity, telling ReadWriteWeb “We’re flattered Google thinks Campfire is a great product, we’re just disappointed that they stooped so low to basically copy it feature for feature, layout for layout…We thought that would be beneath Google, but maybe its time to reevaluate what they stand for.”
Frankly, the reaction is fairly ridiculous. But this is apparently a fight that Google doesn’t want to be involved in. They pulled the application and replaced it with the above notice.
I wonder if Darren Delaye, Braden Kowitz, and Kyle Consalus, the Google developers who created HuddleChat, had much of a say in the decision. And why, since HuddleChat is not an official Google product, was it Google that made the decision to pull it down and not the developers who created it? Google was very careful to say that they were not affiliated with HuddleChat while it was up - that, apparently, wasn’t the case.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the first case of censorship on the new Google App Engine platform, and a bad precedent.
Our test application for Google App Engine is here.
Update: If you are as outraged as I am over this :-), join this Facebook group demanding that Google bring back HuddleChat.
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