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Joost To Kill Desktop Client
Exclusive: In what is likely to be a major shift in the company’s strategy, peer-to-peer startup Joost is going to stop making its desktop client. The decision to suspend the client is likely to be announced soon, I am told. The company is going to a browser-only strategy, in which much of its content is going to be available through a browser-based player. Joost, I am told, will release a small plug-in that would embed itself in the browser and allow you to grab files using the P2P technologies. The web client is likely to have better quality than average video sites. (Update: Liz has an indepth review of the upcoming service along with screenshots.)
Joost had launched its desktop client with much fanfare but for a panoply of reasons, such as bandwidth limitations, software issues and lack of content, the company lost traction and usage of its client dropped. Joost isn’t the only startup to give up backing solely the client. Veoh and Jaman adopted a browser-and-client strategy, which has helped boost their audience.
Joost was started by Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström and raised over $45 million in venture capital. The company hired former Cisco executive Mike Volpi as its CEO, and in the summer of 2007, it seemed Joost was heading to the moon. Over past the 12 months, the company has had to tweak its game plan, trim its work force and refocus to a world that is less accepting of clients. The company wanted to be a key distributor of Hollywood content, but that opportunity has faded with the rise of Hulu.
Liz wondered about the possibilities of turning Joost into a web app, and well, it looks like that is finally happening. NewTeeVee writer Janko Roettgers had come up with five ways to save Joost when trouble hit last year — developing a web version was one of them. Killing the desktop client points to that.
Few Details On Sequoia-Backed CDN Startup Cotendo
Earlier today some blogs reported that Sequoia Capital had invested in Cotendo, a content delivery company based in Israel. The reports didn’t offer much details in terms of technology and the people involved with the project.
Thanks to some helpful friends in Israel and in the CDN business, we found out that the co-founders of the company are Ronni Zehavi and David Drai. Zehavi is the CEO and Drai is the CTO of the new company. They both worked for anti-spam and security software company, Commtouch Software.
Their profiles on LinkedIn describe Cotendo as a company “developing a sophisticated innovative infrastructure which provides an efficient and low-cost CDN service. Cotendo new approach open the ability for new services which help content providers to get the maximum benefit from content acceleration.” The company has 10 employees, many of them from Commtouch. It is not clear what kind of technology they have developed and how much funding Cotendo has raised.
Content
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delivery
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Sequoia
Technology-News
TechCrunch20 Now Live
While the startup-sphere was all knee-deep in DEMO coverage last January, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington and Sequoia Capital EIA and Weblogs Inc cofounder Jason Calacanis talked up their plans to launch their conference TechCrunch20. Their idea is to bring together 20 new startups, which are chosen on merit alone, and don’t pay to present — “taking the payola out of DEMO-ing,” as Calacanis put it then.
Arrington tells us today that the site just went live, with more details about the event and the process. They are looking to talk to any startup that will be ready to launch or publicly demo by September 17, when the conference will start in San Francisco. The companies will be chosen by a panel of 20 experts, including GigaNet’s biased favorite Om. Arrington says the conference will charge for attendance and for sponsors, but that sponsors are not eligible to present a new startup.
Does the world need another American Idol-style pitch conference for startups? No, but the Valley does need a conference where the presenting companies don’t have to cross a huge financial hurdle to participate, but do have to cross a threshold of quality. Anyone who’s been to any of these launch conferences knows how unproductive they can be — hopefully TechCrunch20’s new model will be a better one. Good luck.
Techcrunch
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Sequoia
Jason
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Technology-News
A mysterious CEO change at Stoke
A few months ago we had heard some rumblings that Stoke CEO Randall Kruep was on his way out of the company. Kruep, whom we got to know well when he was running Procket Networks, assured us himself that he was going nowhere.
A couple of weeks later the networking start-up announced a big round of funding, taking the total to about $50 million from investors like Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital.
A surprise awaited us when we check the Stoke management page, following an anonymous tip. Kruep is listed as a founder, but not as the CEO. Instead, the management page points out that Dennis Barsema, a director is now the acting CEO. We wonder what changed between the time when Kruep gave us his assurance and now. Curious, don’t you think.
Just in case you were wondering what does Stoke make, an excerpt from an old post:
The carrier-closet box, which Stoke says is already in trials, is designed to help service providers better manage subscribers from multiple types of emerging access technologies, including WiMAX and dual-mode Wi-Fi/cellular handsets.
capital
startups
Sequoia
valleywag
Kleiner
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Technology-News
