

The Fall of Vidoop - Chris Messina's history with an OpenID startup - turoczy
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/06/05/the-fall-of-vidoop/

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tptacek
_This past March, I paid my own way to SXSW. Meanwhile, Vidoop picked up
travel for Kveton (by now some kind of VP of Open Technologies), Sontag, Matt
Selbie (VP of Marketing), and Scott Blomqist (CTO) who all shacked up in some
sweet pad somewhere outside downtown Austin._

...

 _I’m writing this post not because I’m bitter — most startups fail and I knew
this when I joined the company [...]_

Seems more like that your typical consumer security / authentication company
is going to fail when it pays for four key employees to go to SXSW, especially
when it's in dire financial straits.

~~~
mtrichardson
Vidoop had been playing for a while in the identity space and was still
flirting with it at this time. Part of the entire reason of going to SXSW was
to figure out opportunities in that space going forward, or whether or not we
should just focus on our security product. (I went there as part of bacn.com
but helped out with some Vidoop stuff)

Just another sign of poor focus.

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veteran
I have seen this with Scoble and bunch of these guys who don't count
themselves part of a company or its decision making - "after" they stop
receiving pay check. Even most successful companies mismanage certain
things..You can't cherry pick and publish dirty laundry if there is no gross
injustice..such things should be highly discouraged because it affects real
lives of others

~~~
factoryjoe
Was I cherry-picking things? I tried to be pretty balanced, though that might
be impossible given that I was among those laid off.

Things are still apparently being figured out among the remaining management,
but that there was no public acknowledgement that the company was out of money
seemed irresponsible to me, and needed to be addressed. I think their lack of
disclosure affects the real lives of others more than telling the story of
what happened and where things are known to be at — especially for a company
that deals in security.

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brandnewlow
Sheesh. What a mess! I got nauseas just reading about how all-over-the-map the
leadership seemed. Why did they need 40 employees? Who's the sucker that
funded these people?

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zaatar
If factoryjoe.com is down (it is for me), a mirror is here:
[http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=xbgjos4wt0wq...](http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=xbgjos4wt0wqlznptksiya)

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ahoyhere
Other than complaining about the mismanagement of the company, was there a
point to this that I missed? It seems overly personal to me. The bit about the
end about leaving the customers in the dark was perhaps the only part that
made sense to write about publically. The rest only seems noteworthy cuz it
happened to the author.

I could have written an entire book on the ridiculousness I experienced while
working at Limewire, but that'd be in bad taste.

~~~
factoryjoe
The point was to document what was going on, so that users of the MyVidoop
service would make a decision about whether to stay or not.

As well, it was a post on my personal blog — kind of the point to be somewhat
personal, right? ;)

