PubSub co-founder Bob Wyman responded to rumors that PubSub is falling apart on his blog today.
He says the problems were not that the company lacked killer technology or great employees, but instead lays the blame squarely at the feet of ex-CEO and co-founder Salim Ismail. Bob trashes Salim quite publicly:
What has prevented us moving forward is a battle with a group of minority shareholders, some of whom claim to be lead by our ex-CEO Salim Ismail and are, in any case, primarily his “friends and family.” This group is using very unusual clauses in our Shareholder’s agreements to block mergers or financings. We’ve found it difficult to determine their motives, however, some have said that they believe that it is in their interest to drive the company into bankruptcy so that they can buy our software and start a new company.
Now I certainly don’t have the full story and Bob may or may not be correct. But there are plenty of people out there who say Bob was the problem, not Salim, or that the two of them together were a disaster. Regardless of who’s right, Bob was wrong today. A founder should never try to solve problems by publicly attacking another founder. Who’s going to step in now and fund or buy the company with all of this incredibly immature drama being thrown about?
What a waste.
I can tell he’s pretty pissed at his partners. Still, there’s no reason to post something like this in public. There’s nothing that he can gain by doing so.
Why the complaints about his post? It boils down to this:
If no alternatives arise, we’ll be in bankruptcy and we’ll lose the employees within days.
If he doesn’t make his case public the company is sunk. Would you rather he keep a stiff upper lip and watch it go down in flames?
Agree with BlogReader.
People takie things out of context. He did right by explaining the situation and taking the mystery out of the equation.
Bob as CEO needs to take responsibility for the problem at hand, not pass blame. Irrespective.. this shouldn’t have been done in the public domain. Bob’s instantly lost credibility as a CEO and with that could come backlash from current and prospective investors. A very unwise move.
Why was the article about Digg v3 screenshots from Valleywag removed?
The politics is the sympton. The root cause is that nothing has actually worked at PubSub for the last six months. This is just excuses from Bob for failed technology.
Check out the 15d, 30d, 60d Link Ranks for TechCrunch.com
http://www.pubs....techcrunch.com
And here’s where I document them dropping 9 of 10 pings.
http://www.kbca...=20060503151630
Honestly… I don’t know what could have been gained by posting this publicly. If Bob was at his last straw he could have reached out privately to a bunch of us and we would have given him some decent advice.
Maybe pubsub is about to implode and Bob was at his last straw.
Oh well…. Sometimes its just better to walk away……
The blog post served its purpose. We needed to rapidly and broadly raise awareness of our situation in order to solicit the assistance and/or interest of people who we might not otherwise anticipate should be contacted. Also, we needed anyone who saw the opportunity to know, before contacting us, that there was “unpleasantness” to be dealt with. Since the post, we’ve had a large number of folk contact us with a variety of useful options and offers of assistance. Most important, all were aware of the potential problems before they contact us and thus have “self-qualified” themselves as being useful in this context. This is a good thing. We simply don’t have time to talk to folk who will be scared off by the issues. The blogosphere has proved itself to be a useful communications tool in a very unusual situation… Frankly, I only wish that I had created that post sooner.
(Also, please note that I am not now, nor have I ever been, the CEO of PubSub. I remain, as I always have been, the CTO.)
bob wyman
What do you do if your former co-founder is trying and succeeding at driving your company into the ground? Do you:
a) Goto your room, close the door, cry, and watch your techcrunch.com feed (on which you’re filtering by keywords “bankruptcy or bankrupt”) for the inevitable shut-down post, or…
b) Publicly trash the person whose trashy behavior is driving your company into the ground in the hopes that bringing to light this person’s actions will bring shame upon him, and hopefully compel him to stop their dastardly deeds. And trash this person’s trashy behavior while knowing full-well that people who are not invested in your situation physically, psychologically, emotionally, financially, or otherwise will trash you on their blog for your ‘immature’ behavior.
I’m going with b).
I’m a world cup fan. I don’t like teams like Costa Rica, and the U.S., who give up. I’m into teams like Ivory Coast who ball frantically, with abandon, in search of that equalizer. Yes, they’ll each individually lose individual ‘cool points’ because they’ll be forced to overplay every opposing player with the ball, far overshooting their marks, getting ‘juked’, etc., but at the end of the day, they’ve decided to taking action, being proactive, not sitting on their rears hoping for the magic of the rest of the teams in group play to push them through to the next round – and they take this action knowing that they’ll each suffer the indignities of getting juked, and possibly ending up on sportscenter in the ‘Play of the Day’ – but it’s when the other team took advantage of your overplay, counterattacked, and scored. Critics on blogs far and wide will say you should have held back and hoped the stars aligned and you might have been magically pushed through to the next round through no fault of your own. I say ‘bollocks’. I say grab destiny by the ****s and squeeze tight. This is your destiny. Yours and your teammates. As captain of your ship you decide what is best for you and your team. Don’t be passive. Be active. Seize control. The spectators will say what they will, but they’re not in your position.
Some would call that ‘desperate’. I would call that ‘heroic’.
Like Teddy said, “The only man who makes no mistake is the man who does nothing.”
Without the backstory, we have to assume he’s tried different things to get these folks off his back, and let him run the company. Obviously, they didn’t work.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light!
Last year, I had a former co-worker CC the HR dept over a field permit issue between me and him for the company softball team. I wasn’t even working for them anymore.
This tops that situation in its childishness.
From what I’ve read on TechCrunch, many readers don’t seem to be a fan of Bob. I think Bob is a bit too defensive at times; however, I do respect him for staying with the sinking ship, trying to find a solution. After all, it’s very easy to call quits when things don’t go well. And it takes real courage to deal with debts and employees.
Didn’t Ismail claim on this very blog’s comments that Bob and he were buddies or something? I guess they aren’t friends anymore.
I spent three years trapped in a business with a co-founder who developed a serious drug addiction. He had a mid life crisis, and instead of opting for hair plugs and a child bride, decided to get into coke and then crystal meth, then went barking mad, trashed the business, and generally made my life a living hell.
Through it all I bitched and whined to my friends, but I never made a public stink about it. It only would have done further damage to the business at worst, done nothing to improve the situation at best. He eventually went away, I eventually sold the business (at a loss) and moved on.
IMHO, the only time it makes sense to go public is to call out criminal activity or serious negligence. Nobody cares about your internal politics and drama.
I don’t envy Bob, but he made the same mistake of choosing a key person too casually. Sounds like it has been an expensive lesson, hopefully it’s not all his money at stake, and he can learn from the experience on his next project.
shit! ugly sordid business. 3 million dollars in debt beyond all the investment and what did they spend it on, considering the negative reports about their ui & engine.
some of the comments on this post and bob’s own reveal the extent of spite between ismail and wyman. interesting to see how much of this debt has piled up since the time ismail left the company & will indicate the truth.
difficult to believe that a few shareholders will lose their minds and raze their own investment to the ground. so they went berserk purely on a whim or it had something to do with the merger terms is not clear nor will be. and wyman owns 39% of pubsub and makes an accusatory public post that doesn’t really sound desperate nor emotional nor does he appear inclined to get the rebel shareholders on his side.. will be interesting to find out if ismail sold out his shares when left or is he still a shareholder? if he still has an equity how does he gain blocking this merger on a whim/anger. is he a rich guy who doesnt care about a few million.
if these guys concentrate their energies on rapproachment there something interesting might still happen to pubsub yet. right now they seem eager to let it all go to waste.
Salim is trying to protect his investment but Bob is going for the quick sale. Bob’s string of lifelong failures to monetize his brilliance tells us a lot about his personality and pyschological makeup. Salim’s history of success, on the other hand, tells us a lot about him. Who do you want to believe? The guy who failed to make money from his involvemnt in Lotus Notes and other ground-breaking areas of software and web development; or Salim, who serially picks out good ideas and makes them a success. It is clear to me that PubSub is a brilliant technology, but that the reason it has failed is not because of Salim but because Bob is simply too hard to work with. The histories of both men tell us a lot.
Big question! what’s one guys good historical performance gonna get vis-a-vis the other’s! Is any investor is going to back either of them in the future? They must set aside their quarrel and reverse the wrongs to win back the faith that they can be a good management, individually or collectively. Extremely difficult, not impossible. Maybe that time and opportunity is now lost due to Wyman’s public rant.
“the reason it has failed is not because of Salim but because Bob is simply too hard to work with.”
Its both. If theres one thing they worked together on, it’s destroying pubsub. Both of them are idiots in my book.
The tragic thing in this is there is no good solution at this point. Pubsub is a very good idea that should be moving onwards and upwards. Not digging it’s own hole.
This story should serve as a unfolding reminder to all those who are in shareholder agreements.
The thing that i find weird is that these things usually happen when the walls are crumbling not when thier is rumour of buyouts and growth potential.
There are three sides to this story Bob’s, Salim’s and the truth which will fall somewhere inbetween.
I hope things can pull back togehter …for my own greedy use of the product ..
cheers
scott
If Jon’s impression of their culpability is correct, then the investors and the employees of the company should sue the apparent pepetrators for damaging the company’s business interests and lowering its esteem and potential.
In these days of ’sweat’ equity and rewarding ‘ideas’ with equity participation, when you own something like 39% or y% of a company there is big responsibilty to be fulfiled that must go beyond personalities. Here it seems some in the management have held the chaps who put up the money to ransom with their shenanigans and misplaced arrogance.
The affairs of the company must be thoroughly investigated in public interest since the matter has been purposelfully made public and whether the management has been unduly rewarding itself with high salaries and bonuses must be found out.
The big loser here is technology and therefore, public good and a situation has been conjured that is detrimental to both.
It seems pretty sleazy on Bob’s part, attacking Salim this way the same day Salim announced he is going out of town where he will be presumably unreachable (”meditation course”). I guess we’ll have to wait until he’s back so he can defend himself.
I do not know either of these two chaps. But it is never a fun thing these situations. Both I am sure have their merits for actions taken and I am not going to judge them.
Unfortunately an education on Shareholder Agreements typcially comes at a high price. And that education comes at the expense of a once “trusted” founder or partner.
This … and situations like it are simply sad. Reasonable people can always come to resolutions with positive dialogue. When you are dealing with people who are not reasonable or think they work on a different set of rules than you…UGH. I am with Peter above…you should be initiating things to do what is right – but sometimes you have to walk away and let Karma take care of the bad people
.
“Who’s going to step in now and fund or buy the company with all of this incredibly immature drama being thrown about?”
Another smart guy.
“Who’s going to step in now and fund or buy the company with all of this incredibly immature drama being thrown about?”
Another smart guy.
JeanHuguesRobert
Great concept but poor execution.
Example: 4 hours after the US team’s loss to the Czechs in the World Cup, I searched for “Bruce Arena” on Google News.
They only had 1 story on him after that defeat (they did have several hits about him in stories leading up to that game).
So I tried pubsub.
The phrase “Bruce Arena” returned 0 matches — so you’re telling me that of the millions of sources pubsub is monitoring, not 1 had any mention of the US coach, even before the Czech match?
Ok, this is “monitoring the future” — the blogosphere was just getting ready to unload on Arena — so I put that url in my feed reader and waited.
And waited. And waited.
In each of the 5 days after that game, not 1 hit on “Bruce Arena” — are you kidding?
In all this drama and craziness, what’s the word from their current CEO, Gus Spathis? Has he gotten lucky with the pubsub downfall not having any association with his performance, or did Wyman always call the shots?
Actually I find this story funny.
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