This might have less to do with the competition, but more with something like:

- Their product doesn’t have any demand. I went there and couldn’t figure out what it did. If this is focused on teachers, they should make it more simple.

- They saw Kiko’s sale, thought ‘Hey, we’re also Web 2.0..may be we could also get a couple of grands for this..’, and now they are just following the crowd and trying to auction it off.

Offering an eLearning platform while displaying a spelling error right on the front page, probably didn’t help either.

They should have started with a smaller, focused set of courses and worked their way to various schools hunting experts in the field to create the best course possible for different levels and different timelines. Plus they don’t have metrics which proves which courses give you the best buck for your skill level.

What you can get from their eLearning platform is something you can get just by googling.

Nuvvo founder here…

There are certainly a lot of things we could have done better in terms of marketing/sales. Hindsight eh?

The technology is all there - it just needs someone with an infrastructure to capitalize on it.

The reason the site looks “unused” is that we’ve stopped developing the business months ago trying to figure out next steps - something very unfortunate.

The story of why we’re selling is a lot more complicated than “they saw Kiko’s sale, thought ‘Hey, we’re also Web 2.0…”. But I’m sure anyone who’s been there probably knows that. I hope you never have to experience it Ali, best of luck to you in your venture!

Nuvvo’s sale may also reflect some realities of the e-learning market as well as some of the mistakes Savvica may have made in themselves (and from the post above, obviously they would admit to have made some).

To our eyes, Nuvvo made an interesting splash with an innovative service which was nicely packaged, but like many web start-ups, underestimated the time and cost to build a robust pipeline of business, and the costs to establish an e-brand. Whilst selling a paid service is always an issue with open source alternatives may have been an issue, I doubt it was as significant as being portrayed. After all, only a small proportion of the cost of e-learning relates to the platform, it just happens to be a visible amount.

The e-learning market has proved to be a graveyard for many organisations over the past few years, I am sure there will be more!

I don’t think most people appreciate how difficult it is to get even a small company off the ground, and how easily it can be derailed by other people’s incompetence or malfeasance.

We nearly went kaput ourselves when a “venture catalyst” we hired to help with fundraising (I am an engineer, not a fundraiser), went for months without actually calling anyone. He told a nice story, but when we discovered that he had not even called into our own system (one of our products is a teleconferencing platform), we knew we were screwed and had to come up with a Plan B. Sure enough, this individual only brought one “investor” to the table, who just so happened to be a close personal friend and camping buddy of his. Long story, short version is we had to walk away from the deal and self-finance. I’d rather walk away from a deal than give a handout to someone’s buddy.

Unfortunately, the level of ethics in venture finance and especially the people who surround the business is very low, and this type of behavior is commonplace. Every entrepreneur I know has horror stories about people like this. I’ve been at this for over ten years. I have yet to meet an investment banking/venture finance consultant who is not lazy, corrupt or both.

I don’t know what Nuvvo’s back story is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they got caught flatfooted by something like this. I hope they get a decent deal. It sucks to see small companies sold for pennies on the dollar because they are not part of the insider network in the valley and that’s basically what’s going on here.

Another Nuvvo founder here.

@Michael Arrington: We do indeed have no plans to shutdown the service. We own the servers it is running on and we have an affordable co-location deal. The revenues we make from subscriptions easily cover these costs, but are not enough for Malgosia and I to live on. The only cost is the time it takes to address support emails, but after running the service for almost a year we are pros.

@David Wilson: I’d say your assessment is right on. BlackBoard is the juggernaut in the higher ed industry, despite many better competitors out there. For what its worth, I still think that Nuvvo’s approach as a fun, fully self-serve model will one day win out. It just might take a company with more resources than we had our disposal (sorry mom and dad!).

@Brian McConnell: Have we met? You hit the nail on the head. We have been up down and around when it comes to funding. Being in Toronto is hard: our local VCs are not accustomed to investments like this. I can’t think of any Toronto .coms that got funded during the first web boom, and so far only AmbiantVector in this Web 2.0 wave. By the way, Nuvvo was runner-up in the Canadian Venture Forum for Best Pre-VC deal. This as voted by Canada’s top VCs. Still, neither us nor the winners have yet found funding. Toronto has a vibrant tech community, with projects rivalling the best in the world. (The latest is ConceptShare.) We just need out investment community to catch up.

If we can find Nuvvo a nice new home we would be pleased to afford it a brighter future. Otherwise, we will keep it running for the time being, and take on full time jobs ourselves elsewhere. 3/4 core members have already landed awesome jobs. I haven’t announced it yet, but I will be starting at one of the hottest startups in San Francisco later this week as a co-founder.

It is unfortunate to see the innovation Nuvvo created around eLearning stifled. Having started and sold 2 eLearning companies I know firsthand the challenges of trying to have an innovative solution while struggling to reach the intended market audience (the old dilemma of ‘build a better mousetrap and will they come’). Open source and web services are two areas of innovation that the eLearning industry continues to grapple with, especially SkillSoft and Thomson NETg (the company I work for) arguably two of the leaders in the corporate eLearning space. Couple those areas with the power of AJAX and a software-as-a-service model and you have all the ingredients for a successful startup or it can fizzle out.

I wish all the best to the team behind Nuvvo and hope it works out for them. If it wasn’t for companies like them, willing to take a risk while learning and fine tuning on the fly, then eLearning would continue to run the risk of being a boring online page turner industry. I’m sure the naysayers will come out of the woodwork and critique their business model but hey, at least these guys took a chance and tried to make it work. Your ‘failures’ count just as much as your ’successes’ in the new fast paced world of 2.0.

Ben Watson
VP - Collaboration, Thomson NETg

I wonder what hot startup you could be referring to?

I commend John and Malgosia’s efforts to improve the education performance landscape.

The course mgmt space is an interesting one. Blackboard (purchased installed sw) and Moodle (free open source) dominate the space. Neither are very pretty. Nuvvo offers a third option (paid hosted svc). On the surface, a web hosted solution would be the clear winner based on web technology trends.

However, a viral adoption strategy may not work here. Course mgmt solutions are often standardized at the school or district level. It doesn’t make sense for a school or university to risk inconsistent user experiences when a student takes multiple courses - so all courses are offered on the same platform. So using a viral approach, this precludes most of the teachers in their target segment. It seems like the wrong application for viral adoption. The product is sound. I believe they would do much better in a licensed sales model and by competing head to head with Blackboard - but of course it takes $$ to compete with the 800 pound gorilla.

Too bad there’s no such thing as a foreseeable future.

Not unless you’re a psychic…

Wish them (and their users) the best of luck.

I have to think that this is due to the ugly patent litigation that Blackboard has chosen to participate in with Desire2Learn.

I have to echo many of the above statements. I think NUVVO was a very smart product. In fact, the very service they offer is one that we regularly get petitioned to offer. We do our best for the very small companies/schools that seek these types of services (e.g., real estate agents, building inspector trainings etc.), but, unfortunately, we have larger clients that bring in more revenue, so we sometimes are not able to spend as much time helping them as we like.

We are planning on targeting them more closely because I think there is a real market here. As Christensen has noted, it is the small fish that eventually become big fish and drive disruptive technologies. We have made it our goal to focus and serve small clients and are trying to get better at serving very small clients.

I also concur with the above thoughts on BlackBoard and Moodle. The elearning industry is definitely an interesting one that seems to be dominated by these 2 poles. However, I think, as in all business, there is definitely space for companies who carve out a niche and provide great customer support. It also, of course, helps if you have an AdWords genius and some strong human capital.

Finally, thank you also for sharing your thoughts on raising capital. We are headquartered in the Hampton Roads area (Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Newport News) and can identify with some of what you talked about with VC folks. There are several technology incubators here, so that helps. However, I’ve consulted with several VC type people and it always seems to me that they act like they have some kind of mysterious business secrets that somehow justify what the price they are exacting.

I consulted with several business leaders out of William and Mary, not interested in our company for reasons that would benefit them - but b/c it would economically help the larger HR region, and they pretty much verified what I experienced. In addition, the people who run the incubators confirm what the William and Mary people say. Basically, if you have the ability to grow, and more if this is evidenced by real revenue, then keep doing what your doing and grow at a rate you can manage.

Finally, again, kudos to the guys at NUVVO. Way to take a chance and learn from your mistakes. I hope your team lands great jobs that the find personally and financially fulfilling.

Voice of Reason, you can find some great info on the patent suit here: http://www.downes.ca/blackboard_patent.htm

and here:

http://mfeldstein.com/index.ph.....l_part_ii/

You may already know about these links, but wanted to give you and others a heads up who may know about these ongoing discussions.

Yes, sometimes it is difficult to foresee these things.

Why not approach The Learning Annex?

JPG: errr… how exactly do you *start* “at one of the hottest startups in San Francisco later this week as a co-founder”? Presumbaly, if it’s already hot, it’s already been umm, “founded”. Am I missing something about the semantics of “founder”?

@Vivek Sodera & Gabe: Please see this post on our personal blog: http://married-inc.com/rapleaf/ Regarding my role as “co-founder”… the company is still at an early enough stage that this is appropriate. In fact, we are looking to add one more co-founder still.

@Drama Queen & Michael Arrington: Perhaps “foreseeable future” is a colloquialism not used where you are from. I meant only to say that Nuvvo will stay online for now. We have no pressing need to shut down the service, as it covers its own hosting costs and so forth.

@Glen Moriarty: Thank you for the kind words. Good luck with Scholar360. Feel free to contact me privately if I can help in any material ways. (Contact info is on our blog).

A little aside:

I forgot to mention that I found my new job through CrunchBoard.

In the space of two or three weeks, I was flown down to San Francisco twice and collected three excellent job offers all through CrunchBoard. For what I was looking for, CrunchBoard was far and away the best source of job opportunities.

John

Wow. Really sorry to see this happen. I have blogged repeatedly about Nuvvo and how their business model and their presence as a Web 2.0 play in the e-learning market could really change the landscape. I will still hold onto that hope.

I have never started my own business so no words of wisdom on that front - I have been involved with e-learning for almost 10 years now including working for about half that time at the ADL initiative - a vantage point that allowed me to look across the whole industry as it developed. I still think that if the ‘more traditional’ e-learning companies are not looking hard at how Nuvvo used Web 2.0 technologies, then they will eventually be caught and surpassed by someone who does.

Mark Oehlert
e-Clippings

Mark,

Thank you for the kind words. e-Clippings is an excellent blog and a good resource for anyone in the e-learning industry.

And thank you for all your coverage of Nuvvo over the last year. Hopefully Nuvvo will find a new home and give you lots more to write about.

John

Wow, after looking at Nuvvo’s website, I thought they would be overwhelmed with funding offers. I have worked in the e-learning arena for only about the last two years (I am still in the professional student stage). Most of my experience has been with state virtual schools. Now that’s an rough arena!
Over the last two years, I have seen an enormous amount of change. Big dogs, with the right connections seem to dominate so much of the industry. Meanwhile, good people with great ideas work hard to manage the little piece of the pie they’ve earned. I think the Nuvvo “family” will see some great things in the future. I hope they keep the great attitudes they have displayed thus far. With all I have read and heard (podcast) of them over the last few hours, they seem like genuinely good people. Good luck Nuvvo!