FilmLoop Dips Toes Into The DeadPool

If they come up with a good idea on how to make their service unique, they still have a chance to get out of trouble. With a few million dollars and the core technical staff in hand, maybe they’ll pull a magic trick.

Did any company make a resurrection and come out of the DeadPool?

If they find some way yo make their service unique, they may get out of trouble. With money and core technical staff at hand, they could pull a magic trick and survive.
Did any company make its way out of the DeadPool?

no. Although Odeo never really died, they were just reorganized:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....investors/

I still don’t get why a slideshow company needs $7 million and 30 employees…

I think they lacked grit and perseverence which is serius must for succeding in the market place. Also this person has not read about the cascading decisions theory.

http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

I started http://filmator.net with 25K and for that I got a blend between podcasting, flickr and Youtube. Not some me-too copycat.

How did anyone blow millions on this donkey? Was it on the marketing because it surely wasn’t on the system?

See this talk by Mikee for the best how-to in marketing on the subject
http://startups.in/exchange/di.....ew-economy

Someone please explain what kind of powerpoint can score you 7 mil and a staff willing to put effort into a feature that doesn’t make money and build a business around it.

7. Million. Dollars.

Into a site that ties pictures together.

7. Million. Dollars.

A slide show.

Who funded this company?

Kyle Mashima and Prescott Lee, congrats on taking a shitty idea and conning enough stupid people. Might as well go out and blow the rest of the cash you have left on Ferraris and hookers for threesomes.

PRO TIP: coke once snorted can’t be taken back by a bankruptcy court.

Who didn’t see this coming.. I tried it once when I clicked through to a ‘filmloop’ from a blog (it may have been Guy Kawasaki’s blog - he was an early investor) and it asked me to install some desktop software in order to view the slideshow!

I don’t know how they ever expected this to work, on the scale of company/product/feature - a slideshow is obviously a feature. The existing media publishing players such as Photobucket will sweep this space up.

As for the money they raised, I can think of a dozen companies with fantastic technology that with a little help could be bit hits, but they have been overlooked for funding. With $7M, at least 5-7 of these companies could have reached a point of maturity/profitability.

Guy’s Golden Touch

This is a list of the organizations that I am affiliated with. “Guy’s Golden Touch,” by the way, is, “Whatever is gold, Guy touches.”

oops might have to make a new mantra Guy

FilmLoop is in fact a cool service, unlike the other examples given, FilmLoop allows for more sophisticated creations and editing.

The others are basically Web-based, FilmLoop requires a download - which allows for more technically complex creations.

Hopefully, they will survive or become acquired (why should good technology go to waste???)

However, when these death prediction articles are written by something so popular and high-profile as TechCruch has now become, is there NOT a concern that a company and their employee’s morale are being hurt?

Their post-holiday weekend is now ruined. Imagine what it will feel like going to work Monday?!

Based on this news we have tentatively added FilmLoop to the TechCrunch DeadPool.

30 people? $7 million? wtf did they plan to do with that? $5m / 30 = $166,000 spent in 8 months per employee. i know this is kinda simplistic way of looking at it, but seriously, what did they do with all that money?

making this a desktop application was a bad move. the only real advantage in doing this is as a desktop app rather than a flash or ajax application is to avoid the need to upload multiple photo, which admitedly can be quite tedious, but it’s certainly not worth the trade-off of a longer and more complex development process and putting users off by having to download some software.

arghhhhhhh!

I Think that Michael Arringtons talk with Guy kawasaki (investor of Filmloop) here:

http://startups.in/exchange/di.....ew-economy

Is very revealing especially what Michael thinks about Slideshare (but also great general advice for getting coverage on Techcrunch).

chickerino,

Using nothing more than a web based application, there are ways of uploading entire folders which are full of photos as a batch process.

There is no need to download an application just for that functionality.
They got it wrong.

IMHO, $7 million dollars wasted while they were busy drinking their own kool-aid.

Bubble…, what Bubble?
The key to WEB 2.0 is to stay a small one man shop.
Grow slow get Bigger everyday then Sale.

This has been a long long time in the making. While the technology might be worth something, it certainly isnt worth the initial investment.

Honestly, it was a flawed idea from the beginning because, like so many others, they are dependent on being acquired. If they arent, they die.

2007 will be the year of the great purge in web 2.0. The innovative ideas will rise to the top, while the copycats and non-innovators will exit stage left.

I completely agree with Nik…

Who didn’t see this one coming? Most of Guy’s readers even commented that the company was doomed because of the external software needed. Guy is a great guy, perhaps he seen something we didn’t? Perhaps the founders were “proven” individuals? Who knows.

I can also think of many other companies that could take off with $7 million but get overlooked big time. One of the biggest benefits of VC funding, at least IMO, is the network of people that you are in touch with. That can take a company much farther than just $7 million - especially when that company doesn’t even need the $7 million to begin with. I would go as far as to say that amount of funding for a web startup might actually hinder further development as the founders simply wouldn’t know what to do.

If it takes me $7 million to build a piece of software or website, then I don’t deserve to be an entrepreneur. Any estimates as to the startup cost of TechCrunch? My guess is that it was pretty low, but look how successful it has become… Money doesn’t buy everything.

But the guy from Screencasts online loved it so much!

They should give the money back to their investors, and yes, $7 million is a ridiculous amount of money for what they were doing.

i have begun reading techcrunch & its related blogs like mobile crunch only recently. excellent writing on the state of play in start up funding. dead pool section is especially interesting. might i suggest that when you select a company to profile that you create a lightening poll to get the readers views - realize it is not foolproof, but having followed the latest entry into the dead pool - Filmloop - it would be interesting to see what initial impressions vs. outcome were. sitting here in the UK i sometimes think that much of the funding done in the valley is done within an echo chamber. my opinion - i may be massively wrong - but i am sensing (non-scientific) a backlash against “web 2.0″ companies (was filmloop web 2.0?)
turning back to Filmloop - i remember reading about it on Guy Kawasaki’s blog and my first thought was SFW. As opposed to a start up like Mozy (i have no association with other than being a satisfied user) which provide an easy to understand service for backing up your pc and, depending on cost, a way to get you to pay.

anyone, anyone? buehler?

When’s Browster getting listed in the DeadPool?
http://gigaom.com/2007/01/02/b.....n-and-out/

cool
so I should have 15 employees and at least 3.5 million US$.
http://www.alexaholic.com/filmloop.com+yourep.com
ok.. I dont have a fancy slide-show - I don’t deserve it

I think it is really sad that people can take a huge amount of money and turn it into air. I think the problem were the 30+ employees.
30 workstations at lets say 2k each.. 60.000$
30 nice full-wood desks at ehm.. 800? each? 24.000$
30 of those sweet leather boss-chairs: 1.500 each? 45.000$
lets say all kinds of servers for (lets spend a lot!) 40.000$
5 people moste likely got a sweet ride @ 150.000$ each.. 750.000$
now add the monthly salary..
I think I just figured out how on earth you can waste (or redistribute) that amount of money

I simply must comment on this funding issue, too. $7 million dollars, and 30 employees, to build and maintain one Web service is completely, and utterly ridiculous.

The original Linux kernel was built by one guy, and is far more complex than the software of most Web companies out there today. And, it was build with a budget of around $0.

Now, if this company had, say, 3 or 4 employees (max), never got any funding, and bootstrapped the whole damn thing, they would actually be earning something, it would be a business.

It seems none of these new Web companies do business any more. They’re all playing the company game, using all that investment money to keep the office going.

It is one Web site. It is one Web service. The technology is nice, but it is not complex. What on earth do 30 people do, working for a Web site that makes slide shows? This is insane.

As someone noted earlier…no one is trying to make money any more. They’re just trying to get bought. How can you even call that a business?

Too much VC money is flying around. If I were to ever start a Web company, I’d say fuck that VC’s, bootstrap it, and actually make some money, not hand it down to 30 employees, and office expenses.

How do you even measure the success of a Web company/business? TechCrunch is far more successful than Digg, far more successful than FilmLoop, and so many other companies…because TC actually earns money.

But this is good. This is great experience for new start-ups.

Nik,

I agree 100%, and I believe that was the comment I left on Guy’s initial post of film loop (that there were 10 other companies that could split that $ up and do a lot better). I had the same type of experience when I got to the part where I was supposed to install something. Guy is a brilliant “Guy” though, you can’t hit home runs all the time. These are one of those companies that has no real value, as the day myspace decides they want to block them they’re dead.

If I were filmLoop this is what I would do. I would go in the opposite direction of Slide and ignore MySpace kind of functionality altogether.
Instead, I would try to make the software very, very easy to install. In this context, going desktop is the only way to do it. I would then do something like Plaxo and bug the person to get his friends and family to download and install the software; especially family.
In the process of course, I become the default manager for all photos and videos and make sure there is a near relatime sync between all the family members with respect to photographs, captions/comments and videos.
In essence this becomes from “website bling” or “desktop bling” to “family glue”.

Is it tough, sure it is. But 7 mill is pretty decent amount to make a great start down this road.

I’m surprised that no one as touched on this yet. How did they possibly burn this much cash with 30 people in 8 months? What were they spending money on. Even assuming that all 30 people were there from the beginning (which isn’t likely), in 8 months I’d have expected expending about $2.4 million on salaries (around $10k/month per employee). Hardware and office space, let’s be overly generous and call it $100k per month for another $800k.

So where’d all their money go? They should have a lot more than just a “couple million” left.

I applaud their decision to admit failure and return money to the investors instead of pushing ahead and running out of cash completely, but I would expect they should have $4-5 million left. And a lot more if they hadn’t gone on the apparent hiring binge.

Maybe they are not dead…the laying off hopefully is a part of a broader plan to stop the bleeding….

They STOLE Slide’s idea and raised $8M. The problem is that what they overheard was not the whole thing.

We’ve created a product that does more than slide with 10% of the staff that they had and raised 6% of the investment they raised.

Filmloop: 30 employees & $7 million
Photagious: 3 employees & $500k

Yes, Jaisen, except that your alexa ranking is 800,000 and Slide’s is 800.
Your are about $450,000 overfunded too.

FilmLoop did not steal Slide’s idea. Both companies started at roughly the same time. Both companies have borrowed ideas from each other.

@SutroStyle

That’s because there really isn’t anything left. The virility has already hit MySpace, and unless there is something paradigm-shifting, I don’t see how services like YouTube, Photobucket, or Slide will be unseated.

Neat, another crash and burn from garage ventures. Let’s see, Gator (fashionably renamed Claria), BitPass, FilmLoop, RevX and pretty much every other company they’ve invested in. I wonder how they pay the rent over there off sandhill road? HMMMMmmmmm. Oh yeah, Guy writes books and has a blog giving advice to startups.

what a waste of $7 million dollars.

I actully used filmloop to pimped part of myspace 6 months ago when I did not know slide.com provides similar service. All my hot girls “friends” are using slides now; I guess the coolness factor also works to certain extend due to the high profile of slide’s founders;

Why don’t they think something outrageous to do, like go into porn or video loop.

@simeon

Slide’s idea was invented by its founder at least a 1 1/2 years before slide was officially started, and given the fact that he is a well known person, it was stolen and taken seriously by filmloop’s “founders”.

@Jim,

Slide started as an idea of Jared’s in late 2004 that was later funded by Max. Prescot built a prototype in October 2004, and received funding in January 2005, completely independent to Slide.

Both launched within a couple of weeks of each other around October 2005.

Slide and FilmLoop only shared a similar UI at the beginning, but each added features of the other post launch.

FilmLoop had multi-directional collaborative sharing first.

Slide had larger thumbnails and basic widgets first.

FilmLoop came out with a large format gallery MySpace widget and eBay partnership first.

A few office chairs …. $5000
A couple high end servers …. $50,000
30 overpaid employees …. $5 Million

A business plan that actually makes money … Priceless!

“There are some things money can’t buy …
for everything else there’s Web 2.0″

Oh ye, Browster! Lots of parallels with the Filmloop story - they raised $5M (again something that was more of a feature) and it seems they are on their last legs as well. Thanks for the pointer deadpool auditor

I think what puzzles me most here is “How did they burn up so much cash?”, big bonus for the Founders when the VC money come in? Big pay checks for the Executives? What sort of revenue model they had? Looks like ads based right now.. but isn’t that a red light at the beginning. I think the sucessful web 2.0 startups need to operate “LEAN” , think Reddit, 4 person team, great site. Think bubbleshare, also around 4 person team.

==================================================
Payscroll.com - The answer to the “How much am I worth?” question. Coming Soon!

Desktop apps without browser versions are so Web 1.0.

2007: The Year of the Deadpool. Mike, I believe you need to buy TCDeadPool.com and launch this site. Time capsule type site for the Crunch Network would be cool. You know there will be lots of postings in 2007. I foresee many page views.

@SutroStyle

“Yes, Jaisen, except that your alexa ranking is 800,000 and Slide’s is 800.
Your are about $450,000 overfunded too.”

I don’t really care about our alexa rank. We break even and cover all of our operating costs by having 4,000 users. Have we all forgot about the idea of “profit” and trying to maximize that?

I really wanted to love Filmloop, but something about it just didn’t stick with me (I think it was probably that you had to have their rather large client on your desktop all the time to make it work properly - and that the content wasn’t that good).

But the most interesting outcome from this, for me, is that it proves you can’t always trust the big guns in the marketing world. Seth Godin promoting Squidoo, Guy Kawasaki promoting FilmLoop.. These guys have great insights, but you can’t put them on a pedestal as they have failures just like the rest of us.

I just tried one of the slideshows on their homepage and got a green sad face that said “This photo could not be found”.

Wow…

I led Lightspeed’s investment into Rockyou last year. Rockyou is a competitor to Filmloop, although more focused on widgets than clients. Because of the comments activity on this post and the post on Slide’s funding, I posted on our Lightspeed blog on my thoughts on this area. If you’re interested, click through on my name to read the post.

I don’t know much about Filmloop, but also wanted to respond to some of the comments above. Rockyou has built its business on far less cash, but it is a lot easier and cheaper to develop for the web than to develop desktop clients. No doubt, that is one of the factors that led to the higher amount of funding and burn rate at Filmloop.

I could PRODUCE this and have it hosted and have a full team capable of delivering the product within a month with just $10,000. It’s ridiculous that a simple slideshow application would require 30 employers. — If you are this wasteful… and have a large team producing so little, it’s no wonder things aren’t going to work. —- FilmLoop needed a team no bigger than 4 or 5 people. Investors should wise up to this… a small talented technical team can wipe the floor with an untalented team 5 or 6 times bigger!!

^^ Yes.. I meant employees.

The connection: Guy and Kyle Mashima grew up together in Hawaii.

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
”Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing…”

It’s interesting that we all talk about startups in TC deadpool. I am just wondering if startups’ founders ever thought about products or services that would benefit other human beings as oppose to trivial things that don’t necessarily add values to the live of others. It seems to me the focus is all about this and that great technology and not about to use technology to help people.

Interestingly enough, we all come here to comment on blogs, stories by Mike. Before it was Mashable, later ReadWriteWeb now TechCrunch. I don’t know if this is just me. Has anyone ever gained anything tangible with all these comments. Or put in another way, can you all look back at your time submitting and reading comments and honestly answer yourself if your time was well spent. Just curious.

I couldn’t say it better than Eleanor Roosevelt had said:

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
“Eleanor Roosevelt”

@Mike

“Neat, another crash and burn from garage ventures. Let’s see, Gator (fashionably renamed Claria)”

Didn’t they do something like $100mil/plus per year at some non-Safeway gross margin levels (per their S1) and recently take in some ridiculous levels of funding from Yahoo Japan and Softbank? I’d like my next company to crash and burn like that!

Tim, do you have contact info? I’d like to discuss a project with you/your team.

Good riddance. I interviewed for an internship there in May. They dragged me out for 3 weeks and then pulled the rub out from under me. I think they were just harvesting fresh ideas. . .

to be fair, Nik, seems they did address the download problem you mention. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/20.....n_of_.html

Fuck you all ….

Guy Kawasaki