You appear to be a stalker? What is your real interest?

An associate of mine asked me to take a look into a prospective investment in that company. With smaller companies especially, prior to spending the time and money on due diligence, I like to come in as a potential customer or end-user to learn about the product offering from the trenches.

It is not an opinion that the fireant website sat idle for months, nor that the CEO made promises for a beta version that never shipped, these are facts that as much as you folks internal to the company don’t want shared, really did happen as public record.

Please read item #10 from this same blog:
rod / techfold.com

September 14th, 2007 at 8:47 am

FireAnt has sat since April with no updates, no release of the “beta” player, basically no progress that I can discern. A strange acquisition for ODEO.

I’ve had some interesting comment-conversations with kinberg in the past - check out…

http://techfold.com/2007/04/16…..confusion/

“Marco Rivera” and “Sandy Oldham” are NOT REAL PEOPLE. This is single cyberstalker making up bullshit people (claiming to be “users” although NO RECORD of them even exists). This is complete and utter fabrication — the very definition of “cyberstalking.”

“Marco” where are your videos with your “college friends”? They don’t exist because you don’t exist.

You only seem obsessed with attacking the CEO of Fireant.

“Marco Rivera” and “Sandy Oldham” are fictional characters written for the sake of malice. They have posted elsewhere, the same posts, in attempt to discredit Fireant and the people involved.

In reading blog posts from people involved with Fireant (Jay Dedman and Clint Sharp), it’s very clear the same shameful business guys who stole the FireantTV domain name from the company are continuing to act unprofessionally, keeping up their abusive tactics designed to intimidate and slander.

Posing as FAKE “users” and posting on several blogs with mal-intent is not free speech. It is harassment and cyberstalking.

There is no excuse for this type of behavior, especially from supposed “business guys” who should know better.

You don’t believe them. I was taking pascal and fortran programming when I heard it from my professors, and I didn’t believe them. Doesn’t make it less true.

But seriously, you spent time- months, you seem to claim- on a project, but you don’t care to find if any of it is salvageable? You don’t want to do a post-mortem, so you can learn what went wrong? Your prerogative.

You appear to be talking as if you think project timelines are written in stone, the way a class schedule is. As if delays, sudden changes, or project cancellations are the exception.

As if for your next project you want to say: “The last project I did got delayed or canceled- I don’t know which, because I didn’t look back to find out. But I want you to guarantee that you’ll never delay or cancel anything I work on. Deal?” Good luck with that.

Datawonk my good friend, nothing personal but I think you may be in need of finding your own old age home soon!

I don’t mean to be rude but your assumptions are from another solar system! Either you haven’t been reading the threads or you’re just so self absorbed in your silicon valley life that you’re just not able to see anything from any other perspective than from your business head.

Who cares what fireant is now? I don’t. My friends don’t. And I’ve got to get up early for class so, nighty night!

Of course that’s harsh- it has to hurt. From your perspective it doesn’t matter why the delay. Me, I’ve dealt with startups that not only delayed, but went kablowee- gone, bankrupcy. My code wasn’t reusable, and 3% of zero is zero. I think that’s harsher. But that’s like veterans at the nursing home telling war stories- it must get boring to you youngsters.

Now that theyr deal is out, go ask them why what happened, happened. Can’t hurt to ask. (While you’re at it, ask why fireant is now a cooking show.)

And that those kind of delays and changes are common obviously is just making you dislike the risk of silicon valley. More stories I could tell about startups where original stock got diluted to zero, even though we were the ones who there from the ground up, and then our shares got ground up.

If we don’t care more about end users silicon valley will get shuttered. Go read a Red Herring from 1999- it’s already happened, and it always will.

I was a user of fireant who had the very same experience in dealing with this company and its CEO.

Please refer to comment #19 I posted here three days ago when I heard about the ODEO announcement.

Or do you think that this forum is only for people like you who stand around applauding each other for what you think is a job well done, you and that FEMA guy from New Orleans have a lot in common!

I am really sure that we’re NOT the only users who were lied to by fireant and kinberg, and threatening free speech isn’t going to win you any more minds and hearts out there!

When prosecuted, many stalkers have unsuccessfully attempted to justify their behavior based on their use of public forums, as opposed to direct contact. Once they get a reaction from the victim, they will typically attempt to track or follow the victim’s internet activity. Classic cyberstalking behavior includes the tracing of the victim’s IP address in an attempt to verify their home or place of employment. [1]

Stalking does not consist of single incidents, but is a continuous process.

Remember: IP addresses can be tracked. Cyberstalking can be prosecuted.

Fireant had their software acquired by Odeo (see the screenshot above). How is this disrespectful to users? I believe they intend to release it to a wider audience through Odeo. It seems to make sense.

As for “marco” and his “college friends” video channel — where is it? what’s the URL? (you are aware that Fireant does not host videos, right?) This whole comment thread seems to be fabricated by trolls and cyberstalkers.

So what if FireAnt didn’t publicly release their next beta version… how does this prevent anyone from publishing and distributing videos online? Go to YouTube, DailyMotion, Blip.tv, Veoh, Revver, or any of the thousand other sites where you can upoad and share videos.

Or check out other free software apps for subscribing to videos. Check out Miro or iTunes (have you heard of iTunes? I hear its really cool! You should tell your “college friends”

Why are you so caught up with attacking Fireant? Jeez… Get over it already.

Trolls, Trolls, Trolls…

There are no excuses EVER for lying to end-users, none, zippo, nada.

If the company is having financial problems, or is unable to produce finished products, then it should at least have the decency NOT to communicate false information to its users.

The message directly from the horse’s mouth (kinberg) was that new software was on its way, incuding updates to the site and directory. By repeating this over and over for the past months doesn’t make it right or true, especially when you have people like us out here who rely on those promises and spend time creating things, only to discover its all a load of bull.

Your own mantra of defending these liars by saying us users don’t understand business, has given my friends and I endless laughter. Because again, what the hell does this have to do with kinberg lying to people?

It is true that my friends and I don’t live in Silican Valley, but at least we live in the real world where people come first! Either you guys start valuing end users like us or all your doors will be padlocked before too long.

Good luck on trying to raise money for that start up! It must be a hard life having to balance meeting with investors, while you’re here defending why software companies need to lie to end users who don’t understand business!

20 years ago I might have thought the same- it seems so easy when you haven’t yet had to learn the difference between AR and AP because you didn’t think you needed it.

What makes an end-user more unhappy- a product being late, or a company disappearing entirely? Not even Microsoft was able to get Vista out in time, and it, unlike startups, doesn’t have to spend time fundraising.

Have you ever worked at an unpaid internship? If yes, great, but most people can’t afford to do that. A startup has to have money- unless you’re rich enough to self-finance, the first stage is usually borrowing from “friends and family” (aka “friends, family and fools.” look it up). Next comes angels, and then you try VCs. I’m helping a startup in an angel round right now, and we’ve been working nearly 6 months without it closing yet.

You think startups like the dog and pony shows we try to get to do on Sand Hill Road? I switched from a 9-5 W2 life to a 9-9 1099 life over a decade ago, and every person at every startup I’ve ever been at would much rather be working on the tech than fundraising.

“… seems a bit “fishy” to me. Perhaps it is Josh, a friend, orhis obese VP of Marketing? MYOB Datawonk.”
Nope, just someone ignoring rule 1 of blogs: don’t engage the trolls. The only person saying *not* to speak his mind is the person saying myob.

That sort of statement generally says you’ve never been in Silicon Valley, never been to a Unix conference, never worked in tech. In LA or NYC they might be rare, but here the XXL are standard.

We also never dealt with any VP of Mktg. and calling the guy obese doesn’t have any place in this conversation whatsoever.

We just had some interaction with the lying CEO named kinberg who talks a game but doesn’t deliver.

What does this have to do with making false promises to people like me and my friends anyway?

Nothing personal, but your post really shows how detached you business types are from what matters most, which is making end-users happy!

Its like you live in this bubble of patting each other on the back for a job well done, when the truth is the opposite.

You guys can do whatever you want its a free country and free software, but don’t expect loyalty from people you ignore and lie to.

As said in #16 I haven’t used Fireant (not my space) so I can’t talk to that, but I do know something about selling a startup.

Part of the reality of startups is that if you have a startup, you can end up putting in 18 hours days for long stretches just to sell it or get the next round of financing. And even with all that, 9 out of 10 startups don’t make it. (Talk to any VC for more.) And selling for $400k is making it- not everyone gets to be Google.

If the company was in sell/ financing mode, then all their focus was going to be on the deal. Plus, as Chris said “it seems pretty obvious why there’s been few updates if an acquisition was in the works”

Don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner but I checked out kinberg’s personal blog and here’s a guy who doesn’t even bother to update his blog for months at a time and not a hint of video creation to be found. I wonder if ODEO did their homework before hiring this guy on!

I’m pretty sick and tired of these blabber-mouth, self flattering tech CEOs who think they know what film makers want, when they themselves don’t produce nada. Granted my friends and I are just starting out in film making and comedy TV, but at least we try to produce something every day.

Well good for him if he managed to block that deal because the idea that people would trust FireAnt on their computer if it was now owned by the same company that caused Sony so much loss of reputation due to badly written DRM protection software, hmm, well, you get the idea.

is an attorney’s office that is used by many clients for a mailing address. (I know there is nothing wrong with that). The following names seem to be associated with this address:

Donald F. Straetz, Executive Director, New York Gas Group
Thomas G. Amon, Law Offices of Thomas G. Amon
K2 Digital, Inc (previously Accelerated Building Concept)
SiVault Systems, Inc.
SonicMountain, Inc
Harry H. Wise III, Esq.

Before I hire someone, I look at their resume to see what successes they have had previously.

The folks who are apparently behind Odeo/SonicMountain (Mr. Arturo and Mr. Moore) have a public record from the last company they ran. I think it is more than fair to look at their past record.

Read the SEC filing carefully, and then tell me why this is “stalking”. I think it is more investigative or simply background citizen reporting. Apparently, nobody in the tech blogosphere seems interested in doing reporting, just regurgitating press releases and cocktail party rumors.

I’m not a CPA, but the way I read the filing SiVault raised over $42M dollars by selling stock privately (not through brokers or on a public exchange). They have a number of business that sound high-tech (security software, biometrics, pharmaceuticals, …) but the majority of their revenue came from one customer: The Bridgeport Connecticut School District. The LightTec division was hired to bring Internet connectivity to the Bridgeport schools. A very meat and potatoes network infrastructure consulting engagement, not particularly high tech these days. Bridgeport eventually broke off the contract and they were left with no revenue and no customers, and $42M in losses.

Why do I care? When the SonicMountain aquisition of Odeo was first announced, the mailing address for SonicMountain was in town I used to live in. I was shocked that there was any Web2.0 or VC activity in my old sleeply little subrurban town. That got me curious so I did some quick Google searches and found that the address was a PO box at a UPS store. Then SonicMOuntain announced their new address in Manhattan, when I Googled that I learned that it was the same address as SiVault then I realized that some of the SonicMountain exectuives were also from SiVault. So you do the math… Same address… Same people… I think reviewing the history of SiVault is appropriate in this case and is in no way unprofessional.