Blog Network MyKinda To Shut Down Today

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1. Everett
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:43 am

   Shucks

2. Lee Wilkins
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 1:54 am

   As mentioned in the post, I am currently in the process of writing a deep, inside, open and transparent post into MyKinda.

   I will post it here: http://inside.mykinda.com

3. Sam I Am
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 2:15 am

   What you should be checking out and writing about is http://www.thebigwordproject.com/ . 1000 words added at least in the last 24 hours. This thing is taking off in a big way a la the milliondollarhomepage…. crazy Europeans

4. Todor Christov
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 3:38 am

   Quite a few bloggers from Bulgaria will definitely follow the course of events regarding Mr. Wilkins upcoming statement.

5. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 4:00 am

   ‘The sites will remain down until, he says, “we redefine a more profitable sustainable business model.”’

   My suggestion: Close down the part of the business where you pay people to write whom no-one else would pay and hope enough people will read their stuff to pay for it. Then, buy a little van with a grill, drive it up to a building site or a crowded public place, and sell burgers and hotdogs. The buzz is that there’s big profits to be made from selling products for which there is demand.

   My business consultancy fee is still a snip at $3,000 an hour, and that includes mustard and ketchup.

6. add
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 4:20 am

   why would you spam with a site that isn’t even online?

7. Joe T
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 4:27 am

   Seemed like a promising idea, but the name… Mykinda? It sounds like Midwestern US slang, rather than anything suggestive of Eastern Europe.

   Seems like a cultural gaffe to misbrand a site so badly, and that may have contributed to their untimely demise.

8. Yakov
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 5:08 am

   You can always read Eastern European tech news on our blog at http://blog.quintura.com

9. Amusis
   

   February 29th, 2008 at 5:16 am

   The sites will remain down until, he says, “we redefine a more profitable sustainable business model.”

   Uh-huh. That’s ONE way to spin the death of your business. ‘Temporary’, I like that. Enjoy your immersion in the Deadpool, because you won’t be getting out.

   This is a guy who doesn’t know the difference between ‘incurred’ and ‘occured’ (check out last week’s post on MyKinda), yet he’s running a writing network.

   And how do you supervise Eastern European writers when you don’t speak the lingo?

   And who in the world makes money from blogs? Are we to understand that there was no business plan? Does the term ‘budget’ ring a bell, or is that just something boring accountants like to do?

   I like the hotdog grill suggestion. It’s about time so called Internet entrepreneurs learn the very old-economy principle that the only way to make money in ANY business is to produce something people actually think is worth PAYING for. Free product=zero revenue=bankruptcy=Deadpool.

   Page views are not profits. Uniques are not profits. Hits are not profits. Google pageranks are not profits. Registered members are not profits. Just like eyeballs were not profits during the dotcom boom.

   Paying customers are profits.

   And suckering VCs for another ’round of funding’ to cover your losses and delay your inevitable demise doesn’t count as profit. Hoping Google or Microsoft buys you before you run out of cash and die doesn’t count as profit.

   Long live the Deadpool, and may she feed fat in 2008.

10. Dimitar Vesselinov
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 5:55 am

    “The company had total expenses of about €319,000, with no advertising revenue to offset it. Wilkins capitalized the company with €175,000, leaving €144,000 or so in unpaid debts.”

    I just don’t get these numbers.

11. Joe T
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 5:57 am

    Amusis, well said.

    Someone should engrave your post on plaques and hang them in every VC firm’s office.

12. J.P.
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    Amazes my how people like Joe T and Amusis believe that they know something that others don´t.

    Hey Joe T! You should be the new re decorator for Sequoia, I hear that they are making tons of money and need a new one (and once you´re there you can theach them how to invest)

    

13. Piticu21
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    well done there

    It would have be an amaizing expierence but something were wrong. I think he didn’t trusted so many people as he wanted.

14. Shawn
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 8:44 am

    I got dibs on the cool domain name!

15. Gabe
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    I had the same reaction as Dimitar (#11).

    How do you possibly spend over $400,000 on a web service that depended on no new major or minor technology???

    It’s just baffling.

    Even assuming he pays his bloggers triple what Gawker does, the numbers still don’t come close to adding up.

    Did he outsource to the Pentagon?

16. Dimitar Vesselinov
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 9:11 am

    I used to be the chief blogger of MyKinda Bulgaria and I’m very surprised by this huge debt.

17. Radulescu
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 9:28 am

    Maybe when you’ll come to Romania you’ll see that it takes almost no time to spend haf million euros. Take a taxi ride from the airport to the city, rent an apartment for a month and have a coffee with your best friend in a downtown cafe and then tell me how much you are left with

18. Mark Hendrickson
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 10:14 am

    “Yet another blog network” is a bummer of a tag line; doesn’t get me too excited to see it return.

19. Dyde
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 10:46 am

    Amusis, excellent post. This guy was better off investing his money in gold, or oil or just depositing it into money markets. He would earned a better ROI when what he did with MyKinda, not too mention the huge debt he incurred.

20. Svetlana Gladkova
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    I will join Dimitar in his doubts about the huge spendings on MyKinda. As an insider (I used to be on the same chief blogger position as Dimitar but in Russia) I can not grasp it: it looks like Lee tries to make his spendings look huge and his debts tiny. But what I am really interested in is to know Lee’s intentions about handling the debts. I have 6 people in Russia with contracts and money due and they do not care about how much Lee spent and how he did not receive the funding he expected - they care about how much time they spent working for him. Anyone thinks it is the wrong thing to care about? Try working for free for a couple of months yourself.

21. Full of Shit
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Lee Wilkins is full of shit liar. I worked for him. He never spent these sums. If you did Lee show us the company accounts. Pay up or face legals. You left the UK because you were unemployable and uninvestable and I guess no one in Eastern Europe will want you to work for them.

22. Lee Wilkins
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    my initial response is here:

    http://inside.mykinda.com/29/02/2008/great-regret

23. mykinda writer
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    Guys, we are being pulled by the leg here. Not paying somebody’s money and making him work for free is not a surprising practice in Eastern Europe. The opposite is. There is a movie: “Moscow doesn’t believe in tears”. Why should minimum wage Eastern-European writers share the hazards and the risks of an online business project equally with its leader? They wouldn’t be sharing the whole profit, would they?

    I do not doubt the huge spendings of this project. I am sure they are a flat lie. Not paying your authors their miserable compensation, however, is not only a lie, it is a “theft”. Theft is illegal and punishable in court. Especially when you do have a written and signed contract. Three months people working for free and not getting even one cent in return…What kind of business is that? Definitely not mykinda business. But it is my lawyer’s kinda case. If I were mr Wilkins, I would be selling my car to pay my debts a.s.a.p.

    Put aside the tsunami of negative PR and bad reputation that will follow Lee Wilkins and all his business ventures throughout the next years. It is already forming. And I don’t think its worth the miserable amount of money due. Let’s concentrate on legal actions. The clock is ticking. People are expecting their money and Wilkins won’t get away so easy with not paying.

    Never lie an Eastern European. Especially a Russian :)) And don’t get this as a thread. It is a friendly advice. I suggest you take the easy way out of this situation, or there are legal advisers who will be more than happy to show you the other way around…

24. Mircea
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    I don’t want to be rude or something but I’ve seen this scenario several times when I lived in Romania: some investors from outside coming to “invest” in Romania and in the end some of their businesses went down the toliet acummulating debts (and leaving un-paid workers to struggle for their rights - which the local government didn’t care too much).

    But their founders left the country with pockets full of money! Without problems from the romanian justice…

    This MyKinda investment it’s a small one, a fish in an ocean…but it seems it follows the pattern described above (althought most of those “investment were in other fields than tech”).
    I really hope not to be like that…and I really hope Mr. Wilkins does what he says…at least pay the writers.

25. Mircea
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    ———-
    The investment of €175,000 is an accumulation of office space, people in Romania, Russia, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, lawyer, taxes, machines, furniture, etc etc. This is a fact.

    For me as an individual, trying to bootstrap a great concept, it was an experience, it was ambitious. I went and did something I strongly believed in. It failed, for now. But at least I did it.
    ———–

    Why did he need office space, furniture and all that?? Why couldn’t he make a virtual office? Working all thru the internet? And just pay the writers to write? In their time, on their desk, in their house?
    I know, it’s maybe harder to work like that if you don’t see and don’t interact with them with your writers face to face …but you try many of them and who are serious will stay, who are not will go.

    At least that’s what I’m trying to do with http://www.mytestbox.com (hopefully, it will go somewhere).

    Was it absolutely necessary to open office spaces with all those incurred costs?

    That doesn’t seem to be “bootstrapping”…

26. mykinda writer
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 11:36 pm

    Well, let’s exclude “people” from the equation, because people, obviously, didn’t get paid. Writers did work in their time, on their desk, and in their house. Or at least I did. Many other serious authors who believed both in Wilkins’ idea and his project also did. Speaking of lawyers and taxes, let’s say it straight - we are no dumb people. Most of us already have some business experience in their background. It takes no more than 500 EUR to register a company in each of the four countries. As a matter of fact, such companies didn’t appear. Al least not in my country, and as I am deeper investigating the case with my lawyers, they didn’t appear in other countries as well. So, what kind of “furniture” and “machines” are we speaking about? A desk and a computer for mr Wilkins himself? Yes, may be he hired an office in Bucharest, but I doubt it, because I haven’t personally seen this office. Such an experiment, (or should we called it by its real name - such a fraud) can be organized from any internet caffe.

    As I said in my earlier comment, we are used to frauds, liars and thieves. We are fed up with them. And mykinda shows all the symptoms of a well-known disease.

    “I went and did something I strongly believed in. It failed, for now. But at least I did it.” We believed in it too. Worse, we trusted mr Wilkins. But the only thing he “did” by now is to take advantage of people he doesn’t even know in person and to use their time, work, ideas and authors’ rights for free. May be we’ll never get our money. May be we’ll never see this man in court, as he may just “disappear” like all the other “foreign investors”, who came, stole from local people and left their debts and bills unpaid.

    But we will monitor this man and all his business ventures for the future, so that no more honest, hard working, talented and underpaid people from poor countries could fall into his nets. And that’s the least we can do. As I mentioned above, if I were Wilkins, I’d be selling my car to pay the authors a.s.a.p. A huge scandal, legal cases, dead reputation and non-profit organizations, together with international law-enforcement agencies sniffing in your back everywhere you go is just a part of the alternative…

27. mykinda writer
    

    February 29th, 2008 at 11:46 pm

    Oh, and let’s not forget the tax authorities, as I am sure there are plenty of surprises waiting for them, hidden under Mr Wilkins’ “business adventure” in Easter Europe. It is a matter of weeks and even days to start all legal procedures now. The clock is ticking…

28. Lee Wilkins
    

    March 1st, 2008 at 12:08 am

    To All MK

    Please feel free to IM me today to discuss how I am getting payment to you ALL, I am not running away from this problem.

    Skype: lee.wilkins
    Yahoo!: lee_wilki
    Gtalk: lee.a.wilkins

    If I do not respond instantly, I am not ignoring you, I am sure I will have multiple chats on the go.

29. Mykinda writer
    

    March 3rd, 2008 at 7:19 am

    Just a few words to tell you that working for Mykinda and Mr. Wilkins were not that nightmarish those having posted above me say. As far as I am concerned, issues such as payment made on time, no real involvement in the editorial policy and a nice team to work with were just a few great assets for a journalist. I am very sorry he had to close down for the time being. This shows how difficult making business in Romania really is.

30. Longanlon
    

    March 4th, 2008 at 4:16 am

    “I am currently in the process of writing a deep, inside, open and transparent post into MyKinda.”

    Inside, open and transparent is good, but paycheck will be better.

31. mykinda writer
    

    March 6th, 2008 at 4:01 pm

    When I was young, I used to believe in the ‘our word, our bond” kinda shit. Not that we don’t have the same explanation in our language, it is just that we hoped there were people outside our boundaries, who had created this slogan some 300 yrs ago, and who could be a little more honest and decent, a little more advanced than us… The ugly face of reality, though, shows itself. It comes to say that people we’ve been taught to respect as honest merchants possess the same pattern of behavior as any Mid-Balkan crook: “Use while necessary and then abuse. Abandon ship. Let down the dumb shit-heads who had supported you, and who had believed in you, let them suffer all the losses of your “brilliant” ideas”.
    Thank you, but no, thanks! Not this time! We are fed up with experiments like this. This is simply not the right place, not the right people and the right time. Mr Wilkins had three months to pay. He didn’t. Moscow doesn’t believe in tears. Now he has very limited time to pay off his debts or he will meet his debtors in court. We will sue your ass to hell, Mr Wilkins! Be a man and take a managerial decision. Or be prepared to suffer all the legal consequences!!!!

32. Esquire
    

    March 18th, 2008 at 2:48 am

    Seems that the promised “deep, inside, open and transparent post into MyKinda” was another lie by Lee Wilkins. Some of his former blog writers are now preparing to sue the liar to get paid in full.

33. Roald
    

    March 25th, 2008 at 12:42 pm

    Looking back at those “deadpooled” projects,
    and looking at http://www.mykinda.com,
    it’s almost funny to see that it still seems “alive”…
    (but with no fresh content since end february)…

34. George Hari Popescu
    

    March 26th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    Still waiting the promised personal e-mail from Lee. I know he will not forget to write to everybody, as he promised.