Crowdsourcing sounds good in theory—pull together a bunch of smart, motivated individuals from across the Web to create a new product or business—but in practice it is not so easy to pull off. One of the first major casualties of the crowdsourcing movement looks like it will be Cambrian House, the Calgary startup that tries to organize the crowd around creating new ideas for Websites and software products. After unsuccessfully trying to raise a new round of capital, it is our understanding that the startup has negotiated a fire sale of its intellectual property, assets, Website (and whatever community remains after the sale) to Spencer Trask Ventures, a New York venture firm inspired by the financier who originally backed Thomas Edison.
The deal is structured as an asset purchase, after devolving through various stages from initial talk of a new investment to a joint venture to a buyout. The more Spencer Trask looked, the less it offered. Spencer Trask is basically buying the Cambrian House platform and its community for a fraction of the $7.75 million that investors have already put into the company. We cannot yet confirm an exact figure, but one source speculates that it could be less than $1 million. Spencer Trask plans on taking the assets and rolling it into VenCorps, a Cambrian House project in development that wants to apply the crowdsourcing concept to venture capital. Sean Wise, a Canadian “venture consultant,” is heading up VenCorps and (presumably) whatever is left of Cambrian House. A Cambrian House spokesperson (VP of Communications Jasmine Antonick) contacted confirms that the sale has gone through and that the site will “dissolve” in three months. We are placing Cambrian House in the deadpool.
So far, 6935 ideas have been created on the Cambrian House site. Some of them must be worth pursuing, no? Perhaps. In addition to VenCorps, Cambrian House itself will be keeping some of its more successful projects alive, including desktop fighter game Gwabs, independent-film funding service FilmRiot, Digg-like charity Greedy or Needy, mobile app testing site Mob4Hire, and virtual gift-wrapping app Prezzle. It will also retain rights to its source code and try to license it to others through an application called Knottle and a platform called Chaordix, both yet to be released. Many of these ideas didn’t gain traction until they were invested in and championed by Cambrian House itself, which again makes you wonder whether any good ideas can actually grow into full-fledged products from an unaffiliated crowd.
To be charitable, maybe Cambrian House just suffered from poor execution and Spencer Trask thinks it can do better. But crowdsourced venture capital? If the crowd cannot even make a decent Web app, the chances of its being able to allocate millions of dollars more efficiently than seasoned pros does not seem terribly great.
The imminent demise of Cambrian House is a cautionary tale for other startups, such as Kluster, CrowdSpirit, CrowdSpring, and FellowForce, trying to cut their teeth in the nascent crowdsourcing industry. They all have their own approach, and experimentation is necessary to find the right one.
The fall of Cambrian House won’t deter them from trying. For instance, Kluster takes a more structured approach by breaking down projects into manageable stages and has thought through the incentives a little differently. And CrowdSPRING, which focuses on designs for Website and marketing materials, is formally launching tomorrow after picking a winner for the $5,000 contest to design its own Website.
Some of these will survive, and some won’t. The key is attracting the right community of active contributors and structuring the rewards in such a way that makes it easy to participate. Or is crowdsourcing simply a bad idea that should be put to rest?
Update: In a comment below, Cambrian House CEO Michael Sikorsky reflects (excerpt):
Indeed, our model failed. In short: we became a destination people loved to bookmark more than they loved to actively visit (our traffic pattern was scarily VC-ish). The limiting reagent in the startup equation is not ideas, but amazing founding teams.
A key assumption for us, which proved out NOT true: given a great idea with great community support and great market test data, we would be able to find (crowdsource) a team willing to execute it OR we could execute it ourselves. We needed amazing founding teams for each of the ideas – this is where our model fell short.
What we learned: it would have been better to back great teams with horrible ideas because most of the heavy lifting kept falling back on us, or a few select community members. A vicious cycle was created leading all of us to get more and more diffuse.
Hence: the wisdom of crowds worked well in the model, but it was our participation of crowds aspect which broke down. Trying to find people willing or capable to take on the offspring (our outputs) of the CH model was hard and/or incredibly time consuming.
It is not often you get such an honest assessment of why a business failed from a CEO in the midst of its demise. Sikorsky also disputes that it was a “fire sale,” but declines to give any specifics on the price. He also notes that Cambrian House as a company will continue, even if the site will die, and still owns its intellectual property.
Update 2 (5/20/2008): The company has issued two press releases. One details the sale of assets to Spencer Trask and the other emphasizes that Cambrian House is still a going concern, albeit with a totally different strategy of selling “crowdsourcing in a box” (i.e., licensing its technology to other sites that want to make a go at crowdsourcing). And here’s a 26-minute video Sikorsky made to explain what is happening at Cambrian House titled VenCorps, TechCrunch, and a Loong Talk:
I’d like to understand what the investors of Cambrian House are feeling right now and if a return from their $7.5 million will ever be realized. I’m not sure how a company that was supposedly built with a ‘great’ team can go out spending money on stunts and making noise when there was nothing to make noise about. Trying to get buy in and public attention through costly PR events on just an idea that kept evolving every week seems careless and bad leadership. If I were an investor at Cambrian House I’d be pulling out my hear out and screaming to get everyone together and demand accountability. I can’t assume that most investors were oil or tech rich VC that wouldn’t miss their $$. Sounds like there are a lot of investor either first time or friends and family members who’s money will be lost and won’t be happy, as I know of two investors that fit the later profile.
Sure I’ve had my share of investments and more then not they result in failure, however, the difference here is that all of the companies I’ve invested in have been frugal with their $$$ until they actually had something that generated at least some revenue and knew where they were going.
I guess my comments are really about offering my condolences to the shareholders and investors of Cambrian House. It seems like the CEO is quick to admit mistakes but seems to continue to press on as if nothing is wrong and that there is no need for worrying and that Cambrian House will still make money. Help me understand really how this will happen.
I’d love to hear from investors of the company on their take and how they feel about the recent posts and news. From what I’ve heard, there were a minimum of two rounds of investments and those in the first round who were essentially the ‘founders’ have disbanded and upset with the direction of the company. I’m pretty sure this is accurate but feel free to prove me wrong.
PS @46 - Good CEO? I’m not bashing the CEO but sounds like bad direction and leadership. I’d agree if it was bad company name, bad logo, good CEO at an investment of $1million or so, but $7.5 for what they’ve done… tough pill to swallow.
Sure I’ve had my share of investments and more then not they result in failure, however, the difference here is that all of the companies I’ve invested in have been frugal with their $$$ until they acutally had something that generated at least some revenue and knew where they were going.
I guess my comments are really about offering my condolences to the shareholders and investors of Cambrian House. It seems like the CEO is quick to admit mistakes but seems to continue to press on as if nothing is wrong and that there is no need for worrying.
I’d love to hear from investors of the company on their take and how they feel about the recent posts and news. From what I’ve heard, there were a minimum of two rounds of investments and those in the first round who were essentially the ‘founders’ have disbanded and upset with the direction of the company. I’m pretty sure this is accurate but feel free to prove me wrong.
PS @46 - Good CEO? I’m not bashing the CEO but sounds like bad direction and leadership. I’d agree if it was bad company name, bad logo, good CEO at an investment of $1million or so, but $7.5 for what they’ve done… tough pill to swallow.
@ Hey Perry - you hit the nail on the head - sounds exactly like a self promoting CEO. Sounds like Michael Sikorsky spent more time worrying about which magazine and forum he could be in than actually creating something that provided shareholder value. I’ve been following the Cambrian House story for some time now and from an outsider looking in, was always baffled how many times I kept reading the same thing over again but with a new spin and twist. I honestly was cheering for CH and thought that they’d find their way. You can only spin it so many ways until it catches up to you. Sikorsky - charismatic yes, good CEO - doesn’t look that way.
@50 Tech Investor - I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a lot of investors sharing your thoughts and demanding answers right now. Lot of s%*t has been thrown on the wall and seems to me like it’s all starting to come out.
Let me add another crowdsourcing site to the list mentioned in the article: FOSS Factory (www.fossfactory.org). We intend to aggregate the critical mass necessary to implement niche software needs that are ignored by large software corporations and are too expensive and complex to be developed by smaller companies. We do that by providing an online model that enables collaborative design, funding and development of any free/open source software idea.
So we are a crowdsourcing site that is focused on free/open source software only, and are truly collaborative in all aspects of development.
Check us out, we have recently launched. The source code of the site is free/open source as well (we believe in our product) and we are using the help of the community in developing the site itself (we eat our own dog food!). First successful submission happened yesterday, the project was to enable anyone to vote for multiple projects on our site.
Right now we’re working on finding a beach head; a project that is commercially attractive, is in a field that has a strong community base, and most importantly has a spear head or a dedicated person who wants to complete the project. Right now our potential beach head is a software project that enables a webcam to capture motion. That’s a niche software need for the homebrew video game development community. Let’s see how it goes!
John - love your post. I’m sure there are a lot of questions the investors have right now and hopefully they’ll get their answers. It would be a big win for Sikorsky if he would be able to at least monitize their products and be able to give something back to the investors.
I am Paul Poutanen and I am President of Mob4hire (Crowdsourced Mobile Application Testing).
Firstly, I would like to state that Mob4hire was launched entirely using members of the Cambrian House community but not with Cambrian House investment. Mob4Hire is not and has never been owned by Cambrian House in whole or in part. Mob4hire Inc. is a private corporation. I think it was a little unclear above.
Secondly, Mob4hire has been built using some amazing people from the Cambrian House community. Michael’s comments re having a great team are very true. I feel lucky to have the truly amazing people we have on our team. We are doing very well and we plan on continuing to do so with our particular version of crowdsourcing.
We would have not been able to launch without Cambrian House. However, it is important to realize that a startup is a startup. (with or without crowdsourcing). Nothing is magical. It takes hard work and long hours to achieve your dreams.
@Paul Poutanen #54
So are you saying that CH employees while on the CH payroll were moonlighting to help you build mob4hire? Were they using knowledge gained at CH at the expense of CH shareholders?
Or were these CH community members getting together on the CH website?
Either way if CH enabled this shouldn’t CH be sharing in this or were you able to find a way to avoid their royalty sharing program? Seems to me this is much more of a story of CH’s failure to create and retain value than any sort of success - perhaps CH’s sahreholders will want to share in the fruits of their investment?
@john #54
Mob4hire was built with community members from Cambrian House not staff.
The royality sharing program has to do with sharing with community members not Cambrian House.
Mob4hire owns 100% of its intellectual property.
I for one look forward to this change in a positive light. Sounds like a “rebirth” is a great opportunity to innovate based on first hand experience.
Just for the record, my first idea passed through the Cambrianhouse beehive. CH turned out to be an invaluable source to test and filter out the noise in your head.
/ooper
http://www.socialthumbs.com
@Tech Investor #50
I’m a CH investor. For the most part, this is not as bad as the article portrays it. But hey, that’s what media is about these days right? Shock value.
Regardless, it’s sad to see the state CH is in. It’s not so much the money as it is the relationship with former employees and its reputation locally. They managed to churn through a lot of people in a hack n’ slash sort of way. I don’t get a lot of positive feelings from former employees.
Furthermore, while I trust that Mr. Sikorsky wants to do the right thing, at this point it’s not about intention or trust. It’s about capability. I fully trust that Michael could lead a successful project or business toward a positive end, but its in these tough times where he’s untested as a CEO. He’s well read and applies a lot of effort, but I’m just not sure the capability is there. If there is a reason to replace him, it would simply be for a lack of experience in digging a company and a lot of potentially angry investors, ex-employees and a community out of a $7 million dollar hole.
Perhaps Sean Wise is up to that challenge. I look forward to seeing the new structure.
Here’s my view as a long time member of the CH community. For those who don’t actually know the different between a CH community member and a CH employee, maybe you should join up. It demonstrates a certain lack of credibility.
The CH model in recent years has intended to facilitate introducing people from different backgrounds (entrepreneurs, developers, marketers, managers etc.) and through using the collaborative features of the site, to create a mixing pot that along with the community members, you’d throw in some ideas and if the stars were all aligned, you’d end up with a valid business idea, committed participants and initiation of the next steps of business planning / execution.
No one said it would happen hourly, daily, weekly, yearly. No one can always pick a winner and it takes a lot of ideas and people to finally get a few runs on the board. Arguably cash incentives couldwould have increased momentum but without it, the signs have certainly been promising on a smaller scale.
This year it seems as though CH really has started to gain momentum. So from my perspective, I see the new model announced in the times as crowdsourcing evolution, continued innovation and a warning to sites that came along after CH that they’d better pay attention because these guys are moving closer and closer to mastering the wisdom of crowds and turning it into m00la for everyone involved.
To me, behind the scenes, VenCorps was always in existence. Sean Wise was available to provide guidance to popular ideas and I’m sure there would have been VC opportunities if he liked what he saw amongst the pool.
From the little information we’re reading, the new model is taking the approach above and making it a formal part of the Cambrian lifecycle. A new name helps to spice it up a little I guess but I’d be just as happy with it staying the same.
The thing that does annoy me, however, is that it appears that they’ve gone outside of the community to leak details of the new model first. This is a very minor issue and I’ll build my bridge as soon as I hit submit on this post.
I have been active on cambrianhouse.com for a while and throughout the journey I have and continue to, meet some amazing people and am also currently working (albeit slowly) on making a great idea a business reality. Amazingly, this is without either myself or my partner needing cash incentives up front, just like mob4hire.com. The community is great and I hope that the spirit continues within CH 3.0.
@ Paul #57
maybe this is why CH was destined to fail… if the CH members
- BUT not CH -
could share in the idea that was mob4hire, even though it was CH’s platform which allowed them to know about you AND participate in mob4hire THEN how does CH make money?
If you get the benfits of the CH community but the company and the shareholders that made the community possible don’t get anything then CH must be a charity?
As Sikorsky and you both agree that Mob4hire was built on the CH platform, and it was the shareholders of CH which made the platform possible, are they not being unfairly cut out?
I suspect CH’s investors did not finance it to create a charity, they invested to create a business.
Is it possible to use CH’s platform and community without CH participating in the upside? If so, then at best CH’s management is naive if not negligent.
Did you ever check out some of the ideas in the monthly idea section? My favorites last month were 1) Canope for Canoe (yes, they couldn’t even spell canopy correctly) 2) Crowdsourced Food Delivery - where customers would deliver food (and boogers) to other customers. Gross.
Given the quality of ideas and lack of proven Cambrian business models, maybe CH should have crowdsourced some standards for idea submission and publications (i.e. let’s screen some ideas before letting them go live).
I’m also unfortunately a CH investor (but fortunately only a small amount of $$$).
@#51 Tech Investor, you seem to have it dead on. A decent idea in the hands of weak leadership. I first got involved over a year ago. But shame on me, only after I invested did I dig deeper into Mr. Michael Sikorsky’s background and experience.
@#50 Hey Perry, you are right, Sikorsky first introduced himself to me by talking about all his multiple previous startups. But just check his LinkedIn profile and you see that a lack of real direct experience in running a company or even directing a management team. Also almost half of the professional listings under his professional experience are as him being an ‘angel investor’ for companies???? Is that really considered professional experience? I’ve never listed on my resume where I have invested $25k into some private venture……
Eric is right about execution being the important followup to a good idea. There has been a steady stream of experienced top-notch talent that came and went through the Cambrian company. That’s always a warning sign and I guess a leadership issue once again. You’d think that would have been a tipoff to the board of directors months and months ago about where the company was heading and where the problems were?
I would agree with what @#52 Right on the money said. Sikorsky obsesses alot about what interviews he’s done and articles he was quoted in, even listing them all on his LinkedIn. A lot of energy put towards self-promotion bluster instead of executing, building/retaining a strong team, and delivering revenue.
Yah, I feel a bit stupid for going in without better due diligence, but at least I didn’t bet my firstborn child on this gamble. And I’m not trying to slam Sikorsky because he sure has a knack for promoting ideas (and himself) and convincing people he knows what he’s doing. But he sure hasn’t proven himself as a CEO who can lay out a good strategy, execute on a plan, oversee operations, and get a company to revenue. My fault for buying in blindly.
@#63 Warren:
Sorry to hear about your loss. I have noticed over the past 2 years how many people have come and gone on the Cambrian House staff website. I always assumed they were contractors being brought in to help build something and then moved on.
@#55 Paul Poutanen
From your blog, it looks like you either work for Cambrian House or, in the very least, act as an advisor (is says as much in your blog and the Cambrian House People page has a ‘Paul’ listed as an advisor). Does that really make you a fair judge of whether this system works? Are you also a shareholder in Cambrian House?
@#64 Hey Perry:
What I have heard from a handful of people who used to work there is that every person at Cambrian House was brought on first as a contractor and also required to become an investor in the company. Some great people were badly matched to unsuitable roles/projects and there were lots of complaints about chaotic project requirements, control issues, lack of support, respect, etc. etc. Maybe it is a biased sample, but none of them aren’t happy to be out of there. The big complaint is that they felt the company was just randomly burning through the cash (and people) without having the discipline to complete any products.
@65 Warren
As an investor, were you given any indication that this Vencorp activity is in the works? Have they sent you anything?
@66 Hey Perry:
I know an investor email newsletter update was sent out to us 1-2 months ago. I can not recall if there was anything about Vencorp in it though. I had already given up on this investment by then so I only skimmed it.
My hope is that all of you will understand what actually happened someday down the road. None of you know the entire story.
Michael is committed to his shareholders and providing them with a return.
At this I’m sure Michael will succeed.
@ cookiemonster
Some of us DO know Michael and what sort of stuff he has pulled, lied about, done, and regardless of how ‘committed to his shareholders’ he is, he is NOT a good person. Quite far from it. Ask his old business partners, his friends, people he looked in the eye and swore he would be there for. Yeah ask THOSE people and you’ll find out a whole other side.
Cambrian House failed for a whole bunch of reasons. You just have to read all the comments here to know the challenges it faced. One thing I would like to add is that there still is a number of GREAT people still working for Cambrian House. I’ve heard it’s a great place to work regardless of the leadership from Michael. I wish all the best to them if Cambrian House closes.
@ Jeffery 69.
Like I said…you don’t know the whole story.
I know why CH failed. Lots of simple reasons and lots of complex reasons.
(No one here mentions that they were trying to build five companies at once-and not one of the employees of the past or present could push any of those sub-companies to the next level - some team!)
Sure, blame it all on Michael - it’s like blaming the entire problem the US is facing with the economy solely on George Bush…as if he is the only person running the country.
That’s pretty ruthless though, judging that someone is “NOT a good person.” Who are you, God? And who should he “be there for?” He’s still there (for Cambrian House), pressing forward.
Outta here.
@cookiemonster
So, I’m guessing you’re either MJ or one of his brain washed minions. Hijacking this thread with his own self-serving BS while his company is drowning is fairly representative of his narcissism.
I’ve heard it was mostly his fault. Lying to investors by stretching the truth to its limits, wasting valuable company resources at critical times on vanity projects, not even knowing/caring about what his company was building for months on end, abusing company funds for his own self-promotion, firing dozens of employees without a hint of real human emotion, betraying his closest friends, misrepresenting activities and opportunities to the board and the shareholders. Really swell human being.
After all that crap in the presentation about acting as if karma exists… I suppose that applies to everyone except him? You couldn’t name one friend he brought into that company that thinks the same of him today.
Hi All: Mike Sikorsky along with several other crowdsourcing company founders will be at a Stanford / MIT VLAB event on Tuesday May 20th. We’re crowdsourcing questions for the panel — this sounds like a great group to tap into. Please post any questions you think should be asked of CH and other companies to:
http://ask.metafilter.com/9127.....wdsourcing
Thanks!
Event Info:
http://www.vlab.org/article.html?aid=184
@70 cookiemonster
I worked there. I’m guessing you did not.
Prio CH models failed due to poor execution. Simple as that. Blame the team(s) if you want. The simple fact is MJ’s inability to distribute authority killed anyone’s ability to move an initiative forward. Robinhood Fund was an exception and when it gained initial traction, the writing was on the wall. Every member on that team was pulled and it was left to die.
A real shame.
All I know is I witnessed the chaos first hand and any attempt to exonerate MJ while stringing up his teams is wrong.
5 companies under 1 roof….MJ’s idea.
@ cookiemonster… why don’t you tell us the whole story then? I’m an investor in CH and after reading all the posts, including the last few ones by Google, Jeffery and Warren I couldn’t agree more. It’s sad that it’s come to all of this but it was only a matter of time before investors, past friends, and ex-CH workers started to share their thoughts and voice their opinions around what has happened in the past few years at CH. I personally am insulted by the way I had to hear about where the new turn of events through these posts and not directly through CH which leads me to believe the ship has already sunk. What happened to all the promises of a tight community, informing shareholders every step of the way… and a bigger question I have is - while we are all blaming MJ, where’s the accountability from the Board. We put our trust at the beginning in MJ and when that failed looked to the board to control the spending and MJ’s destructive ways. I still don’t understand how a company of less than 25 people can spend $7.5 million in only 2 years the way CH did. I really want answers.
And cookiemonster - just for the record, your post just validated everything everyone has said on this thread based on your remarks. Google- you’re probably right, either MJ or one of the few CH employees left still being manipulated by his ways (but honeslty - only MJ would bash the past and Present team publically like it’s their fault when they don’t do anything without his direction). At least if you’re going to try and defend MJ and CH, add some substance behind your defense.
I guess what I’m really looking for is for the investors of CH to really get together and have a serious and long discussion around what we do from here. I think it’s important to mention that I’m not pissed that my investment in CH may already be lost - that’s the nature of investing. I’m PISSED because of exactly what everyone on this thread has talked about because it’s true - so cookiemonster - we don’t know the whole story? Let me summarize - throughout the investment pitches, MJ talked about building a company around a great team, reached out to all his friends for investments to start a great company and sold the idea to investors that it wasn’t even just about an idea but about the founding team members and what they brought to the table. Oh, and yeah Google – you’re right about the “Whether Karma exists or not, act as if it does” crap MJ fed to everyone as his closer… So after all the money came in what happens? He destroys the team, tells everyone they’re crap, spits at Karma in the face and uses everyone in his path (wait a second, isn’t the CH logo a Viking? Hmmmm interesting).
The thing is all this info and opinions expressed by everyone on this thread is not new. In fact, people have been feeling it and thinking it for years, but for the sake of the company, we all kept our mouths shut and that’s just not going to happen anymore.
Here’s a message to Michael Sikorsky: While there are a lot of angry people out there right now in the CH community, why don’t you address the shareholders and at least face the music. If it’s not as bad as some people say it is, why are we not hearing from anyone?!?! I think a CH investor meeting would be in order within the next few weeks, whether MJ organizes one or the investors do. I just feel that a lot of crap has surfaced recently and every person deserves to defend their name and reputation so here’s your chance.
@73 Core Values
It sound about as bad as I had been hearing. When you look at the pedigrees of many of the people who passed through the Cambrian doors (veteran programmers, experienced project managers, previous company owners, people who have worked many years for large successful companies) it is hard to imagine they were not able to produce at least one decent product. It becomes hard to blame the individual team members after a while.
From what I understand, the only people still there day to day are really junior folks just out of school, I’m guessing all under 30. All of the senior people are long gone.
@74 Tech Warrior
You ask a great question, where was the board through all of this? You would think that anyone with the knowledge and background needed to serve on the board of an internet tech company would have seen the warning signs and pinpointed the root of the problem a long time ago.
@Warren
There was some all world talent all right. That said, all world talent doesn’t always make for a great team. In this case, it obviously didn’t. I suppose the group of us could have done a better job at confronting MJ and insisting he articulate the vision and get out of the way while it was being implemented.
That’s a regret I’ll always have.
I’m a little confused, perhaps someone here can help me.
where to start…
1st I am an investor in CH, but admittedly, and it is now more apparrent than ever, a novice at investing.
2 years ago I decided to invest in a ‘private’ company here in Calgary. I met with 3 CEO’s - Curve Dental, Shopster, and of course CH.
Curve - Matt, Dorey seems like a nice guy, pretty young though and dentistry…boring!
Shopster - Sarath Samer…? Obviously very smart, good experience, but kept talking about business model and revenue streams and how to make the company profitable for Shareholders and customers… too business like.
CH - MJ Sikorsky Crazy hair, jeans lot’s of big ideas and we’ll figure out the business plan as we go along… the stuff of dot-com wet dreams… really exciting!!
Now… Curve went through some rough times, but are growing… guess what, there will always be dentists. Shopster… last I heard they had made a few million in sales last quarter, CH… ah yes… still trying to figure out the business model and 7.7M spent on educating themselves on what doesn’t work.
I wanted dot-com excitement and guess i got it. Wish I had put my money with one of the guys who were trying to make money. That’s what learned.
But this is my question… I will ask MJ directly, but frankly don’t really trust him. He spins everything, don’t know what to believe anymore.
IF CH is shutting down BUT “retaining its IP” who owns it?
IF CH is reinventing itself as VENCORP does that mean I own shares of VENCORP? I would think so… then how much, how much of VENCORP do CH shareholders get for 7.7M?
What about Mob4hire? MJ says it was built using CH, Paul agrees that he did it using CH. Why doesn’t CH own any of it? Are CH insiders shareholders in Mob4hire? If I paid for this platform to build mob4hire, how come I don’t own any? Something stinks here.
Finally, as an investor i do think i need to take responsibility for not getting involved. people were in and out like flies, when the entire founding team leaves you know you have a problem. I thought the board was supposed to represent shareholders, but they never talked to us, only MJ talked to us. Is this how it is in every private company?
anyways, if anyone has answers i would like to hear it.
So, I’m a bit confused. What about:
http://www.killingmichael.com
and
http://www.followthewhitelaptop.com
?
i think that #78 is inappropriate.. if only because some people are dumb enough to take it seriously.
@Confused
I heard the KillingMichael blog took 6 weeks of combined design work, at a time when the entire team was idly waiting for a CH site redesign. At the company’s make or break moment, he took away the designers to work on his vanity project. When nothing was happening and it was obvious the ship was sinking, the rest of the founding team simply walked away last summer.
And oh yeah, he has never posted once to that blog. What a perfect representation of his interest in his image more than hard work. Riding in his Porsche in the header image, pretending like he’s a cool high roller. MJ operates entirely on falsehoods. What a fraud.
What do you mean, #79 john? You think I made that? Check the date if you think that:
http://reports.internic.net/cg.....ype=domain
@80 Google
Why would the founding team walkaway if they were all investors in the company as was suggested by an earlier post?
@82 Big Red
That should tell you about how strongly they felt about leaving. They were financially incentivized, and yet still walked away rather than be associated with what was happening. All early employees were considered founders. By now CH has had 100% turnover in its engineering team TWICE. Talk about dead canaries in the coal mine.
@ 80 Google and 82 Big Red.
Just to clarify, the rest of the founding team didn’t just simply walk away. From what I heard the environment got so bad some had to leave for their own personal sanity and others seemed to have been pushed out. The statement of them walking away isn’t an accurate representation of them simply giving up and MJ staying the course and pressing on.
There were a lot of founders and individuals that were there from the start that put up a lot of cash because they thought they could make a difference, however, that became increasingly challenging when they were subjected to inappropriate criticism and verbal abuse. I could really go on about this but I think now it’s almost seems like beating a dead horse and I think everyone now gets the picture on how people were treated.
I think this would be a lot more interesting (and useful) if you guys posted under your real names. It’s easy to talk big and try to destroy someone’s character when you’re hiding behind an internet pseudonym. I think MJ would be quick to admit that he wasn’t perfect, but some of the personal attacks are a bit much.
@ Dustin #85:
I think it’s called “keeping from getting sued”.
I think this would be a lot more interesting if we placed bets on what people’s real names are!
I’d wager a $50 on Tech Warrior and Core Values. I mean, come on, we all know who Tech Warrior is…
And I’d wager a $100 on cookiemonster. The punctuation and language from his earlier post makes it pretty obvious.
@Dustin
Why don’t you get the ball rolling?
Factor1: Aggressive narcissism
1. Glibness / superficial charm
2. Grandiose sense of self-worth
3. Pathological lying
4. Cunning / manipulative
5. Lack of remorse or guilt
6. Shallow
7. Callous / lack of empathy
8. Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
9. Promiscuous sexual behavior
Factor2: Socially deviant lifestyle
1. Need for stimulation / proneness to boredom
2. Parasitic lifestyle
3. Poor behavioral control
4. Lack of realistic, long-term goals
5. Impulsivity
6. Irresponsibility
7. Juvenile delinquency
8. Early behavior problems
9. Many short-term marital relationships
10. Revocation of conditional release
Can I ask if anyone here has used the site? like posted a idea, even a stupid on… reviewed a few? I was just wondering.
I have been a long time community member of CH… I love the community. I use to love the transparency of the company… they had demo days where the community could participate in design process and see where everything was going… that was a few years ago…
Now we have
Gwabs - I paid for it over a year and a half ago… and still no game… and apparently its crowdsourced… I guarantee they market it as the world’s first crowdsourced game when no work was done by anyone other than employees…
Prezzle - they were in talks with some MAJOR company’s about partnering… Then they abandoned it… after spending how much on it? Not only that members of the community got together that had the background to take the product to the next level and offered to buy it and let CH have a %. Talks were ongoing and then suddenly no response to calls or emails…
Follow the White Laptop - Not a bad idea, take a shiny new state of the art Mac and have tech gods sign it… and then forget about it… then forget about is some more… then find it in the closet somewhere… have one more person sign it… then perhaps think of ebaying it off to help some poor children… oh wait its sill lost…
Endless Domain buying- CH owns so many domain names its crazy… most of them… sorry all of them will never be used… a good % of the are so stupid it makes me want to vomit!
Trips for nothing- It sounds like they are never home… ever… like they would go talk to someone about how great they are… while no one was at home making the thing that is suppose to make them great! Oups… we need a product.
Robin Hood Fund… now GreedyorNeedy… at one point that was the only thing making them money and so what do they do… fire the team… and then a major company comes in and says they want to do something big with it… and all of a sudden its popular again…
Partnerships that lead nowhere- Mashery, HotHead Games, just to name a few
Battle Axe Second life- they created a place in second life and staffed it… all day…
Insulting members of the community- the community is your bread and butter, to make fun of them is stupid
CH Foundation… * 1% Profits - to a charity of choice
* 1% Equity - reserved at inception
* 1% Time- volunteered by employees
Well the 1% profit is never going to happen… but come on that’s for the press to eat up
“We really are built to flip. I’m the only guy who says that out loud. I don’t know why everyone lies.” Said during the Web 2.0 in 2007… Just what the community wants to hear
3 offices- NY, Valley and Calgary
When I think of all the money that was wasted…
Interesting thread. A ton of truth and a ton of confusion. Also, nice to see Saigon and Joyce returning to CH after being banished from the site.
All in all, I’m very familiar with many of the community members on the site since I’ve been there since they fed google. I could go on and on about things, but I do just want to add that the most valuable part of the site for me has been the people I’ve met on it. As a community member it’s been a great experience interacting with some outstanding people. Of course, I can still appreciate an investors anger.
It will be interesting to see how everything goes dow. Still lots of questions about the existing CH site, Greedy Or Needy, Prezzle (which still displays that the next version is coming soon), Film Funder, and of course Gwabs to name a few.
i’m a former employee with no hard feelings, and would just like to say a couple small things:
i met Michael Sikorsky (the CEO) when mutual colleagues introduced us in the task of creating an initial brand / logo for CH. i enjoyed working and communicating with Michael, but my brand work somehow failed to meet the collective expectations (including my own). the process and the relationships were not very transparent for me.
nearly a year later, the company having established its brand and culture, i made a youtube video that impressed the CH crew, and was asked to come in for a potential interview. Michael was impressed by the energy and support my video gave to the CH vision, and i entered a short period of “probationary” employment with them. it turned out that as a private freelancer with large projects and photo shoots pulling me away regularly, i was unwilling to part with my own projects at the time to enter an extremely demanding environment. i didn’t have much to give in the first place. but Michael and all of the people there were very accepting and fun to work with, and many of them have remained friends since.
i’m still very grateful for the opportunities and the learning i received while briefly among them, and while i agree with Michael that the team/relationships issue he mentioned is really the key area where CH fell short, i felt very comfortable there. the energy in the air was, and probably still is, one of birthing something new and crazy.
there is no doubt in my mind, everyone will see great things come from this end-of-an-era move that CH is making forwards.
there will always be those who choose to look at the negative things that cause us to trip up along the journey… those who will have and hold their opinions and make personal attacks to justify themselves… those who will attempt to belittle others in their hard work…
…and there will be those who fail, and acknowledge failure, yet still believe there is something of value to be found in working hard toward their dreams.
ps. i still can’t believe they used a wordmark font that was employed at least three years earlier for a hugely popular christian worship-rock group’s wordmark - http://www.delirious.co.uk/flash
seriously, branding is a delicate process. and they didn’t execute it with much education about typography, one of the key elements of a successful brand.
but i still hold that their passion will trump technical and personal mistakes. because the vision - the idea - is bigger than one person’s tastes.
Sounds like things were and are still quite tumultuous at and with the CH people.
Being on the outside its apparent that there was an idea that if CH could figure out how to harness crowdsourcing that it would be a powerful business model. CH didn’t - and you can’t fault them for that - that is the nature of startups and exploring new frontiers.
Its also apparent that the management team and board didn’t have control. The gross overexpenditure and blatant self promotion don’t appear to be targeted towards figuring out how to harness crowdsourcing.
Sikorsky obviously failed on many fronts as a CEO - not in that he couldn’t figure out how to crowdsource, but that he could manage the money, the people and the technology. But let’s face it, others were involved. Where are the other founders? Rob Shaw was the CFO, what is his role if not to manage the dollars? How about the board of directors, don’t they oversee the executive?
There was failure on several levels, but just because Sikorsky couldn’t manage the company and was driving it over a cliff didn’t anyone else there have the repsponsibilty to pull him back?
CH is in salvage mode - what can they save. (of course it will be spun as something positive, of a “strategic move”)
Questions need to be asked.
“of these new entities how much do original shareholders own?”
- Sikorsky has indicated that the new companies will need additional funding, at what price? what share of ownership?
“of these new entities how much will former CH people own through new share issues?”
Will ownership in any of the new entities be offered preferentially to certain CH shareholders over others?
- vencorps is being lead by CH director Sean Wise, will the original CH shareholders get the fair market value for any IP being transfered? This is not an arms length transaction and should bear significant scrutiny.
Many current/former employees, friends, family and fools were/are CH shareholders indirectly through a scheme called assignment that Sikorsky heavily promoted. This also means that many are not direct shareholders. How are they going to be treated? Will they have access to information and the right to influence decisions?
For the amount of money raised through such a large pool of investors and the claims of mismanagement and deceptive sales practices, and now a dismemberment of the company which includes non-arms length disbursements - I would be surprised if some regulatory authority didn’t get involved.
@ #97 John:
I didn’t realize there was an “assignment” arrangement/scheme for their employees. How did it work?
Would this be considered Crowdsourcing? we are all coming together to share our collective knowledge?
just something that just came to me.
@ Warren # 98
Essentially CH stated that there were investment minimums, BUT if you couldn’t make the minimum you could invest under someone elses name and they would ‘assign’ the value of the share to you.
many employees invested behind Sikorsky, but also some other investors pooled money together themselves. CH provided the ‘legal’ paperwork to these groups.
Some investors have since unwound that agreement and are direct investors - well maybe all have, i don’t know. CH encouraged this, and even facilitated the ‘assignment’ process so it definately cannot be dismissed as independant shareholder activity.