Bungee Labs, a well funded Utah based startup that left private beta only six months ago, laid off 15 employees today to give themselves more runway on their cash burn rate. The last we checked they had 38 employees, so this is nearly 40% of their total headcount.
CEO Martin Plaehn explained: “This change had less to do with the rate of technology development and more to do with actual versus anticipated rates of adoption. Our Platform-as-a-Service, Bungee Connect, has achieved the level of robustness and capability we envisioned and we are committed to its continued regular advancement and support. As with most new breakthrough offerings, Bungee Connect will require longer incubation time to become broadly accepted. As a start-up, our action yesterday extends our operating plan well into 2010 to more deeply establish Bungee Connect in the marketplace.”
The product is somewhat similar to a whole bunch of competitors – platform as a service application development. We’ve mentioned a number of them in our previous posts, including DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, LongJump, Coghead and WyaWorks, among others. Salesforce’s Force.com is also a competitor. So, in a nutshell, the market may well mature, but there is no guarantee they’ll end up at Bungee Labs.
At least one employee says he has no regrets. Alex Barnett wrote: “No regrets, none at all. When I considered the opportunity of joining Bungee Labs (and by doing so leave a relatively safe harbor in order to do so) I knew of the risks involved. Bungee Labs’ mission was – and still is – of the kind that aims to “change the world”. To have been a member of the team tasked with realizing the company’s hugely ambitious mission has been nothing short of an entirely worthwhile and educational pursuit.”
Sounds like someone has vested on some stock to me. I’d be pissed off if I was laid off.
The 2000 bubble all over again?
Yea, I think that employee comment was made out of guilt after sending a destructive, flaming tip to ValleyWag. Either that or the guy is living in denial and needs therapy. “I was so lucky to work with these geniuses that it was my honor to be shoved out the door.” Right…
Alex was our VP of Community. His post reflects the same intelligence and professionalism that he brought to Bungee Labs. Why would you want to malign his motives and character from a vantage point of ignorance?
–Ted Haeger
Bungee Labs
This is really sad, I really like the founders. They started out as CanyonBridge and had a really awesome web based ajax client back in the day, when the only people doing ajax anything was Google, it promised to be everything exchange server was but without the headaches.
To this day it is still the best use of ajax I have ever seen, but a couple years ago they switch gears, changed their name and abandoned the email product, now we are seeing these large email products getting acquired (eg, PostPath) and I wonder if they should have just stuck the email thing out.
Jaymon speaks Gospel
You get an Amen Brother!
All the rest of ya’all’s here are just haters…wishin you could be dreamers and have had the privilege of working with\for CanyonBridge\BungeeLabs..anyone on here actually have a bungee account and use the product??? Wait…guess if you had you would be too busy there to comment here…
Shane Rasmussen
Stock Holder and One of the Founders of CanyonBridge
“Long Live El Mistieriosos Robot”
I remember visiting their booth at Web 2.0 SF – I left thinking, who the hell are their customers and why name themselves with a Bungee when they have _nothing_ to do with Halo …
With a mission like that, no wonder they’re free falling… the umptieth startup with a potentially good idea and bad planning and execution, nothing new or surprising about it.
Interesting post…
http://www.KidT...ru.blogspot.com
Alex Barnett is a liar
That’s just inappropriate. Alex is a good friend to me, and a person of excellent integrity. His release from Bungee Labs is unfortunate, and your addition of insult to injury only reveals the quality of your character rather than anything about Alex’s.
–Ted Haeger
Bungee Labs
I’m really not quite sure what this startup does. But I do know that 38 people is about 30 too many. I wonder how much of their time is spent managing instead of trying to do whatever it is that they’re trying to do. TPS reports killed the startup?
The product was good but…let’s face it – running a platform company is HARD. And it will probably be even harder now because developers do not want to build stuff on a platform that may go out of business. Good luck BungeeLabs!
As for bungee whatever, honestly good luck but current employees don’t plan vacations next year.
To TC Editor, who cares about this, really. Is this news? How many of us have gone through a startup who has failed. Too many. Borring.
They’re in a crowded space while the macro economy is falling flat. That’s a hell of a tough situation. I hope they see some good luck, get the formula right, partner well and – survive. We all do better when companies like this pull through.
Thank you for your level-headed assessment, Jonathan.
–Ted Haeger
Bungee Labs
The PaaS model that Bungee continues to define and refine is solid, will find its niches and then go far beyond that. Bungee had excellent execution and very strong marketing. This is a case of the strategic value — cloud computing — catching up to the more tactical development and deployment as service values. As cloud gains ground, so to will PaaS. It’s just not likely to be the other way around. Best of luck to Bungee and its progeny.
Dana:
Thank you, both for the well-wishes and the real-world assessment. I hope that readers understand and appreciate the breadth and depth of your knowledge in this market space.
–Ted
I think Bungee had some FANTASTIC technology. You guys knew your stuff and were inventing the future of the Cloud. I would guess that the economy has more to do with this change more than anything – if the VCs were not feeling the pinch, then they might have been more flexible.
May I remind everyone that this may be a GOOD thing? A business that takes a realistic view and makes tough decisions in order to better succeed is SMART. It is unfortunate that Alex is no longer part of the team – he was one of the smartest guys I have talked with. The fact he is taking this well speaks of his character and that he is still devoted to the success of Bungee.
Ted – may I suggest that you look into the Open Source route we talked about? You are still free to use http://OpenAjax.Com to support Open Ajax . You have less resources to make a sea change, but it just may the way to suceed.
Bungee Labs, eh? Should have named the product Halo Connect. That would have sold like hotcakes.
2 reactions:
1. To be honest, I’m surprised they found 38 talented people in Utah for that project. It’s tough to find talent in that market.
2. What the hellz are they doing with 38 people on staff after an 8m round? Talk about burn!
CG
That’s tough. I guess this is what can happen when you staff to “anticipated” revenue and profit vs. actual. Sounds like their projections were overly optimistic, perhaps bordering on wishful thinking. Speaking of wishful thinking, a friend told me his father once said to him, when explaining the dangers of wishful thinking: Son, sh*t in one hand and wish in the other. Now open your hands and see what you have.”
As long as you’re mentioned products, don’t forget about the web’s first Database-as-a-Service offering: http://www.HostedDatabase.com which was originally launched in 1999. They offer complete on-demand apps like CRM, plus also custom web-hosted databases.
Man, the long knives come out fast around here! Bungee is pioneering a new space – app dev tools for cloud computing. They are pioneers and are currently collecting arrows (including a number of unfair missiles on this thread). In theory, folks reading this blog should be rooting for tech companies pioneering new and interesting markets. There are certainly plenty of other, more cynical blogs for folks who have nothing better to do that crow over the setbacks of innovative startups.
Totally!
Sorry to hear about the recent events in Bungee Labs, if any of the bright guys that got layed off is looking for a cool job and wants to stay involved in the PaaS space, please contact me at carrers @ apprenda.com.
Best Wishes
This is a tough space to be in. There is a ton of competition and there seems to be more coming all the time. I’d love to see one of these services release an on premise version that can be run internally to a company. Some of these tools are really cool and have great feature sets, but I really hesitate to commit to building something on a service like this. Even platforms like Google App Engine which is from an obviously well established company make me leery, investing in building apps on a startups platform is even tougher.
Kimbro:
Bungee Labs has released “Bungee Application Server,” which is exactly what you’re seeking–an on-premise system that can run internally.
Hmm. Doesn’t sound like these guys are done at all. Here is what Martin, their CEO says: http://blogs.bu.../08/27/changes/
(disclaimer: I’m on their advisory board).
See http://intellec...-direction.html for reply.
Extract: “As one of the employees affected by the downsize, I am surprised by the vitriole and nay-saying going on here, …”