It seems like only yesterday when we covered the beta launch of QikCom, which was poised to become another horse in the race for the first real Twitter-for-enterprises alongside Yammer and Present.ly. It was almost yesterday, as they released the application to the public in October 2008. Now, a look at their website teaches us the micro-messaging service has already folded under the pressure of the race.
QikCom hits the deadpool, and companies who were using the service only have a couple of days to retrieve their data, which leads us to believe there weren’t all that many of those in the first place. The placeholder now even includes a link to Yammer, deeming them the ‘best enterprise micro-messaging service’ (they recently raised $5 million in funding and launched a hosted version of their software that can be used inside corporate firewalls). We use it here and are indeed quite happy with it, but we’re not counting out Present.ly out just yet. Since they added a desktop and mobile version recently, they’re keeping up pace with Yammer quite nicely without raising a dime in venture capital (so far).
It’s very simple: if you have business model with low costs that can generate its own positive cash flow, you will never know the deadpool.
If your business model is raising VC, I’m sorry but in this economy, you have almost no hope avoiding it … sonner or later.
Aljali Sen
I think there should be some clarification that says that its QikCom and NOT Qik DOT com that is going under.
Oh Thank god!
I read that as “qik.com” at first and my mouth dropped. Whew. !!!!
Thanks Jamboree & Adam J. Glad I’m not the only one who had that thought. In fact, was the only reason I clicked on the link to check the article … not surprised in the least that this particular company is dead. Glad it’s not Qik, too!
Sure thing Cathy. You and I both felt that way and I that’s the only reason I clicked. I was very relieved to hear it wasn’t Qik.
Sorry about QikCom but thank goodness our dear Qik.com is still around.
IMHO it was probably only a matter of time before Qik.com sued QikCom for trademark infringement.
Glad it didn’t have to come to that… never heard of QikCom tho prior to this.
This economic situation will probably teach start-ups some valuable lesson on running on small footprint and bootstrapping their business.
The ones that survive this journey will surely emerge as winners.
I don’t know about the comment that Present.ly is just “keeping up” with Yammer… I’ve been playing around with it since the private alpha in August of last year and as far as i can tell from Yammer’s feature list, they’ve almost always been ahead (feature-for-feature) than Yammer, except in – like you mention – mobile and desktop apps like iPhone and Adobe Air support. On the other hand, they have had Windows Mobile and Android clients since January, which Yammer still doesn’t offer…
We’ll see how/if Yammer’s funding actually helps them pull away, but so far I agree with you – Present.ly is a serious contender in this space, and I wouldn’t count them out!
na na na na
na na na na
hey hey hey
goodbye
Maybe you can give press to startups who actually have something resembling success rather than jump on them when they market based on “beta” invites and a copy of another service?
How many “that was quick” entries would you have if you covered every single company who died in their first 6 mos?
VC funding is not a business model. Sorry, but this was expected.
http://tr.im/gk8j
Just to clarify – that QikCom is not the same as the live mobile video streaming company which is Qik, Inc. (Qik.com).
OMG I almost crapped in my pants I thought it was qik.com too! Well good riddance to the infiltrator and long live Qik.com (Qik dot com)
http://www.techcrunch.com
hello
hello good
You know I had heard a few years back that startups didn’t need VC any longer as the costs to “startup” were so small that credit cards were doing it. So the VC started looking for other ways to get involved, hence Ycombinator and other imitators sprung up.
What we are seeing here, is stupid money chasing stupid ideas that were already done, and done better, getting wack mob style.
If you have a good idea and market creatively (ie; talk to the bloggers and tech writers), you can start without the 5M dollar A round that most of these idiots think they need.
But it takes idiots on BOTH sides of the aisle to make a mistake. I am not sad when I see metoo technology die, or “I really need that Aireon Office chair to start my company” folks drop. I respect all of those who work hard and breath life into something on a shoestring. Those are the real startups, and those are the ones that real VC should be paying attention to.
Give me two Stanford MBA’s and one MIT engineer and a napkin and we could go raise 5M back when. But who needs that kind of money to do a startup, it’s like working in a candy store, you end up fat.
Wake up and SMELL the Coffee…