Funny how we receive tips sometimes. Yesterday we covered the latest Startup2Startup meetup, and a certain ChrisATSo33t commented on the story pointing to the latest quarterly report (PDF) of Luxembourg-based VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners in which they state that Paris-based portfolio company Jooce would be “closing its doors” during the month of February.
We’ve now entered the month of March, and the Jooce website is still alive, people can still sign up, and their blog has been silent since October 2008. No notice of shut-down anywhere to be found, and e-mails are not bouncing (we hope they’re still being replied to since we contacted the Jooce team for comment). But since Mangrove was the company’s only investor, having injected seed funding into the startup in 2007, we’re pretty sure we can deadpool the startup.
Update: wow. Jooce got back us with a completely different story:
I think the gun was jumped just a bit, Jooce is not closing. In fact, Jooce has been recently been in talks with an undisclosed buyer within the internet cafe world wishing to acquire Jooce. Doors don’t shut so easily on great technology.
When I asked why the VC would possibly claim such a thing about one of their portfolio companies, they made me laugh out loud by saying that “VCs are apparently not omniscient” and that “God can rest easy for now”.
We covered Jooce, which operates (operated) a web-based OS, a couple of times before starting with its launch in August 2007. It offered a virtual online desktop that provided a Flash platform for communication services like chat and e-mail combined with a custom way to play games, listen to music, etc. so you could essentially have the same user experience when you go online on any computer anywhere in the world.
I’ve always had doubts about this kind of concept, which is similar to what startups like Goowy, Cloudo, eyeOS and others are up to, given the current evolution of the web.
See, I already have a web-based OS. I just refer to it as my browser.
I guess the time of the web OS is not right now, great product bad timing.
TechFilipino
i talked with Aleks over there last week–he said they are looking for a buyer and he is leaving tech to make movies instead. Good luck to him…
jooce got acquired… least that is what the email sent out to all of its users stated
Not quite yet. See update with statement from Jooce staff.
So Jooce is out of the deadpool?
When they actually get acquired.
Just signed up for the site – but couldn’t figure out what exactly this product does. I would have expected Word/Excel or something, a picture browser… or anything really! What’s the point of having MSN? Every internet cafe has that already…
I used to work as an intern at jooce. I can say what is currently public is not at all what they have yet to make public. I am sure they have shown that to the icafe people, I think that is what the icafes are interested in, not what is up there now…
A new version of the jooce platform was released on the weekend, and one of the primary improvements has been the fixing of many of the bugs that until now had plagued jooce’s growing number of Mac users.
Clever spam. You fooled me. Never again tho.
Shoot, I am glad they are not closing. They sent out an email to their users saying that they were in aqcuisition talks about a month ago, then I downloaded the Mangrove update for Q4 2008, and they said Jooce was closing down in February.
I was like “what the hell”.
Well, good job to Aleks and company on keeping the company afloat.
I can’t imagine how hard it’s going to be without funding rounds from Mangrove, but I hope the project finally takes off.
WebOS made a big boom then a little putter about a year or 2 ago.
BTW, I scored an awesome job in LA, just like I said I would. Sunny palm trees here, and NO FRENCH. Paradise.
I scored you some publicity!
Oh, and hi Travis. I hope you’re doing well too.
Here is a copy of the letter they sent on January 20.
“Dear jooce User,
We trust that jooce has been serving you well in the past year. However,
in 2009 we will be undergoing a temporary transition as jooce is in the
process of being acquired. ”
This heavily conflicted with the Mangrove Q4 release.
BTW, Travis, if you wanna hook up doing flash for Soeet, you’re always welcome. That’s my own out of work-weekends project. I have some good people on it now and investment lined up for when it betas. If the Jooce acquisition doesn’t work out, get a hold of me.
EEI recently announced its nationwide search for a CTO. Starting from the top, EEI has contacted Aber Whitcomb, current MySpace CTO, as well as Sean Parker, Founder of Napster and Former President of FaceBook. “No offers have been agreed upon yet so the search continues”, says EEI CEO RJ Garbowicz.
I think for a WebOS to really work it needs to be able to operate on the host device (PC, Mac, whatever) as a virtualized machine that streams what it needs locally and syncs changes back – gives you all the power of the host machine and no risks of accidentally closing the browser or not being able to use all the keys or access hardware functions (GPS, smartcard readers etc) like Moka5 or MojoPac http://tinyurl.com/aa5y9v
It doesn’t matter what the project is, to get the next round of capital you need X amount of users.
Jooce may have missed a milestone, which according to their term sheet canceled their next funding round.
http://pedatacenter.com/pedc/
You can get the US based Mangrove term sheets here. I am a premium member of VCExperts, though I never have time to use my membership.
busy, busy, busy…
It would have been nice to see Jooce’s term sheet, though they told me what the milestones were last year. Tough milestones for this type of startup.
I could have helped them reach their milestones by totally cheating, but they were too honest for my tactics. I had suggested they use part of their budget to buy undervalued websites with their demographic then to redirect those users to their website like speeddate did when they bought out the facebook widgets.
They should have “cheated”. What’s the worst that could have happened? Probably not as bad as this?
You really have to go all out and consider every option when you are in Guerrilla startup mode.
In this economy even established businesses are fighting their way out of the economic Jungle with automatic weapons.
hi, jooce os is beautifu and we like it…
I just wanna ask if how to install this operating system because its our project . hopefullly you can answer our question. tnx and Godbless always.. hope we can get the answer as soon as possible
hi,. jooce is nice os.. I just wanna ask a question about how we can install jooce because its one of our project
I like the idea of webOS, but like the article says “in talks with internet cafe owner”, this is the only place that a webOS is useful.. The steps that need to happen for this to be practical- 1. install 2. configure 3. find internet cafe where they use this 4. travel without computer.
I think that most people ‘on the go’ would be carrying a laptop or WAP/3G phone, so doesn’t that take away from the value of webOS?
So did these guys burn up or get bought up?
Interesting technology too bad it’s buggy.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee.
Sorry, Jooce filed for bankruptcy in Octobre 2008. All the office computers sold in Janvier 2009. Mangrove keeps paying ISP bills to sell Jooce to chinese
hello…….where did jooce go??? …… its no where to be found….need help…