Bad news for Portland-based Open-ID startup Vidoop (as well as Vidoop partners like AOL, MySpace and Flock): it’s apparently out of business. Earlier this month the company announced layoffs, but based on an email string that was forwarded to us, the company is now “officially out of business” and winding down.
From CEO Joel Norvell to Vidoop insiders, where he says that the company has no funds to pay wages or other liabilities, and that employees are being offered computers in lieu of wages:
Vidoopsters:
I am currently working with our counsel on next steps, but here is
what I know:Vidoop LLC is officially out of business. Unfortunately, there are no
funds to pay the unpaid wages or other liabilities. I don’t yet know
if this means there will be a bankruptcy filing. However, we are in
the process of winding down and vacating the office.Tomorrow and Friday we will be offering certain equipment such as
laptops and desktop computers to employees in lieu of a certain amount
of wages owed. As an example, a laptop might be worth $1000 in back
wages. You would only need to pay taxes on the actual book value of
the asset, which might be $250. So you would write a check for $0.153
on $250, or $38.25. The company’s liability to you would be reduced by
$1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25.The investors who walked out of the May 5 deal created a situation
that made an orderly shutdown impossible. However, several of us have
worked nonstop to preserve everyone’s stake in Vidoop, and efforts are
ongoing. We hope to provide details soon.Thanks to everyone who is volunteering their time to help shut down
the office. There is simply no roadmap for a situation like this, and
I know it is frustrating. Your support during this difficult period
is very much appreciated.Joel
It’s not clear how long the Vidoop service will remain active. The company promised “plenty of warning” of a shutdown of MyVidoop on May 14, but since then have been silent. There’s a ton of speculation in the email string (we aren’t posting most of it), but we’ll wait for an official company announcement. There’s also likely an interesting backstory around that “investors who walked out of the May 5 deal” statement.
We’ve put Vidoop in the deadpool.
UPDATE: Here’s a comprehensive story of Vidoop’s fall from former employee Chris Messina.
it would be awful if they got a pc instead of a mac.
I would much prefer a PC, well come to think of it I wouldn’t mind a Mac, if only so I can dabble in making iPhone apps… otherwise its pretty much usesless to me.
Bonehead.
macs rule!
This is really sad news indeed.
I was a little surprised when I found out it’s an OpenID company though. From the name, thought they were some video startup.
What’s really sad is that Vidoop moved 7-8 families from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Portland when they decided to relocate to the west coast — a year ago.
Thoughts go out to those families stranded in Portland. Hope you guys can find jobs.
Stranded? I’m pretty sure I’d rather be jobless in Portland than jobless in Tulsa. Hell, I’d rather be jobless in Portland than employed in Tulsa.
From someone just returning from Portland (to chicago) after a year trust me you would rather be in Tulsa where the unemployment rate isn’t 12.1% and climbing. Portland’s beautiful, but the economy’s is nearing the deadpool.
As one of those laid off by Vidoop in the first round, and who moved back to Tulsa, I can say with abolute certainty that I would rather be back home in Oklahoma than out West. The job market here is good and the pace much, much less frantic.
I’m a Tulsa startup founder and it just breaks my heart that such a cool startup left a low-burn environment for a higher-burn environment and it didn’t pay off.
And, Ryan, we’d love to have you visit Tulsa any time. FYI, Google has one of their few data planned data centers parked right outside Tulsa. We’re doing just fine.
It was more then likey pressure from VC firms that they move west where the VC’s can help get them connected to strategic partners and generally oversee their investments… This is a smart move by investors.. Has nothing to do with Tulsa over Portland ( other than the distribution density of capital firms)
do they have the Internet in Tulsa?
Yep, they are wireless connected
, Wimax. Most advanced. State of the art. That’s why Google is moving there…
The key to Corp success is gr8 product and strategy. Strategies are finalized in meetings. There u go. Wish we had meeting Nazi app lot earlier.
Not sure if meeting Nazi could have saved vidoop. But certainly made meetings productive and on task. It has worked wonders for many.
To everyone out there, if you see some signs of chaos in your company, please grab the app and put it to use asap
In public interest http://themeetingnazi.com
I’m chief defender of Tulsa Michael. Google SBC, Sprint, Level 3, WilTel, LDDS + Tulsa. You’re going to find we have bandwidth out the ying yang. That’s one of the many reasons Google has parked one of their Data Centers in Tulsa.
Better yet, YOU are hereby cordially invited to come stay in Tulsa, MY TREAT, and see what a hellacious nice city we have.
Vidoop got their start here. TwitPic got his start here. Ping.fm is headquartered right down the hall. I’m starting up here. Everythings three times more affordable here.
Just remember Tulsa favorably in the TechFellow rounds. We have good stuff happening here.
what a jackass statement.
Jobless anywhere sucks.. asshole.
I agree.
I’m sorry to hear this is happening. For all involved.
well ryan, it’s pretty easy to be smug about being jobless in portland when you don’t have friends who were laid off by vidoop. asshole.
also, vidoop mgt deserves a lot of blame for their company’s demise for making the move to portland last year when all signs showed the economy was headed for trouble.
What I cannot figure out is the need to make a huge impact in 3-6 months of starting the company.
If the thing has to last, a year or so must pass, I reckon, with real value-add to existing services. I doubt any Startup watcher blogs miss out new technology. So take that tech, add something useful and make your own new mashup/startup.
Mere copies are often a waste of money and time. If you want an early profitable exit you’re just a stock trader with some tech skills and a little more patience and a little longer attention span. If your aim is to be famous it will serve you more. Just money is, IMO, the lowest level of motivation for an entrepreneur. Given all the technology you have, why not work from homes or local towns.
In particular, why not someone start a human co-location center just like a server facility where you have cubicles rented out by the day or week? And this can come up in every town. Take a look at Google’s team-seating layout of cubicles. Hire cubicles for a week or so.
The real-estate company does just renting office space per cubicle per day
The data and code goes into “The Cloud”(TM) a local server bunch or a remote one like Google’s AWS or Microsoft’s. And you go into a cubicle for that day.
People with bigger plans and/or the need for safeguarding business secrets and IP, just rent whole floors.
Where do you get this real estate from?
The recession of course.
“Distributed office expenses reduction using intelligent, dynamic cubicle reallocation” anyone?
This model works just fine in an economy where a lot of small businesses are in trouble and they cannot use spaces they earlier used for restaurants, snack bars, pubs, shops, showrooms. You also have town halls, school playgrounds, mobile cubicles maybe, and well laptops with wireless, of course.
Use this to get your employees a sense of office so that they do not become unproductive, underproductive or overworked while working from home. Think dynamic electric grid. Think Obama’s plan to revive the economy. Think electric car battery recharging network.
And finally you have the best, most reliable office spaces of all of them – garages! That’s where great companies like Google come from.
You also have mobile homes – which could become mobile offices, so the truckers can make a few quick bucks if geeks work on the move.
Given the amount of research needed to study biodiversity in combinatorial genomics, truck offices are going to be the rave in the future. Given the pervasive wireless networks that are planned, this works out an as interesting line of thought to ponder on. Servers on the move.
Anyone at Rackspace, Amazon, Google and Microsoft reading this? Work from home, from wheels or from cybercafe offices.
Don’t migrate and lose your new job. Stay home or behind the wheels, enjoy the hike and write the code from the cliffside cubicle.
Developer Nirvana!!
Outlandish today, commonplace tomorrow. I think it is worth a try to field test this on a decently large scale. The legal mess is something I am unfamiliar with. But Mike isn’t
Google Server Bus.
Google Office Bus.
Google Cubicles-on-wheels.
Google Internet Bus <—- REAL
I continued to hope that Vidoop would be able to turn their descent around. They’ve got a compelling OpenID offering and their CAPTCHA idea showed promise.
It will be interesting to see if anyone else sees enough value in their efforts to (pay money to) pick up their work and continue.
Really wishing there was an "Ugh" button right now
What is the wage law in Oregon? Directors and officers are often liable if they intentionally start a pay period knowing they can’t make payroll.
Different states have different laws. Some states are more tough than others, e.g., the state of WA holds officers liable 3x the payroll amount and employees can sue the officers as individuals.
D&O insurance often doesn’t cover this case so the employees could sue the execs or the VCs or both for being turned out on the streets with no warning and without a chance to find another job in a touch economy.
This is unfortunate. They were a great member of the Portland start up community.
I met three Vidoopers sitting on a table outside while biking around Downtown Portland two days ago. One of them waved his hand and said hi. I didn’t realize that that might’ve be one of their last meetings.
My sincerest hope goes for Vidoop’s upturn.
Overall that is fucked when you have to pay rent. I’m empathetic to the situation. Looking for a co-founder with an MBA and some guts. call me. Lambright dot com
And some money, I assume?
So like what happens to all the myvidoop openID accounts?
Oregon is a fantastic place to have this happen – we have something called the Wage Security Fund which will pay us our owed wages and then attempt to recoup that legally. http://www.oreg...s/wsf120506.pdf and http://www.nrto...entProfile=1055 .
The worst part about this is a limbo around health insurance.
I’ll be glad when this is all over – it’s an unwanted distraction.
This right here is exactly why NO one will pick up the technology. Legal issues are all over this deadpooler. The State and Feds will eat up anyone that comes close to this.
Good luck. The technology is going to disappear in a cloud of legalities. Too bad.
Best to all those laid off, hope you find places quickly.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee…
I use MyVidoop as my OpenID. I wonder what this means for me?
I hope the places you use OpenIDs allow you to change to a new OpenID. This is why I feel it is always better to use a URL that you control and then use delegation.
Actually had they charged for the service and had you paid for something you are getting for free, they would still be alive.
Go cry in someone else’s beer.
Wake up and Smell the Coffee…
They would still be in the deadpool if they charged and nobody was willing to pay for it
Better than nothing. I was wondering what was going to happen to all those OpenID providers. TOo many of them
Obviously they should have fired their finance chief long ago if employees are being paid in office supplies. Somebody didn’t do their math right.
I hope noone takes the laptop in lieu deal; any lawyer will tell you that’s a total ripoff. Like paying new car dollars for a used car.
When the startup I was at during the dot com days went under, we were not only paid our last wages, we could take home our desktops for $50.
I agree… if you feel there is a chance to sue the company, the deal sucks.
BTW, at my last company, we were told to take the checks and immediate go to the company’s bank and ask to it to be paid out in cash as apparently the debtors were seeking to freeze the company’s account.
If/when the company declares bankruptcy, the property of the company belongs to the creditors and it would be illegal for them to give away what is OPP.
As they are not currently (?) in bankruptcy, they are probably within their rights to give away computers, but I would imagine that creditors will want them to be returned as office equipment is probably the only thing of value. There’s probably some stupid law that will allow them to repo them too.
And what about their other liabilities? Are they giving their cleaning service computers too? How about the freelance copywriters/designers/etc.? Not every liability is to some faceless mega-corporation.
Employees’ wages come before any creditors. The BS is not that they are jilting creditors by giving away computers. The BS is that they didn’t shut down before running out of money to pay employees. No excuse for that. I’ve been in that situation and we made sure we paid wages AND vacation before shutting down.
Sorry to see this. Hate to say it, but while PDX has a great and growing community of technologists, we seem to be light on people who know how to run a company. More leaders pls.
Sorry to hear about this, what a shame. A lot of layoffs in the world. The truth is a lot of tech startups begin strong but then cannot stay differentiated with all the competition.
Whatever you do, don’t sign anything saying that you are taking the computer in liu of pay. Take the computer, then get your money from the state insurance fund.
if the state hae such an ‘insurance fund’ i wouldn’t do what the poster advised… there’s this thing called fraud.. screw with the state.. and you might find yourself facing a state charge of theft/fraud….
this is right in line with people who try to rip off state unemployment insurance funds…
idiot…
>the company is now out of “officially out of business”
the company is now “officially out of business”
“The company’s liability to you would be reduced by
$1000, and you would have a laptop for $38.25.”
Umm, $38.25 plus the $1000 in wages you won’t be getting…
CEO needs to take an arithmetic refresher course.
No roadmap for this? Yes there is: Company A spends every dime it has, then the dimes of its employees including having them cover expenses on their own credit cards, takes dimes from the employees’ insurance fund, possibly their social security payments or tax escrow. Then they try to get them to sign something that says they are not owed any money because the company generously gave them used equipment tthe company couldn’t sell for much of anything anyway in this economy? That’s a pretty regular roadmap and I’ve seen this very predictable ‘drain circling’ chain of events happen recently to friends working in Seattle, LA and Minneapolis. Sorry it is happening to you in Portland. Good luck with the legal battle – hang in there.
I would go to their office and take home everything that is not attached to the floor. So for example if the company owes me $1,000 I would take stuff valued at $3825, just in case.
then you would be in jail for theft….
Seriously.. For how good the TC articles are. The dumbest mutherf*ckers post here.
I almost wish you didnt have the option to leave comments, then I wouldnt be compelled to read the jerry springer trainwreck phenomena that these comments provide.
I’ve used Vidoop for a couple of years and loved their concept. Sorry to see them go and hope that they will be able to return from the Deadpool
Fortunately I use Mashed Life instead of Vidoop for my password mgmt… so no migration pains
poor management. honestly, i lived in portland for 8 years now and except jobdango, i never saw any startups succeed. too many fags and hippies getting stoned.
Equipment in lieu of wages? Ouch. Best of luck to the folks at vidoop bouncing back on their feet.
This story reminds me of that site, fuckedcompany.com (sp?). In the waning days of the last recession (2000-2001) post Dotcom Bubble, lots of startups had similar stories. Shoot, there was even a documentary called Startup.com that showed the rise and fall of a startup. Man – the stories from FC.com were great. Laughable after the fact – but not that laughable in lieu of today’s recession.
What if you already own a PC, and have bills & a mortgage to pay? The economic news gets harder to read every single day.
This is why I feel it is always better to use a URL that you control and then use delegation.
A lot of layoffs in the world. The truth is a lot of tech startups begin strong but then cannot stay differentiated with all the competition.
I am too lazy to actually read the updates on the full corporate story, but seems the website is open for business, so, did someone throw money at the problem or what…