So, I was a (low-ranking) employee at Beyond Oblivion. This is the first I've heard about most of those numbers and many of the extravagances. We built a killer product, that was ready for prime time, but unfortunately didn't end up selling to anyone. That's all I really knew -- we had a product, we ran out of money. It wasn't until after that we heard about all the crazy stuff that was going on. I still try to stay out of it, because it doesn't really matter anymore, but it's still interesting reading articles like this.
I read things like this all the time, but it's a completely different thing when it's actually you (or relating so closely to you). I put a lot of time and effort into the product, and my piece was something I was personally really proud of. It's really unfortunately to see it fail in such a big way. I still debate putting my involvement on my resume, even though its demise had nothing to do with me. I interviewed at a Y-Combinator company I was really interested in, and didn't get the job... I still wonder if that had anything to do with it. Anyway, nothing to say or learn from the experience really, just thought I'd say that.
Why would you debate putting it on your CV? It'd look a lot worse to look like you were out of work for that time.
Besides, a startup that wouldn't hire you because you worked as an engineer at a failed startup would be insane. I'd be more afraid to hire engineers from startups that did succeed, because I doubt they'd be as motivated the second time around after the big windfall.
Did you work with another developer named Jed? He was working on some search stuff for Beyond Oblivion I believe. He's actually my neighbor and we often talked about the stuff he was working on. I was shocked when I first heard the news. It sounded like you were working on some cool stuff and seemed really excited about where it was going. Seems like it came as as surprise to many.
We built a killer product, that was ready for prime time, but unfortunately didn't end up selling to anyone.
I'd be curious to hear your definition of a killer product. Personal a killer product to me is one that sells though I understand it's just one perspective.
> Personal (sic) a killer product to me is one that sells
If you read the article, this isn't a B2C product. We were working with manufacturers and high-dollar contracts ($100m+ I think). A lot of different hands are involved, lots of due diligence, it had to match the manufacturers strategy, and laws and regulations are all questioned. Since a majority was mobile, we also had to involve the carriers. We also had to work with the labels and publishers when dealing with manufacturers in different regions. A lot of that work was over my head (since as I said, I just built the product... I'm also not sure how much I can talk about publicly, so I'm trying to keep it sort of vague). We had to work a deal out with everyone so they all get paid what is fair to them (we want to negotiate the lowest price, each one of them wants to negotiate the highest price), and those kinds of things take time. All of this happens over a period of months, while other parts of their (everyone mentioned above) business may be moving in other directions -- acquisitions happening, strategy changes, budget projections, layoffs, massive hiring -- you name it. In Y-Combinator land it is really that simple, but when dealing with big business, it's not.
EDIT: Just realized I didn't answer the question. A killer product, to me, is one that I would routinely use, and that my wife uses as well. She liked to use the app (I can't say that for everything I've built). I did too. We also proved it would scale, and yada yada. I'm afraid of saying more, but yes it was a solid product.
I wouldn't hesitate to put it on a CV. First, an entry would have to be really bad to be worse than a big unexplained gap. Second, startups go under all the time and everyone understands that this is more likely than not. If anything a potential employer would realize this has given you a useful bit of experience (but of course you should be ready to talk about what you learned). The only way it could be negative is if it was widely known that the product failed due to poor engineering (assuming you are an engineer), but this doesn't seem to be the case here.
$500,000 for branding the name BOINC and everyone outside hate it. That marketing firm has done a heck of sales job.
Burned through $20 million of its $33.2 million in the final ten months, less than $1 million of which was paid to employees. I wonder what's the justification for such spending ratio.
As such it is rather confusing for native english speakers when commas and dots are swapped. Which makes sense since it is essentially like speaking a different 言語 halfway through your sentence.
Don't worry, I am Swiss and do 1 000,00 or, when I feel really creative, 1'000,000. Try being a trader where THAT slips into your compliance emails every so often :).
My first job out of university was for a failed start up. When I joined it was fantastic. There were only a handful employees and the company was making good profit. Then somebody decided to expand as quickly as possible. They hired a new CEO that just didnt understand small businesses. She came from a massive company and her first reaction was to hire insane amounts of people (mostly middle level management) from her old job.
They never managed to score another contract and ran out of money within a year. It was shameful how much money these guys grabbed for themselves and drove the company into the ground.
It seems to me that certain people think that they can pay themselves whatever they want once they get investment money. Its like free money.
Nothing in that article makes me think "promising" was ever an accurate description for Beyond Oblivion. The idea itself sounds completely horrendous from every angle.
The idea itself sounds completely horrendous from every angle.
The business model for pretty much every music-related startup sounds horrendous from every angle. Mostly due to the ridiculous fees and constraints imposed by the labels and partly due to relatively high infrastructure costs.
Most of the products in the space operate on the premise of reaching "exit velocity" as fast as they can. The goal is to either get bought by an established player, or to make ends meet on the razor things margins by the virtue of mass market scale (which in turn gives you leverage to negotiate slightly less ridiculous deals with the labels. slightly.).
This sounds like the story of a non technical founder. In my experience they are the ones most susceptible to faffing around with branding nonsense in a desperate attempt to contribute something meaningful to the startup
Am I crazy for thinking these sorts of things are absurd and in 10 years we'll look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking?
I want music. I want a phone. I want cell phone service. I don't want Verizon selling me a phone. I don't want them selling me music. Or ringtones. I want them to provide me with quality, economical cell phone service. These multi-tier one-off annoying-to-negotiate media deals boggle my mind. It's the reason that despite having Amazon Prime, Netflix and more, I still can't watch half of what I want to, let alone where I want, when I want (actually, I'm on Linux, so I'm screwed either way).
It just reeks of absurdity and politics. Maybe I'm just naive.
Verizon and the other carriers/telcos/broadband providers are desperate to avoid becoming dumb pipes or a simple commodity. They lose pricing power, brand power, control, and profit. In that sense, it's easy to understand why they are doing this.
Unfortunately, by Verizon (and lots of other players with their own interests) inserting themselves into all of these deals and processes and platforms, it creates an absurd burden on consumers who just want to watch the damn movie/transfer media files between devices/get a phone or computer that's not preloaded with crap.
It's no wonder that consumers gravitate toward companies that minimize these pain points (Apple, Spotify) or continue to download pirated media content.
I read things like this all the time, but it's a completely different thing when it's actually you (or relating so closely to you). I put a lot of time and effort into the product, and my piece was something I was personally really proud of. It's really unfortunately to see it fail in such a big way. I still debate putting my involvement on my resume, even though its demise had nothing to do with me. I interviewed at a Y-Combinator company I was really interested in, and didn't get the job... I still wonder if that had anything to do with it. Anyway, nothing to say or learn from the experience really, just thought I'd say that.