The most interesting thing here is that Scoble "liked" this ;-) - Brian Sullivan

Scoble "likes" items to bring them to the attention of those who follow his feed. It's not an emotional response. It also is his only option if he wants to highlight it... and not comment. - Louis Gray

Lighten up Louis - I'm sure Robert can speak for himself - Brian Sullivan

Louis, that type of social behaviour is not alone a scoble thing :)- - Peter Dawson

interesting, scoble "liked" my post but then removed the like. i also think like should be renamed to share to avoid these issues in the future. - Allen Stern

I thought changing it to "mark" would work as well. - Brian Sullivan

I don't Like that PodTech failed, $7.5 million in VC cash and today they were sold for for less than half a million dollars. I know Robert, Jeremiah, John and Vallery, but no one is ready to tell the story - paul mooney

I'm cool with telling the story. I just need a couple of glasses and wine and a lot of time to tell it first. Podtech was screwed up by a number of decisions. Everyone played a part, but I sure learned a lot about how a company can screw up big time. Major learnings for me? 1. Have a story. 2. Have everyone on board with that story. 3. If anyone goes off of that story, make sure they get on board immediately or fire them. PodTech did none of the three and I'm sorry for my part in not making the three happen - Robert Scoble

That's the cool thing about you, Scoble...you're human and admit it too! - Sean McGee

Not all ventures succeed though. How many 'fail' for those that succeed? It pays to take a pragmatic view. I think it's a hot market, and the impetus to succeed is high, eventually some will break - Mo Kargas

Other things I learned: 1. Make sure people are judged by the revenues they bring in. Those that bring in revenues should get to run the place. People who don't bring in revenues should get fewer and fewer responsibilities, not more and more. 2. Work ONLY for a leader who will make the tough decisions (see above). 3. Build a place where excellence is expected, allowed, and is enabled. 4. Fire idiots quickly (didn't happen at PodTech -- even if you count me as one of the idiots). - Robert Scoble

We get so much coverage of companies when they launch, when they're growing, etc. I'm hoping that someone writes an in-depth piece on what went wrong at PodTech so that entrepreneurs can learn from this. There is so much that you can learn from failures. - Mike Doeff

Other things I learned: 1. if your engineering team can't give a media team good measurements, the entire company is in trouble. Only things that are measured ever get improved. 2. When your stars aren't listened to the company is in trouble. 3. When your stars start leaving (Gillmor and Owyang left before I did) the company is in trouble. 4. Getting rid of the CEO, even if it's all his fault, won't help unless you replace him/her with someone who is visionary and who can fix #1,2,3. - Robert Scoble

My only thought is, how much longer does PodShow have? - Christian Burns

Robert: Thanks for all the insights from the "front". It's no fun being in a business failure. :-( But the lessons there are immense. I learn a hell of a lot from my failures... - Mitchell Tsai

Mike: I'm not going to be the one who writes that. Much of the worst stuff is too personal. Failures of companies often happen around failures at the leadership level. Telling why things failed means telling off investors, executives, and others (and even me). Not likely to happen because that'd mean burning bridges and I'm just not willing to do that. These people have too many friends. :-) - Robert Scoble

My vote is for assimilation into something bigger. They bought it to "right the wrongs" and flip it to someone else. Heck, at 500k, it's a bargain right now...IF things are cleaned up. - Bradley McSpinn

Brad: almost all of the talent left. What's left now is not much that's worth much. The revenues came because of our social media leadership. That's what Furrier really had in his hands. Owyang. Me. Cunningham. Jones. Gillmor. The rest of the stuff was a pipe dream that didn't lead anywhere, which is really why the company burned through $7 million (plus several million in revenues). - Robert Scoble

@louisgray I've often wondered if there was a better option than "like" and "unlike" would be nice to see "interesting" there are many times when I see something that is interesting but I don't "like" it. - nicefishfilms

Although I'm sorry to hear this happened, Robert, I'm really appreciating the lessons you're passing on. Valuable stuff, thanks. :-) - Brian Carter

Louis is correct. I didn't "like" this. I just thought it was interesting for you to read. - Robert Scoble

I'll second Brian. Thanks for sharing, Robert. - Chris Baskind

"burned through $7 million (plus several million in revenues)" ?? wow thats a lot of mulla to burn thru .. net net at least 10-12M ! For what a 10 member team and within like 2yrs ?? you all must have had rock star status... did you have a chauffeur driven car Scobles ? - Peter Dawson

I have Podtech stories, too. - Eric Rice

Well dish them up, Eric. The aspect of full disclosure is part of what I love so much about FriendFeed. - Bradley McSpinn

tell tell Eric.. the topic is hot :)_ - Peter Dawson

I honestly hate to hear of the downfall of any credible social media, especially in the means by which this story unfolded. Glad to see you're in better company these days, Robert. - Bradley McSpinn

Peter: there were more than 30 people and dozens of contractors working at Podtech. Only a couple brought in any sizeable revenues. - Robert Scoble

Yeah...I'm SURE that if wages had been at even 100,000/year (That's a 1,000,000 payroll for a 10 member team)...they'd still have money left. Unless their offices were prim-o real estate...I dunno...I don't live there. EDIT: just saw your last post Robert...makes sense now...sorry... - Sean McGee

Misteps aside, did PodTech have a viable opportunity, or was it ultimately doomed from the start? Clearly any company that's not run as a meritocracy has little chance for success. - Brian Edwards

Although Robert's response to Mike Doeff is probably true (that the backstory to companies that fail are too personal), I agree with Mike that a post mortem of entrepreneurial endeavors would be very useful. Case studies can change the names to protect the not-so-innocent too. - David Muir

grrrrrrrr.. I wish FF has button at bottom of thread 4 ease of commenting..anyhoot @Sean even at 40heads - it still does not make sense. Unless you tell me that all 30 members were getting $100K and dont 4get startups pay less and give more in share holdings !! - Peter Dawson

Do I dare bring up the how did they expect to pay back 7.5 million in V.C. through such extremely niche content question? - Paul Colligan

@Peter: Well, as we all know, contractors usually cost more (per hour) to employ than regular employees...And, being a video site, I'm sure their bandwidth costs were high (although I only watched maybe 3 videos total myself in their entire existence.) But, you're right. You know, If PodTech were a restaurant, the owners/founders would have only taken a salary large enough to cover their minimum expenses and waited to take a larger salary when the restaurant was successful. - Sean McGee

Sean: engineers in Silicon Valley cost more than $100,000 per year. Podtech had a chance in the Social Media World but spent too much to build its own platform and never delivered on that. We also didn't work together and that is another failure in a startup. - Robert Scoble

I am going to write an in depth post on this story. It's huge. There are many lessons. Scoble's view is from his perspective but there is a big picture that goes way beyond Scoble's view and that has to do with building a company from a zero stage. I've moved on from a year ago after I was forced out by the board. We made some mistakes but directionally correct. Sure if I had a mulligan things might be different but a business strategy, financing strategy, and team strategy are part of the story.. - John Furrier

john: I am looking forward to your post. - Robert Scoble

There are many lessons to learn that I'll post about. PodTech had a great chance and pioneered some of the best practices in social media. One thing that I'll talk about is the difference between self financed growth strategies and venture backed growth strategies. - John Furrier

Looking forward to your posts John. - Thomas Hawk

I'm looking at this from way on the outside. The value of my perspective is that I know nothing about internal management, visions, discussions, factions, or what have you. All I can say is that from afar, I never got any brand coherence from PodTech. Was it news? paid corporate marketing videos? analysis? community? There were some powerful personal brands--I still follow them in the PodTech diaspora--but it felt they never cohered into a PodTech identity. (That doesn't mean losing personal identity.) - Michael Markman

Michael: exactly. We never played together as a team. It is why entrepreneurs need different skills after they start their companies. It is not enough to sell people on a dream. You must coach your way to it too. - Robert Scoble

Great to work with John, Robert, Valarie, Kevin E, Jennifer J, Michael K, Jeremiah. Like many Web 1.0 / 2.0 companies, those in social media face the challenge of business model. There are lots of bigger train wrecks. But unlike PodTech, no one created enough of a brand (good or bad) to even be remembered in this conversation. There are more to come. - Brad Baldwin

Brad, so does this mean you're looking for something new now, or are you still with PodTech's new owners? - Jesse Stay from twhirl

When exactly are people supposed to use PodTech? At work... but too time consuming... people hate slow voicemail and want email. In the car, maybe. At home, may not want to address work topics. At least they had the cojones to cut bait. - Indio Apache from twhirl

John Furrier, I'm also very interested to hear your stories. - imabonehead

I think this is one of the best conversations I've ever seen on Friendfeed or in a blog. The perspectives are great. From my outside point of view, and from the vantage oint of having worked with literally hundreds of entrepreneurs, I think Podtech didn't exactly know what it was doing from a brand standpoint, other than being "cool." It was VERY cool, but so was pets.com,There also has to be a viable business model, and I don't believe revenue from sponsorship is enoough. - Francine Hardaway

With all due respect to their "failure", half a million dollars ain't that bad! What puzzled me from the beginning, is what permission do they have to record and publish many of the talks. Did all respectful speakers surrender full "replay/distribute/resell" rights to their sessions? This doesn't apply to interviews, but a lot of recordings are from professional talks and seminars... - Adi Rabinovich

I have been thinking about what Furrier said about me not having a full picture of what went wrong. First of all I don't think he is right, but if he is I will add one last learning: never work in a VP position when those above you don't share a complete picture of the business with you. Especially when that business is a social media one that was pushing transparency and community values. - Robert Scoble

PodTech introduced me to Thomas Hawk. Robert Scoble took a risk and left Microsoft for PodTech for more money and to make his mark ouside of MS. The back story would be interesting to hear. I agree with Francine Hardaway in this this is one of the best conversations I too have seen on FriendFeed. Honestly, I'm an audio listener. I never could support PodTech as a viewer unless you count Photowalking. I did not know that John Furrier was forced out. So who bought PodTech? - Maury Estabrooks

Pathetic that people cheer at someones failure. Regardless, I know - don't go there- just freakin sad. - Rocky Barbanica

What will happen to your videos? You guys did good work there. - Andrew Feinberg

Andrew: our old videos belong to Podtech. I hope they donate the tapes and archives to the Computer History Museum. - Robert Scoble

I'm looking forward to hearing an open discussion of what went wrong. I think startup entrepreneurs like me ca learn a lot from this. - Andrew Warner

Hope the 2-3 hours of video Scoble recorded of CrossLoop way back doesn't go away - Mrinal Desai

One thing, Andrew, you could learn - don't alienate those about you. Be strong enough and have the courage to bring everyone on the team together and make them all feel that their contributions are appreciated. - Rocky Barbanica

...and be smart enough to put the company on Chemotherapy when cancer is detected. - Rocky Barbanica

Robert was kind enough to take me to Podtech and introduce me to John when I was in town last May. I think it's very sad that it didn't work out. People put their hopes and dreams and very soul into startups. But then, "failure" does have a lot of value, as we can all see from this thread. Hopefully, for everybody involved Podtech was a good stepping stone to something else that's better. It looks like that's what it was for Robert and Rocky and others, at least. If you keep that perspective, then some of the inevitable aftertastes won't be as bitter. Hey, some of us would kill for stepping stones. - Dawn

@ Scoble. I am copy pasting a comment from Mathew Ingram's post on this topic. I liked the comment and hope you would shed some insight into its questions. The comment follows: "Is anyone at Fastcompany Inc. reading this? What has Scoble really learned? What is Fastcompany.tv's story? How do Fastcompany.com, scobleizer.com, scobleizerTV, Fast Company Live, WorkFastTV, PhotoCycle, Qik, Kyte, Twitter, and FriendFeed/scobleizer all fit into that story? If you need a hint, read the about page. How much revenue is Fastcompany.tv making? How much profit. What is the project revenue growth for the rest of the year? What is being measured at Fastcompany.tv? It doesn't know much about it's audience. There is no way to login, share demographic info, etc. Who is making the tough decisions at Fastcompany.tv? Why did it take a threat from SAP to fire Shel? There doesn't seem to be any strong editoral decisions or guidelines." - Bilal Hameed

Bilal, perhaps you and anonymous commenters at Mathew Ingram's blog should mind your own business. Demanding revenue and profit numbers, etc., is outrageous. - Dawn

As much as anyone who is 'in it for the tech' hates to admit it, revenues are simply essential for any business. I can't even count the number of times in y old company business development came down and said 'do this and this please' and I was like 'it will take 3 employees 2 weeks of time to do this, how much money will we get for it?' and the answer was 'oh, no revenues, we just think it would look better.' Revenues matter. - Andrew Leyden

Did the rights to the Vloggies go with the sale? I know Irina would love to have her idea back.:) A lot of the talk here is how Podtech was a "social media" company, where it always looked like a "video production/distribution" company to me. Is there a difference in Podtech that I was missing? There is definitely a great case study in how companies interact with creative professionals and communities somewhere in here. - Schlomo Rabinowitz

Bilal: the changes to WorkFastTV actually were made due to community feedback. If it weren't for the community feedback, those changes would never have been made. What is FastCompanyTV's story? We are having conversations with business and tech innovators to understand how the "fastest companies" are building value for their customers and we'll use the most interactive methods around to include our audience into those conversations (which is where Qik and FriendFeed come in). That's why this week I interviewed one of the best architects in the business (he's designed stadiums around the world). Two weeks ago we interviewed six congressmen. As to revenue and all that... - Robert Scoble

FastCompanyTV is making our bosses happy (we're bringing in more revenue than is being spent) but we're a private company so we don't discuss our finances in public. About our audience. I'd argue that I know more about our audience than any TV show does and we're soon going to require loging into FastCompanyTV to comment. Who is making tough decisions? I have a boss and he has a boss but the community is really our ultimate boss. - Robert Scoble

Schlomo: no, there's no real difference in the end. That's why PodTech failed. It squandered (didn't listen to, or make use of) its social media stars. I don't know what'll happen to the Vloggies trademark and domain. I assume the new owners will keep those, I'd assume Irina can negotiate with them. Andrew is right. Dawn, thank you, appreciate the support. - Robert Scoble

PodTech and John's earlier work (circa 2005) was why I got into podcasting. It's why I co-founded PodCamp. It's why I thought there was a great opportunity to make interesting media in the tech space. Between PodTech and IT Conversations, I learned tons of larger picture information that saved my company millions of dollars. When all the "cool kids" showed up, I had high hopes like everyone else. But that's also when things diffused in a weird way. - Chris Brogan

Scoble: $100,000 for an engineer?? Wow...The only guys I know here in San Antonio that might pay that much for that job is Rackspace....Maybe USAA. Wish Rackspace needed UI developers...I'd love to work for them. - Sean McGee

What a wonderful discussion. I am waiting for John's post. It will surely clear a lot. I know John personally and I like him. Let's see his opinion and see what the next steps for everybody are. - George Athannassov

some of Those videos that Scoble did for podtech have had huge impact on me - Christian Burns

Posted a longer essay on this, and podcasting as a business. My question: How does the $500k sale price relate to missteps by the company, as opposed to fundamental problems with podcasting as a business? -- http://www.thestandard.com/news... - Ian Lamont

I pointed this thread to a friend of mine, not a geek , but a "thinker" and who dabbbles in M&A, Hedging and all that nice fund style mngt. His comments were. "listen there are lesson to be learned everywhere, the founders should be thankful that this is only a 10-12M cost of learning curve. All startups face a risk, all investments have risk. Its only throgh failure that people learn to mature and grow. All good things that flourishs are by-products of many failures" . Oh well, I digress. - Peter Dawson

It was certainly an interesting ride for the almost year I was there. One thing I could never understand is why PodTech felt it needed to build its own media player and distribution platform when there were several potential partners that were already years ahead of PodTech's development. Blip.tv or Castfire could have easily saved PodTech a shit ton of cash while delivering better features and stats reporting. I suspect with an engineering team in place, they needed something to do. - Eddie Codel

Eddie - Can't agree more, but this is just one of the many missteps that appears to have happened. Roberts level of transparency on the topic gives us a great opportunity into what can go wrong in a start-up. The core issue appears to be a lack of leadership at many levels. If an honest post-mortem can be written it will surely benefit anyone looking to build their own startup. - Jim McCusker