2 Oct 2008

Listen all of y'all it's a sabotage


Clint Boulton, of Google Watch, posted "Did Google Sabotage Ringside Networks?" today. In this post, Clint examines (commenting on a previous post on the same story by Om Malik) some what Ringsides co-founder Bob Bickel had to say, on Ringsides closing...

In a few words, Bickel implies that Google (or rather a non-evil company...) offered to buy his company, then after 2-3 months changed its mind withdrawing the offer, which led to the closing...

"After dragging out the process for most of the summer, the non-evil company decided that they really did not want to acquire the company after all. Recommendation: always beware of wolves dressed as Grandma, they may be more like Microsoft than they admit."

By that time Ringside had used up all of our seed money. And by backing away from our Series A offers, we kind of burned the VCs. Even better, our development had stalled because of our desires to build stuff aligned with our new direction in the non-evil company."

Clints opinion on Bickels 'accusations' is this:

"It's possible Google is working on a similar piece of software and viewed Ringside as a threat. In which case, Google could have pretended to want SocialPass and led Ringside and its crew down the primrose path (thank you, "Ferris Bueller"), only to pull out and leave Ringside in the lurch...

We may never know what happened between Ringside and the non-evil company, but the demise of the company reminds us that nothing -- not even among philanthropic-seeming social software players -- is sacred in the cutthroat Web economy."


philanthropic-seeming social software players?? WHAT???


Lets see if I got this correctly...

You create a company.... You develop the next 'hot' product... All engines are firing away... You got your seed money sorted for now... Your developers barely sleep anymore...

And then, a big company comes and offers to buy you! (Yeah! Payday is near!)

So what happens then? You sit through the negotiations, trying to get as much as you can... Right??

WHILE doing this, do you:

STOP DEVELOPING YOUR PRODUCT?
JUST BURN THE REST OF YOUR SEED MONEY?
SIMPLY PRAY THAT NOTHING BAD HAPPENS WITH THE NEGOTIATIONS? (i.e. these dorks agree paying me the mother-load...)

HELL NO!

I am sorry for Bickel, but it seems to me that this is exactly what he did... Google, and any other company OR INDIVIDUAL in the world as a matter of fact, has the right to cancel any OFFER it has put on a negotiating table, for whatever reason it believes is right...

Bickel, or anyone else in his position, on the other hand, should have kept his focus on HIS product, HIS money, and HIS company...

Its a game of business, not a philanthropic charity Clint...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's right. Ringside was looking for the quick payout, and that was their mistake. At least some of the founders weren't primarily interested in developing a business as much as they were interested in cashing out.

Alexis said...

Exactly!

AND, they did not have a plan B, they were not prepared for what naturally could happen in any given negotiation...

They paid the price...