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TechCrunch
Getting The UnParty Started: Seesmic Lays Off 1/3 Of Staff
Michael Arrington Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:03:59 -0000
It's time to start slamming the reality of the Silicon Valley situation home to everyone. Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur lets seven employees go, he says, which is more than a third of the company. This comes on top of three employees let go a couple of weeks ago. "We cut everything that wasn't outsourceable, core or absolutely necessary for the company." Le Meur says the company isn't in dire financial trouble yet, noting he raised a $6 million round just a few months ago. But he's planning for a bleak fundraising future. I am an investor in the company.
Parallel Kingdom Set To Launch One Of First iPhone/Android MMOs
Jason Kincaid Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:41:37 -0000
Since the launch of the iPhone App Store, we've seen a wave of geo-aware social networks that make use of the phone's GPS (or in the case of the original iPhone, pseudo-GPS). Each of these apps aims to help facilitate social interaction by locating nearby friends, points of interest, or people you might be interested in meeting (but might not know yet). There's little doubt that some incarnation of one of these apps will help shape the future of social networking, but there's still a huge geo-aware market that has yet to be tapped: Games. Parallel Kingdom, launching at the end of the month, is set to become one of the first massively multiplayer online games (MMO) to hit the iPhone platform and Android platforms (both platforms will share the same in-game network). MMO's have been tremendously popular on personal computers with mega-hits like World of Warcraft, and have proven to be lucrative with subscription models that feed off their addicting gameplay. Parallel Kingdom is hoping to take this success to a mobile platform.
Elevator Pitch Friday: Palo Alto Software Makes Collaborative E-Mail Intelligent
Dan Kimerling Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:30:55 -0000
It's Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that's worth showing you. This week's presentation comes from Palo Alto Software, a software company startup that wants to make it easier for organizations to manage and collaborate using e-mail, to save time and be more productive. Palo Alto Software wants to make organizations more efficient, by taking community wide e-mail boxes, such as info,sales, or admin, and applying logic and analytics against them. For organizations that deal with large quantities of e-mail, managing that e-mail can become a task onto itself. Palo Alto software's E-mail Center Pro automates this task, freeing employees up to focus on the content of the e-mail instead of just managing it. E-mail Center Pro is sold through a Software as a Service model, with pricing based upon e-mail volume.
MacBook Pros Riddled with Faulty Nvidia Graphics Cards?
Peter Ha Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:53:53 -0000
Apple has released a statement that may affect those of you with newer MacBook Pros with Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics cards. Said graphics cards have been known to be faulty and may cause video to be scrambled or distorted.
Entellium Scandal Gives Ignition Partners a Black Eye
Erick Schonfeld Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:51:23 -0000
Just because you run a private company that does not have to file quarterly financial statements with the SEC does not make it okay to cook your books. The CEO and CFO of Seattle-based CRM firm Entellium found that out the hard way. They were arrested by the FBI earlier this week for inflating their revenues and then lying to their board about it. The company appears to be toast. It fired two thirds of its staff of 60 people in Seattle, and its Website is down. We are putting it in the deadpool. The CEO, Paul Johnston, and CFO, Parrish Jones, kept two separate set of books. One they showed the board, and the other was the real one. The fake one inflated revenues by $11.7 million over the past three years. For instance, in 2006 they told the board that revenues were $3,950,362, but they were really only $582,079. In 2007, the fake revenue number jumped to $6,291,705, whereas the actual revenues were only $1,446,238. This deception continued until September 26, 2008 when the VP of human resources, Melisah Wojtacha, came across the fake board books while cleaning out the desk of a former sales VP.
Google Employees Watch In Horror As 60 Percent Of Their Stock Options Drown
Erick Schonfeld Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:43:35 -0000
The entire stock market is taking another drubbing today, and Google is no exception. Its shares tried to rally in the morning, but are now trading below the $329 they closed at yesterday. That's a key price level Google employees are watching because a huge chunk of their options (1.7 million across the company) were granted with a weighted average exercise price of $329.78. The options are worthless under that price. In addition to that, there are another 5.7 million options that were granted at weighted average exercise prices of $450 and above. (see table below). All told, 61 percent of Google's stock options granted to employees are currently under water. The rest of Google's stock options become worthless at the average exercise prices of $275, $177, and $21 (for pre-IPO employees, who don't have much to worry about). All of these numbers com from Google's second quarter 10-Q and don't reflect any options that may have been granted in the third quarter. (Google's third-quarter earnings announcement is next week). Only eight days ago Google's shares were trading at $411 and three months ago they were above $450. In that time, a lot of paper wealth has disappeared and along with it incentive for many recent hires to stay.
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