I received a large response from my most recent column on the Neokast mystery. The most interesting post was this one:
Um, the real answer to from someone who knows is much simpler and less intriguing:
a) NK’s management team had no business experience in either the streaming space or in running tech startups
b) Said Mr. Johnson was arrogant and unwilling to accept the above point
c) He was unable to come up with a business model that made money
d) He did not want to raise venture capital until it was too late to do so
Btw, there was never any serious offer from Microsoft or anyone else. And the company shut down because their angel investors (who were not themselves experienced venture investors, rather friends of Mr. Johnson’s father), got cold feet (as they should have) when said Mr. Johnson could not come up with a sensible business model.
Arrogance + Inexperience = shutdown, no matter how good the original idea, or how great the software team.
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Now THIS suddenly sounds plausible!!
I have met the people involved and see a lot of wisdom in this response. I heard that the Microsoft offer was low-ball. I believe the company fumbled the chance for quick funding which I, frankly, handed them. While I didn’t at the time sense frustration in the dev team it comes inevitably if the work is left too long on the stove. Adam Johnson was WAY too much into being with all those pretty girls. The only part I can’t understand is why none of these guys will talk to me? Are they just embarrassed?
Thanks for the insight.
It makes sense up to a point. But I still think they sold their technology:
1.)Perhaps everybody is not talking too each other, because some people dropped the ball.
2.)Think Deal Or No Deal. They didn’t take the initial deal from “the banker”, waited too long, and now they’re selling it(or have sold it) for an even lower price, and just to make some kind of money. Yes, it’s embarrassing to admit you screwed yourself and your partners.
3.)If it’s been sold or being sold, there’s still going to be an NDA.
4.)Nobody else has cloned and applied this technology, have they?
To be honest I liked all the neat ideas that Cringely came up with better than the real answer.
We don’t know the real answer yet, we are all still guessing.
Agree with the commenter above, I’m a bit disappointed with this. It sounded like a good idea, it would have been great if MS or another tech giant had bought it.
If the technology worked, there must be someone with a big pile of cash who can make it make money.
Why hasn’t the R&D at Microsoft, Google, Apple, Adobe or even Real Networks reverse engineered this technology and applied it yet?
Wake Up! Cringely bought it with his rocket team to broadcast their launches.
Hint from the true inside:
I heard Adam Johnson might be developing an iPhone App, and looking for a bunch of app developers.
New ISP bandwidth caps surely didn’t help.
Are we 100% sure this actually works? If I built something, thinking it would save the world, then discovered as I scaled up that, eh, it wasn’t going to pan out quite the way I thought (and had blabbed to all), that’d be a good reason clam up?
Or maybe that’s just me 🙂
Simple embarrassment, an oft overlooked, yet very powerful motivator/behavior modifier.
If it is the case that the venture tanked, I don’t get why MSFT or someone else hasn’t snapped up the rights at rock bottom prices.
So where’s the patent application number? Is it published anywhere?
I like reading the embarrassing moments. Maybe I
If you don’t know how to monetize something and can’t find anyone else to monetize it for you, but if you still want some sort of value out of it, what do you do? Open source the app and ride the publicity into a cush job. Cf. Bram Cohen, Jon Johansen, etc.
Possibilities:
a) open source sounds too utopian to you, because you’re still hooked on the get-rich-quick business you thought you had
b) you’ve already sold the rights
c) you’re in a pyrrhic fight with your codevelopers
d) …?
I don’t buy the “you have to move on this fast” meme. Paradigm shifting technologies don’t suddenly suck because you waited a year to implement them. Maybe (d) is: tech wasn’t so hot in the first place.
Or maybe (d) is the economy, and it’s just too hard to get capital from the relevant players right now.
Based on the descriptions provided by Mr. “Cringely”, I bet the technology was bogus to begin with.
I suspect that p2p,the ultimate scalable technology, ultimately doesn’t scale to consumer uses. Thats why these p2p distribution businesses are failing. I think it doesn’t scale up to a national business model for one to three of the three following reasons:
#1 It gives gigantic bandwidth, if only a small percentage of the network uses it, but if every TV viewer were to use it, we would be back to square one, essentially limited by the size of the pipe because large bandwidth users wouldn’t be able to capitalize on small users’ slack. Its true, that p2p can decrease the average number of network hops, but I’m guessing the savings from decreasing hops along network backbone are smaller than we might expect, because most of the performance is limited by the last mile.
#2 p2p is based on a trusted network. For smaller networks this is fine(although there are still plenty of viruses on torrent networks), but with a large enough network, the probability of having some seriously malevolent users approaches 1. Maybe they couldn’t serve fake content because of high-quality hashing, but they could certainly engage in crippling DoS.
#3 It might be too decentralized. Businesses generally have a model based on providing some service to a number of users. They monetize the service by controlling the service availability and form. If it only costs $6.99 to serve a channel, what is to stop me from Hacking NeoKast’s software so that I can serve a channel myself? If the company controls the server code, then they can maintain control. But in p2p every client is also the server. So providing the service delivers the business to me on a platter.
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Cringely, do you know if there was any reason given for why Neokast’s law firm withdrew? I thought firms couldn’t just pick up and leave a case without some good reason.
“i can’t pay you anymore” is usually reason enough.
VERY interesting article on the BBC site today, that coincidentally mentions some high-compression, supposedly high-quality streaming system:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7962180.stm
I wonder if these are our boys?
Gary
I’ve been watching this story, along with Blockbuster-Tivo deal, past 24hrs.
These aren’t the former NeoKasters, but I’m intrigued to see if this company has some success. The trick is to combine cloud computing with home media entertainment center and your mobile device. Gaming is merely the foot in the door – this is a step in direction of Google Cube – remember that one? – OnLive if initially successful, may be pursued by big players sitting on huge cash reserves like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco or IBM
Perhaps Neokast sold their technology to the same unnamed company Burst sold their DVR patent to.
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