Valleywag: AKimbo

Akimbo's last-ditch plan: Porn!

Jackson West — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:20:00 PDT

An Akimbo employee detailed the twists and turns in strategy at the now dead startup, mostly from the point at which Tom Frank (pictured) took over as CEO. Frank stalled development on content for investor AT&T, killed a product a month after it was shipped to Novato-based Sonic, switched products on client CenturyTel with two months notice, then decided they needed to acquire Canadian startup iWave's software. Only after founder Jim Funk left, along with legions of engineers, did executives decide to resuscitate tech built in-house. The nail in the coffin?

As a last ditch effort, they were going to go all porn with 'CarnalTV.' They lost the last of their talent at this point because they didn't want to work for a porn company.

Having lived through a dot-bomb, I doubt those engineers will be too proud to take work in porn if a recession hits and mortgage payments need to be met.

Ding, dong, Akimbo's dead

Jackson West — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 PDT

Akimbo, the online video company that just laid off most of the staff, has finally closed its doors. Its failure comes only months after a fresh infusion of $8 million from investors, including AT&T. The telco giant was looking for Akimbo's content to fill out the company's HomeZone TV offering. Only problem? Akimbo lost all its content licensing deals, according to a tipster. [VentureBeat]

Internet-TV startup Akimbo meets its iceberg

Jackson West — Fri, 02 May 2008 13:20:00 PDT

One anonymous source has now become three, so we're calling it over for Akimbo, the TV-over-the-Intenet startup which no amount of new CEO Thomas Frank's winning smiles could save. Writes an ex-employee:

It's true. I used to work for them over 2 years ago and all of my friends that were there are now gone. They laid off the last of them today. It's sad but LONG OVERDUE. Akimbo is now officially dead although the heartbeat died over a year ago.

So who's left to move the deck chairs? More details on the sinking of the startup, which had raised $47 million in venture capital, after the jump.

Not even the HR person knew about it until the rest of the employees were notified (in an impromptu all-hands meeting in the middle of our normal lunch hour - how obnoxious!). The execs, of course, had to have known about it the day before, and one of them even assured some of us yesterday that we had "nothing to worry about" in terms of the health of the company or job security.
It seems like the CEO was hoping he'd be able to swoop in at the last minute and play the hero. Unfortunately, such was not meant to be. They're only keeping all of the execs and high-level managers, a couple of engineers, the accountant, the HR person, and a little flunky who filled a position that wasn't even open at the time of his interview. Apparently he is related to or knows a friend of the CEO. What the hell were they thinking?!?

It's all a bit shady if you ask me. Clearly the board thought so, too.

The set-top box market is a tough one — most Americans have crappy bandwidth, and the demographic with enough disposable income for new services probably already has digital cable, a DVR and a videogame console already. Even Apple has struggled to sell many Apple TVs. Sling Media's Slingbox meets a niche demand for road-warrior live-sports addicts, but is still a minor success. "So what the hell is Akimbo?" Engadget asked in a 2005 review. Exactly. It never really found a direction; by the time Akimbo turned the ship around and ditched the hardware business, it was clearly too late.

Will the last Akimbo employee please turn out the lights

Jackson West — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:40:00 PDT

Akimbo has laid off nearly everyone except for its executives, according to a tip we just received. An early entrant in the TV-over-Internet field, Akimbo saw its original CEO Joshua Goldman leave for the luxury of investing in other video startups. The company dumped its set-top box business to sell Internet video-on-demand software to other hardware manufacturers. So far $47 million has been poured into the company by the likes of Cisco Systems, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Kleiner Perkins' William R. Hearst III, who serves on Akimbo's board. Any Akimbo employees out there want to confirm or contradict our tipster's impression that CEO Tom Frank and COO Neil Goldberg are mismanaging the aging startup?