After winning kudos from the site that chronicles startups in 2005, Michael Arrington invested in the company. Cubrilovic even contributed to the site and crashed at Michael Arrington's place for a time. What followed were many laudatory posts which, though the relationship was disclosed, didn't state the obvious — that by mid-2007 the company owed customers, investors and employees money.

The only mention that the site, and the company, was facing problems came in an addendum to a post about Joyent. Arrington had stopped writing about the company as investor, but continued to write other companies he'd funded which weren't tanking. Duncan Riley finally pointed out last January that "there are big questions about [Omnidrive's] long term viability." Riley proceeded to defend Cubrilovic on a podcast run by the entrepreneur, before one of the hosts described spending an evening at Arrington's house in January of 2007 "doing shots all night with [Cubrilovic]."

The details that I've heard are that a competitor, possibly Box.net, tried to make a deal that could have at least allowed the company to close the book on some debts; but that because of the company's structure, Cubrilovic had to sign off on the deal, yet was unreachable. Observers say that the CEO's erratic behavior showed a pattern perhaps indicative, in their opinion, of substance abuse. Former CTO Phil Morle's contention that payments went directly to an account held by Cubrilovic sounds like a recipe for a binge-spending disaster.

In an update to his original post that Cook published yesterday, the investor seemed to dance around the issue of alcoholism:

Too many parties, too many conferences, too much working between 1-4am, not enough working normal business hours, too much socializing, not enough focus, no business development, and not enough follow up and delivery.

Cubrilovic claims the company has received funding, is profitable, and has a bright future ahead of it. But Phil Morle, a former CTO for OmniDrive, and another ex-worker claim otherwise.

Morle makes serious accusations. Not only were he and other employees not paid, he says, but Cubrilovic allegedly used a personal PayPal account to take OmniDrive users' subscription fees, a careless move that could open him up to charges of commingling personal and corporate finances.

It would be nice to know which story is closer to the truth. If only there was an investor and board member with his own technology blog who could clear up this matter. Alas, Arrington so far has been silent on the drama at OmniDrive.