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venture capital
deathwatch
Ashton Kutcher-backed startup Ooma is falling apart
Hold the phone: Voice-over-Internet startup Ooma is flailing, despite — or perhaps because of — a viral-video marketing campaign directed by Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher. Ooma launched its product, a $400 device which offers unlimited phone calls, last year, with a splash of press. Starstruck tech bloggers like TechCrunch's Michael Arrington gave away Ooma gadgets to readers in exchange for some facetime with Kutcher — and asked few questions about its nonsensical business model, which had it charging high upfront prices for hardware and giving away phone service. Now, we're told, its high-school-dropout CEO, Andrew Frame, has seen a host of executives leave. More »
party report
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
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Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.
More »
5:00 PM on Thu Dec 6 2007
By Megan McCarthy
2,354 views,
7 comments
Latest by "Fake" Dave McClure: Valleywag, the local gossip rag, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. more »
michael cerda
Jangl CEO Michael Cerda faced down a crowd of entrepreneurs at a Stirr event in Potrero Hill, and, in an unusual moment for Silicon Valley, spoke the truth. "How many of you guys are founders?" he asked. Cerda waited a beat, looked at the raised hands, and said, "You're all fucked." Until that moment, no one had really been paying attention to the "Founder's Hacks" program, even with Twitter's Evan Williams and Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams on the stage. Stirr founder Sanford Barr had been walking around shushing people like we were naughty sixth-graders. With the crowd's attention, Cerda launched into the tale of a previous startup — and most in the audience assumed he was talking about Ooma, the VOIP gadget company he started in 2003 with George Oscar Bluth II lookalike Andrew Frame.
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Ooma creator says startup founders are "f----d"
Jangl CEO Michael Cerda faced down a crowd of entrepreneurs at a Stirr event in Potrero Hill, and, in an unusual moment for Silicon Valley, spoke the truth. "How many of you guys are founders?" he asked. Cerda waited a beat, looked at the raised hands, and said, "You're all fucked." Until that moment, no one had really been paying attention to the "Founder's Hacks" program, even with Twitter's Evan Williams and Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams on the stage. Stirr founder Sanford Barr had been walking around shushing people like we were naughty sixth-graders. With the crowd's attention, Cerda launched into the tale of a previous startup — and most in the audience assumed he was talking about Ooma, the VOIP gadget company he started in 2003 with George Oscar Bluth II lookalike Andrew Frame.
More »
geeks gone wild
New England geeks get best chance to score
Ashton Kutcher's greatest contribution to geek culture — and no, we aren't referring to Internet telephone startup Ooma — is coming to Boston. Fulfilling every nerd's wildest fantasies, the guilty-pleasure reality show Beauty and the Geek is coming to Beantown on Saturday . Producers are searching for dweebs and bimbos willing to provide the CW network's viewing audience with endless entertainment at their personal expense. And the specifics of the casting call? More »
clips
So, you thought that yesterday's video from telecom startup Ooma was bad? Oh, it gets weirder. More »
Ooma gets creepier
So, you thought that yesterday's video from telecom startup Ooma was bad? Oh, it gets weirder. More »
voip
Ooma, the voice-over-Internet gadget maker founded by entrepreneur and celebrity doppelganger Andrew Frame, finally makes its official debut. Starting today, the $399 box, which routes calls from regular phones over the Internet, goes on sale to the general public. Now you won't have to rely on blog giveaways to get your hands on the device. Assuming you want to. More »
Say hello -- and goodbye -- to Ooma
Ooma, the voice-over-Internet gadget maker founded by entrepreneur and celebrity doppelganger Andrew Frame, finally makes its official debut. Starting today, the $399 box, which routes calls from regular phones over the Internet, goes on sale to the general public. Now you won't have to rely on blog giveaways to get your hands on the device. Assuming you want to. More »
explainer
Red Herring displays its ignorance
Still on deathwatch, Red Herring, the once-storied tech publication, is displaying its straitened circumstances even in its copy. The few articles on its website that aren't Reuters wire stories seem to be written by a skeleton crew, with equally skeletal thought behind them. Take, for example, Cassimir Medford's puff piece on Ooma, the also-doomed VOIP startup. Medford, ostensibly Red Herring's "telecom and wireless reporter," includes this doozy:The name Ooma was chosen because it invokes curiosity, Mr. Frame said. Also it has four letters and the IP address was readily available.Here's what's wrong with that — and what it shows is wrong with the Herring. More »
"TechCrunch giving away Oomas? I'm seriously over tech. I'm moving into pork bellies or something less sad."
separated at birth
Ooma's arrested product development
Valleywag has already noted the curious resemblance of Andrew Frame, the founder of VOIP startup Ooma, to "Arrested Development" character George Oscar Bluth II, a failed magician. But that's not the only curious resemblance we've spotted, now that Ooma's launched its long-delayed product. It turns out that Ooma's Hub, a $399 pice of hardware for making cheap Internet calls, competes with a $99 product that does the same thing and is already on the market. More »
ooma
Andrew Frame's startup is older than it looks
When was Ooma, the VOIP startup founded by entrepreneur Andrew Frame and supported by actor Ashton Kutcher, actually founded? Seems like such a simple question. The company says it was founded by Frame in 2005. But former CEO Michael Cerda, in a detailed account, says it actually got started in the fall of 2003. And the Internet Archive shows an Ooma site dating back to 2004. Does it matter? Of course. The age of a startup matters as much in Silicon Valley as the age of a star in Hollywood.
voip
Why does eBay subsidiary Skype have a Swedish military transport in its Estonian development center? Could it be preparing to take the fight for VOIP customers against new competitors like Ooma to a new battlefield? Read more. More »
In Estonia, Skype girds for battle
Why does eBay subsidiary Skype have a Swedish military transport in its Estonian development center? Could it be preparing to take the fight for VOIP customers against new competitors like Ooma to a new battlefield? Read more. More »
deathwatch
