Just a couple of years ago it felt like Portland was the place to be for a tech or internet startup, now they’re dropping like flies. Yesterday it was announced that the latest casualty in this mess is to be Vidoop, LLC – another victim of investor pullout. While Vidoop struggles to figure out how to deal with being flat-ass broke and unable to pay their employees their remaining wages (in fact, they’re offering to give them laptops, etc. in lieu of wages), this serves as a nasty reminder of just how fucked up the start-up world is these days.
I wasn’t a Vidoop customer, in fact I was always a little fuzzy as to what it was exactly that Vidoop even did. Their name suggested a video service ala Vimeo or YouTube but they were far from that. It makes you wonder just how much longer we can all afford to give our start-ups stupid Web 2.0 monikers that are meaningless to Joe Consumer, I’ve felt for awhile now that the Web 2.0 naming ship sailed awhile ago with Twitter.
The real tragedy here though is twofold:
- The Portland area is left with quite a few more highly-skilled by unemployed people. We already have too many and my thoughts go out to the newly jobless folks from Vidoop, here’s hoping you find something and find it quick. It sucks that your last paycheck is a fucking laptop, no doubt about that, chances are you all had one already anyway. Let’s face it though, it’s better than nothing I suppose.
- This also means that investors are skittish to a fault now. They probably have been for some time but we white collar fucking Americans apparently STILL haven’t learned our lesson from the shit storm on Wall Street… People, seriously, think about it… You AREN’T going to get a return on an investment in 3 fucking hours, the world just doesn’t work that way. Everyone is still caught up in the stupid 90’s tech stock way of thinking and in all likelihood things NEVER be that way again. Investments grow over time and from what I’ve read, Vidoop died because they simply weren’t given enough time. Granted, I had no money invested in it, I wasn’t even paying attention to them, but still. Rome wasn’t built in a goddamn day and only a fucking dickless dipshit throws a million bucks into something, waits an hour, and then cries like 3 year old when they aren’t made into an instant billionaire. Get real. If getting rich is your goal, trust me, it’s going to take a lot more patience than you’ve given companies like Vidoop.
The economy sucks and no one likes to lose money, that’s a given. Stories like this though, they make me wonder how many brain cells the world really has left. Who are these investors and what the hell are they smoking?
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