Slashdot Mirror
Arrington's CrunchPad Dies
adeelarshad82 writes "Michael Arrington announced the death of the CrunchPad on Monday morning in a blog post heavily spiced with angst and drama. According to Arrington, the Crunchpad, a 12-inch Web tablet expected to be priced at about $300, was just days away from launch. At the last minute, however, Arrington received an email from Chandra Rathakrishnan, the chief executive of manufacturing partner Fusion Garage, apparently trying to cut Arrington out of the product on the eve of the launch. Fusion Garage, according to Arrington, wanted to market the device itself under its own name; which obviously was the deal breaker. Arrington claims that the company had overcome obstacles at every stage in the business such as deals with Intel, retail launch, securing venture capital and angel investments. Interesting bit is that some were already speculating that the Crunchpad was not real."
We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavorIf he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.
Translation:
I'd like to cash in on Arrington's hard work. Does he have some sort of puppeteer's slot in his ass or lower back where we could shove our arm during launches? Or is he run by remote control? Does he come with instructions or ... how does this 'Arrington thing' work exactly? Please toss him the offer of looking like Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public but being my subservient bitch behind the curtains and being forever financially crippled. If he requests vasaline, we may be able to find some funding somewhere but we're not making any promises. There are sharks and there are sheep ...
Honestly, I applaud Arrington's levelheaded response. I believe mine would have consisted of nothing more than "WTF?" and an image.
Aside from all that, I'm sad because I really was excited to see what came out of this and would have been interested after the price dropped a bit. I mean, depending on battery life, you'd have to be nuts to get a Kindle over this.
My work here is dung.
It wouldn't be a surprise if the whole thing was just a hoax. Like the other article says:
Arrington, who is not a journalist (and has never professed to be one), regularly talks to financial guys, with close ties to virtually every major technology company. He's also plugged into these same companies at even higher levels. Oh, and he also invests in companies he writes about. At times, this can make his information incredibly prescient and also highly self-serving. The problem is, no one can tell the difference.
And a few days before launch and dies for such a stupid reason? Please.
Then what were we seeing in the videos on Youtube? Really expensive tablet PCs? They couldn't get that down to $200? I'm just confused as to what his motivation would be ... I think inflating your stock with a fake product and then dumping all the stock you have before it crashes would look hilariously like insider trading. So what's going on? What do they mean by "plugged into these same companies at even higher levels"?
... which are pretty heavy claims. I kind of get the feeling this isn't a hoax and there will be serious fallout one way or the other if they don't iron things out between each other. IP suit if it launches and fruitless R&D and production money if it doesn't.
In his 'rant' he's also calling these people out on infringing on his (and other people's) IP if they launch
My work here is dung.
Unless they rework everything that touches the co-owned intellectual property, there is no way Fusion Garage can legally ship anything. Arrington said as much and stated that a lawsuit would be waiting for Fusion Garage should they attempt to ship anything without CrunchPad's approval.
This whole thread has been modded Troll. I'm guessing the CEO of Fusion Garage somehow got mod points.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
I'm not sure what Arrington is bringing to the party here. He's not an engineer that I know of, but more of a money guy. It seems like Fusion Garage was doing all of the heavy lifting on the project. It's not clear how much skin Arrington had in the game. If he was providing serious development capital, he has a point. If all he was providing was "vision" and bloviation and hype via his blog, with maybe a seriously minority share of the capital, then he should STFU. There must be some sort of written contract for a venture like this. Let's see what it says.
Personally, I don't feel that the branding of something with "Arrington", "Tech Crunch", or "Crunchpad" brings a lot to the table.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Airing your dirty laundry on your blog is a sure-fire way to alienate the very people with which you want to reach an agreement. You've no doubt made it harder to resolve your differences amicably, even if Fusion Garage were the ones being dicks.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
This is pretty run-of-the-mill back stabbing in OEM/ODM business.
1. The manufacturer sees an opportunity with a weak 'partner'
2. Screws the partner.
3. Profit!
The thing is 'Fusion Garage' would have screwed him even if they worked a geographic restrictions deal out. If there was any meaningful market acceptance, any number of bigger OEM's would have taken their lunch in ~24 months.
Sad it has to go like this, but this very common unless you are an HP/Apple/Dell. Typical chicken-egg capitalism problem.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I'm guessing you've never started a company. When you do, you'll find out that a fair number of your friends turn into psychopaths when money is involved. This is why the best number of partners in any new venture is 1. I got screwed by AMIS in a somewhat similar situation. We co-developed the Express Array using our technology from cell design to routing. The first chip came out and worked 8 months after we started this very aggressive project. The day the chip worked, AMIS basically said "we don't need you anymore. Fuck off and die now." For AMIS, the entire project was delayed a year. It was incredible, unexplainable stupidity. And yet, it's an entirely common story.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
I was just going to post something to the same effect. A good friend of mine was pushed out of his company by his partner, board, and angel investors when his invention was close to launch. Another friend turned evil on me when our own start-up company was approached about acquisition. Even though we were 50-50 partners, I still feel like I got shafted. And every slashdot reader knows that Windows is dominant not because of its technical merits, but because of legal -- and illegal -- bullying. Screw or be screwed seems to be the name of the game. Sometimes it seems the only way to win is not to play.