It was with mixed emotions that I woke up today to learn that Entrecard was sold. Sometimes a leader is SO bad you begin to enjoy their nonsense. Graham Langdon was Kim Jung Il with an asshat, running his online version of North Korea into the ground. The following is the main announcement from the Entrecard blog.
“It is with great excitement that I announce Entrecard.com, Inc. has been Acquired by ZipRunner Inc.
ZipRunner has the resources, vision, and dedication to Entrecard that will allow it to grow in pursuit of the vision I laid out nearly two years ago.
Moving forward, my relationship to Entrecard will be that of an advisor, and I will help the good folks at ZipRunner take the whole project to the next level.”
Great, so the grand leader is “staying on as an advisor”. If I could have given Ziprunner one bit of advice, it would have been to lose the cancer known as Graham. Other than alienating people left and right, what expertise does Graham possibly bring to the table? “Dude, if you ever find yourself late at night in a drunken threesome with enraged sealions, take my advice, drop the acai bowl, but hold onto the cell phone! Believe me, I’ve been there”. If you want , NAY, crave additional Graham mockery, then head on over to yet another soon to fail blog started by Graham: http://ontrapranore.com/.
Now, what does this mean for the bloggers who still use Entrecard? Well, Ziprunner certainly didn’t buy it to cavort around techcrunch parties as “Mr. Web Asshat 2.0″ bogarting every joint he can get his hands on. They bought it to turn a profit. Bottom line is they bought a list of bloggers. Names, emails, home addresses, social security numbers, and all.
Who is Ziprunner?
| Corporation | ||
|---|---|---|
| ZIPRUNNER, INC. | ||
| Number: C2322843 | Date Filed: 12/12/2000 | Status: active |
| Jurisdiction: California | ||
| Address | ||
| 2168 S ATLANTIC BLVD #232 | ||
| MONTEREY PARK, CA 91754 | ||
| Agent for Service of Process | ||
| ANDREW H TE | ||
| 2168 S ATLANTIC BLVD #232 | ||
| MONTEREY PARK, CA 91754 | ||
2168 S ATLANTIC BLVD #232 Belongs to Powweb. Hmm, now the great turnip wheels begin to spin. Remember Entrecard’s original investor, Andrew Te? Entrecard has already received a $112,000 investment from them. So either Graham sold EC to the original investor, or he simply lost control of the company because he couldn’t sell EC for enough to repay the 112k. I guess the way Graham said it sounds so much better than “I f cked up and the investor took Entrecard because I didn’t meet my obligations”. Some sort of deal probably was struck as part of the original venture capital agreement, hence the “staying on as advisor” nonsense. Buy-out or not.
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I think you’re right on the money with “he simply lost control of the company because he couldn’t sell for enough to repay the 112k”. I was thinking the exact same thing as soon as I saw the name Andrew Te. Great detective work there, Turnip!
Interesting, thanks Turnip. I wonder what the plans are for Entrecard. There’s no doubt it’ll be better off without Graham at the helm.
I give the new blog 3 months.
3 weeks would be closer, given Graham’s track record with blogging.
lol. I have to agree that it’s a case of the investor taking ownership cuz Graham couldn’t pay him back. honestly, is there any sane person with knowledge of the situation who can make an argument that EC is worth a hundred grand?
Long before CMF ADs, during the mockudrama when EC was listed as “for-sale” I was seriously going to offer 50k for the business. Phirate jumped right in on the forums saying he was interested in continuing work on the code regardless of owner. However, much has changed since then. I’d guess 10k is too cheap, 20k too much for the domain + code + baggage.
I wanted to make an offer for Entrecard too, but unfortunately Graham was convince it was worth something like 20 x it’s actual value.
Great to see that piece of shit Graham gone no matter what the reason,and thanks for saving me the trouble of looking up the info on the new owner.As soon as I saw news of the deal I knew I could get the scoop here.
Steve, You know it! I awoke to Tyson chastising me for not fulfilling my promise of making one more EC post when EC was sold. I like how the details of the “acquiring” were deliberately obfuscated. The guy makes a loony post about “controlling the bounce rates through al-gore-rhythyms” and then blames the fall of EC on those who objected. Yeah, same way an absentee landlord let’s a property fall into disrepair, posts a sign after 2 years saying “I’m going to paint the house pink”, and then blames the tenants who question the color choice as the reason the house gets condemned.
Thanks for the detective work as always, Turnip! There is next to nothing about this company online – if there is any info, a website or anything, it is buried under blog posts about the Entrecard acquisition. So good on you for finding this. This is very interesting… hm.
Good job! I read the news, then Mr. Google pointed me right to Turnip.
I am interested to see where the thing goes. Graham had the angst laden item last week about a “timer” on drops to slow the bounce rate at EC. That was met with a chorus of boos.
If the new bosses are not “buyers” as much as “holders of a defaulted note” then their interest in making big changes likely approaches zero. My guess is the site brings in enough money that they keep the lights on. But who knows? Anything could happen now I guess.
Impressive. I learn about this story from Turnip first instead of Entrecard. I definitely should start checking my email first thing in the morning instead of running around your site
You only read it here because I promised “one more post when EC gets sold”. Good thing, too. Graham sure blew a lot of smoke up the blogosphere’s wazoo with that “Ziprunner” nonsense. He knew damn well people would have a hard time getting info, which is why he provided none, despite writing a lengthy article painting a rosy picture of his tenure at entrecard. I hope Andrew H. Te doesn’t think he is as clever as Mr. Langdon when it comes to informing EC’s members about the truth. That would be a horrible start to the new relationship. Now I think I will go back to my gardening.
I heard a rumor that Graham is now going to blog about gardening. This should be interesting.
With that last ec post now it’s your gardening blog and putting in the spade work with making that grow and florish. the ec drama was good while it lasted, or will GL be like harry potter and bob up again in a new episode ?
He’ll be back like a bad cold. When Ziprunner begins running in the red, it will become annoyed with the high cost of fixing/maintaining the code. Don’t be surprised if Ziprunner dumps the property in 6 months. To who? You guessed it, a group of investors lead by boy blunder himself will buy it. As usual, Graham will post how he has learned from past mistakes, but simply couldn’t perform because of the pressure of having the VC breathing down his back and stifling his creativity. Seriously, if you like to read fiction, read ontrapranore.com to see how delusional he is.
The underlying tone of Graham’s “farewell message” is to blame anyone and everyone who’s criticised him in the last few months. But that’s bullshit. Entrecard was a great idea, but a series of knee-jerk changes, none of them thought through properly, allied to an arrogant siege mentality, has shown Graham up as incompetent. And the notion that anyone taking over Entrecard is going to retain him as an “advisor” is a joke – why would anyone who’s just acquired a business because it’s on it’s knees retain the person who reduced it to that state ?
Correct Jim, they wouldn’t retain him unless there had been a preexisting agreement to do so, as with the angel investor. Nowhere did I see mention how EC went 1.5 years without even an attempt to monetize itself. Graham was so sure he would get some sucker to dump money into it, that making EC profitable was the least of his concerns. By time he realized he was stuck with his white elephant, he couldn’t sell and it was too late/expensive to change the system.
Honestly, as much as I hated EC before I left, if I knew there was even a remote chance of outlasting asshat I might have stuck it out for a little longer. Don’t get me wrong – I certainly don’t think things will get any better, I just would have done it out of spite. Anyways, this was a good way to start my Friday and thanks for the info. In closing, I don’t think anyone thinks EC will get any better, but as long as there are new bloggers desperate for trafiic, they’ll continue to get people signing up as long as the lights are left on. Sad.
CHEERS!
ps – I read today how Facebook is breaking Canadian privacy laws (and many other countries) by retaining customers accounts who have quit – is it possible EC would be the same?
Canucklehead, EC traffic is like crack. You waste an hour of your day to get 300 visitors. If your blog normally gets 5 visitors, and 3 of them are search engines and the other 2 spammers, then that crack hit sure feels good. If the addict is told nobody stayed more than 4 seconds on the page and half the visitors were bots, they don’t want to hear it. There will always be a market for EC. In fact, it took a special kind of absentee asshat to drive away that many people from such a simple business model.
You should know I hate facebook. I can’t even delete my account but continued to receive spam from them. Because I couldn’t change my mail settings, they continued to spam me. That is illegal in America too under the can spam act.
I wondered if EC still has our information too. My account was deleted quite a few months ago but I did get a few newsletters from them afterwards. I really don’t need more from the new owners.
Facebook owns everything you post or upload there. That’s why I don’t upload any of my own photos to it. Only through my Flickr account. I really think they (FB) are taking advantage of the fine print to do that.
Well Graham lasted a bit longer than I expected! If this ZipRunner has any wits about them they will have nothing more to do with Graham. That boy isn’t capable of advising anyone and sure as heck doesn’t know anything about the business world. If ZipRunner is going to continue the service as is they should immediately get into damage control mode. I agree that if all they are doing is sitting on a defaulted note which is most likely then they are likely going to try to dump it themselves. Meanwhile a lot of members are going to concerned about the credits and if they can get their cash-out. My concern is what they will do with the personal information they also acquired.
Got here from Google when I was searching for more information regarding ZipRunner Inc.
Very good investigative work!
Turnip, I didn’t mean to chastize you. Thank you very much for the information.
I was serious when I said I wanted to read your thoughts on the sale. A day later, I’ve seen opinions ranging mostly from “I hope things get better, let’s wait and see” to “I’m not confident but let’s wait and see.”
And the nice thing from the new owner is that it seems like they don’t mention anything anymore about the Credit buy back program… Because in two of my blogs i didn’t sign up yet for the Cashout program… The link is no more available for these members (and the new one).
For the ones who signed up, the waiting for Cashout approval message is still there and on my other blog i have the Cashout Account. Let’s see if they cashout anymore, or if i should transfer better all available ECs in that account
That is an interesting bit of news Cornyman. I wonder if the new owner reinstates all the accounts Graham banned and stole credits from to fund his contests. I doubt it.
hopefuly the dictator will not control anything and his “advice’ will be shitcanned!
Mike, if I gave you 112k and you pissed it away on an office and nothing to show for it, would I take your advice? “Advisor” is simply a title negotiated as a golden parachute to let Graham save face. If he was so “attached” to entrecard, then why couldn’t his own mods ever find him to get an answer, even by email? Entrecard isn’t a turnkey operation where you can just ignore your customers.
I’m going to cash in my money before they turn that option off!
I think the payout could take much longer or could get suspended as new members and member who haven’t signed up yet for the CashOut-Program have no more the ability to sign up for the Program!! As far as i know there was never a bigger payout than 10 $ or 15 $ at once. Members who wanted to cash out 100 or 50$ never got their payout, some wait since May for this money!
Even though Entrecard has been has been taken over, I fail to understand that being such popular web tool how Entrecard did not made money? It was a brilliant project and so popular,is 112k is big enough that Mr.Graham was not able to make such kind of money with Entrecard? What went wrong? On top of that its hilarious that he is being appointed as advisor in the company he failed to run properly.
It didn’t make money because it was mismanaged. It was a concept in the lap of a programmer who made it work. From day one the gameplan was to dump the property to an investor, not actually run a business. Absentee owner = mess.
Thanks, I had no idea about this, glad I came here…
Like father like son, interesting image.
david
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing, I already knew some of this, but your blog post put into better detail…have a good one !!!