Domceq even more so.

SpinVox is a total house of cards, all investors should be totally embarrassed.

SpinVox makes all of UK VC look like idiots.

Bueller?

Techcrunch’s “holier-than-thou” attitude is getting worse as time goes by, and makes it harder to find the actual facts – what good journalists are supposed to present to their readers – in the conceited, self serving attitude that covers the stories like a thick sickeningly-sweet syrup.

Arrington WAS the best product journalist, until he fell in love with himself and forgot that that’s what he is – A JOURNALIST.

Apprently, his colleagues also forgot that that’s what he is – “Arrington is best Product Journalist in the business, and a startup that doesn’t take his advice does so at their peril.” – WTF???
If Arrington reads this post and is cool with this comment, well, I guess that just proves me right..

Don’t get me wrong – I think the techcrunch guys are doing us all a great service, but I think we will all be better off if everyone (Butcher, Meyer, Domecq et al.) get off their high horse and start focusing about what we are all REALLY interested in – building exciting new companies that will grow and prosper and make a real difference in people’s lives.

I hope I’m not the only one…

What is ironic about this episode is that Julie herself has continually failed in life; failed to make First Tuesday anything, failed to raise a fund for Ariadne, failed to make any friends in the industry, and failed to make any money from investing in start ups.

She still gets incredible media coverage: clearly she has not failed at PR.

AND YET, the ecosystem in which she survives somehow manages to keep her afloat. So Europe can’t be that bad at giving failed entrepreneurs chance after chance after chance…

First Tuesday. She sat on a few panels. Intro’d a few VCs to entrepreneurs. Riased money in 1999 (my 12 year old daughter could have raised money in 1999, even when she was two.com). Fell out with all her co-founders. None of which give good references (try speaking to Nick Denton or John Browning). She started Ariadne. Consistently fell out with everyone there (if you have a spare 20 mins do read the fucked company cache http://bit.ly/NSs7S …), Employed people like this (really, read it, it’s hilarious http://bit.ly/1QFrY4 ). Claimed that Skype was a portfolio company but all she did was headhunt a junior wonk (try asking the Skype guys about her).

Consistently failed to raise money from institutions for Ariadne, only from angels who swallowed her lines. Today she intros deals to VCs who all have her on auto-delete and seems to earn her salary makes money from constantly appearing in PR
http://www.ariadnecapital.com/documents/Julie_Meyer_Speaker_Biography_00
1.pdf )

What is terrific of course about Julie is that she keeps on bouncing back. It is probably posts like this that strengthen her resolve, keep her fighting for another slot on radio 4 and sharpen her persuasion skills to convince another innocent entrepreneur to give up equity to become part of her “portfoio” and get access to her “network”.

And that is the rub. I’ve got nothing against PR trolls who want to get coverage to increase their speaker fee and somehow fulfil their insecurity, but it fills me with fear that she might become a respectable part of the “ecosystem”.

It’s easy to post anonymously on a blog, so I want to hear from all those successful entrepreneurs and management teams who have got value from Ariadne. Please; speak up!

One of the strangest things about this whole sorry saga, is that it’s been common knowledge for at least a couple of years that SpinVox used call centres abroad to transcribe messages and seemed to have a very manual ‘technology’.

I’m amazed that nobody did some digging before now. I’m equally amazed that SpinVox weren’t prepared to be more straight-forward from the outset.

The financials are something else though …

You’ve got three great stories here:

1) SpinVox — the emperor has no clothes
2) Christina Domecq — £500k salary? car and chauffeur? what planet is she on?
3) Julie Meyer — lots of talk, but what has she actually ever done? How much CASH has Ariadne (not the suckers who were sweet talked into investing in Ariadne) ever invested?

Please keep digging……

After so many years the service is still not available in the UK.

Whats the saying? Go hard or go home.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070210150625rn_1/comments.fuckedcompany.com/phpcomments/index.php?newsid=97505&page=1&parentid=0&crapfilter=1

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-law-courts-tribunals/10602370-1.html