R.I.P.: Edgeio and TED

Written on 7th December 2007                                                                                                              COMMENT
Patrick de Laive, Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of The Next Web Conference. Twitter: @patrick

Businesses come and go, we all know that. May they Rest In Peace.

In the US an entrepreneur isn’t considered an experienced entrepreneur when he or she didn’t fail at least one time. The more failures, the better (hmmm.. not sure if I totally agree with that). In Europe we are far more conservative when it comes to bankruptcies. I like (as with many things) the mix between the US and European culture.

You don’t have to be ashamed if your company failed, but you must aim at creating a profitable business and don’t start a business just so you can fail (if you know what I mean).

Although a lot of negative things happen when a company goes out of business, there is also a bright side. The entrepreneur just learned some big lessons and has time to start a new company!

R.I.P.: Edgeio (see also Techcrunch article)
Edgeio was founded by Michael Arrington (yep, the famous blogger) and Keith Teare. I have had the luck to meet both in San Francisco. Keith is a great guy (he was the one who tipped us to wake up Michael Arrington which was covered by Wired Magazine later on :) ). Edgeio shared offices (and secretaries -Amy-) with Techcrunch. What Edgeio did..? Not totally clear to me.
Edgeio got 5 million dollar funding in October 2006 Intel Capital and Transcosmos and “burned through that money according to plan” !!!! EXCUSE ME! Guess their excel sheet predictions were spot on on the expenditures side but was a little bit off with the predictions of the revenues :)

A TechCrunch reader commented: “what exactly did you spend 5 million dollars on?” Arringtons reply is hilarious “parties, scotch, hookers, blow. you know, the usual” :)

R.I.P.: TED (no not the conference)
Closer to home, Amsterdam based TED pulled the plug. TED published a free paper for kids and had an internet concept attached to it and with TED mobile, TED TV and 25 talented people working at their office it seemed a healthy and successful company. TED was founded by Friso Jiskoot (son of former CEO ABN AMRO) and backed by Marcel Boekhoorn (Serial entrepreneur, investor in several startups -zecco.com symbaloo.com-).

I wish Friso all the best and I’m sure we’ll hear from him again as he is a true entrepreneur.
Sorry to conclude that TED is DEAD. R.I.P.