Gawker: valleywag, snocap

Shawn Fanning might never have to pitch Volkswagens again

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Finally, Napster creator Shawn Fanning will make a little bank. After Napster went bankrupt and he sold Snocap to Imeem for not much at all, Fanning and cofounder Jon Baudanza have sold social network startup Rupture to Electronic Arts for $30 million. The best part: Fanning and Baudanza did it without launching a product out of beta. All Rupture ever built was a still-in-beta network for World of Warcraft gamers. Investors cashing in on the Volkswagen pitchman's payday (see video) include Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures.

Shawn Fanning's Snocap purchased by music startup Imeem

Jackson West — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:20:00 EDT

Snocap, the company started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, has been acquired by social network Imeem. What the fate of Fanning's sophomore effort proves: There may be second acts in the Valley, but they're usually not any good. Imeem had been using Snocap's digital registry to identify uploaded music for over a year. It also reunites a number of original Napster employees, like Snocap COO Ali Aydar who will be the new VP of operations at Imeem. Snocap had been rumored to be for sale for some time after slashing jobs. The 15 remaining employees will be absorbed into Imeem's growing San Francisco office — which added the staff from Anywhere.fm earlier this year.

Party correspondent confronts ghosts of Yelp parties past

Megan McCarthy — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:00:36 EST

Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (Even the founders get in on the action!) Last night, Yelp held its holiday party at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Upon entering, I was greeted by a mass of San Francisco Yelptards, each louder than the next, all laughing, cajoling, flirting, and hugging each other. Self-congratulations were clearly in order.

The insular crowd, however, all but ensured I'd meet up with Ghosts of Valleywag Past. No, not a spectral Nick Douglas or a scary Nick Denton — but other people I've read about, or written about. That vaguely familiar girl chatting with Jeremy Stoppelman? Oh! It's his ex-girlfriend Liza, reportedly the center of love triangle involving Valley good-time-guy Sean Parker. There's Steve Chen, the YouTube founder, with spiky hair and glasses, holding hands with his girlfriend while bidding Stoppelman adieu. Over there, by the bar, is Ooma CEO Andrew Frame, wearing a form-fitting leather jacket and sporting bangs. Bangs? Really? And Keith Rabois, the ex-PayPaler now at Slide, with the controversial Stanford history.

Then I met Snocap founder Jordan Mendelson, whose appearance with a bevy of beauties at last year's Yelp party lead us to crown him the Valley's newest bad boy. Boy did we peg him wrong. My first thought, after taking in his supreme untallness, was that he seemed like such a nice guy. And so unassuming. The expression of smug self-satisfaction in last year's pictures was missing. As was, apparently, his job.

I asked about Snocap, the troubled music startup he founded with Shawn Fanning, whom he worked with at Napster. Mendelson confirmed our rumor that he had left for another project. So, was he going to indulge his Valleywag-created persona and party hearty all night? Sadly, no. Mendelson begged off early during the afterparty at Mr. Smith's, in order to prepare for a venture meeting today. The bad boys are growing up — or at least learning when they need to put on appearances.

Shawn Fanning's company deals itself losing hand with new music play

Tim Faulkner — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:36:47 EST

Snocap, the peer-to-peer music store started by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, is losing money, staff, founders, and partners. Not to mention money. So what's its new gambit, after licensing peer-to-peer technology and building MySpace stores both flopped? Enter BoomShuffle, a Web widget for creating music mixes using content from the Snocap store. It sounds less like a music product than a startup strategy, though. What do you do when your first two business plans fail? Why, you boomshuffle them! It's the game every entrepreneur can play! Unfortunately for Snocap, I suspect the deck is stacked against it.

Zazzle to follow Snocap to MySpace glory

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 12:28:25 EDT

Selling music on MySpace worked out so well for the now-downsized Snocap. Now, Zazzle.com is giving it a go, helping sell music merchandise through MySpace. It's the kind of original business plan you have to expect from a company's whose slogan is "infinite one-of-a-kindness."

According to reports, Zazzle and MySpace reached an agreement to allow MySpace bands to sell customized T-shirts for $15 to $20. Some day, MySpace might open a platform for third-party developers and let them make money independently as promised, but not today. For now, companies like Zazzle have to nuzzle up to MySpace and ask nicely. Nicely, we imagine, involves forking over some dough.

New details on Snocap's CD Baby breakup

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 13:08:02 EDT

When Snocap and music retailer CD Baby ended their partnership earlier this month, Snocap made like it pulled the plug. But today CD Baby president Derek Sivers put out numbers that show why it's no surprise Snocap had to lay off 31 of its 57 employees. Its partnership with CD Baby only generated $12,000 in revenues.

In a post to CD Baby's blog, Sivers details the costs his company faced dealing with Snocap as a partner.

We had to hire 6 new full-time customer service people just to deal with the thousands of problems. We couldn't fix problems ourselves, only pass them on, because all fixes had to be done by Snocap. A hundred times a day we had to helplessly apologize to our clients.
Every company meeting revolved around Snocap. Every employee had to be trained in the endless FAQ about Snocap. For the last 8 months, the CD Baby office has felt like a Snocap office. All we were doing, all day long, was dealing with Snocap issues.

But the pain felt necessary, because Snocap, with its deal to distribute music over MySpace, was expected to pay-out big. That little fantasy died when Snocap came to CD Baby with numbers, Sivers writes:

$12,000 total sales for the 8 months they'd been active. Since we keep a 9% cut, that's $1080 for us, total. Ouch.
As a curiosity, I quietly enabled MP3 sales on cdbaby.com, without telling anyone. A "buy MP3" button showing up next to the "buy CD" button.
In 3 weeks, with no announcements, we sold over $110,000 in downloads. Hm.

Shawn Fanning leaves his Snocap baby an orphan

Tim Faulkner — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:59:40 EDT

Snocap may have started as Napster creator Shawn Fanning and bad boy Jordan Mendelson's baby, but we've heard both Valley hipsters have washed their hands of their failing creation. A tipster reports that Fanning is long gone and focused on his latest startup, Rupture, a social network for videogamers. Mendelson, too, is working on a new project and is likely to leave Snocap in a few months. As for the cause of the layoffs, a tipster says the CD Baby deal's failure isn't the proximate cause. Instead?

Word is that the CEO Rusty Rueff is responsible for getting snocap into this ****ed up situation. It didn't help that the former CTO Dave Rowley made a mess of engineering before he was fired a few months ago (and given time to find a new position so that he could make it look like he "left for better opportunities" but he was fired).

Whether or not it's the company's creators or current management, there's no need for finger-pointing. Snocap's vision has failed, and the digital-music industry — like Snocap's founders — has moved on.

Shawn Fanning's baby killed by CD Baby

Tim Faulkner — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:26:03 EDT

What led to yesterday's layoffs at Snocap, the digital-music startup founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning? The breakdown of a deal last week with online retailer CD Baby, if not the proximate cause, was surely a signal of the startup's incipient meltdown. CD Baby is a music store that allows independent artists to sell their music at their own price, and Snocap's most significant partner besides MySpace. But, judging by the comments of CD Baby artists whose songs were being sold through Snocap's MySpace stores, that partnership has had little value.

When the relationship broke down, Snocap began sending emails to CD Baby customers, trying to sign them up directly and cut CD Baby out. Other musicians began reporting Snocap stores appearing in their MySpace profiles without approval. Others yet were complaining that Snocap wasn't providing its artists with any payout after five months. Things only got stranger with official statements from the companies.

When the deal fell apart, Snocap acted as if it was at its behest. Said Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff:

These experiences have shown us that Snocap works best when used directly by artists without the extra support of CD Baby. To use or continue using the Snocap MyStore to sell your music on MySpace, you must create a direct account with Snocap.

But a few days later CD Baby founder Derek Sivers rebutted that claim:

I'll give a public and detailed account soon. For now, just know that the ending of the relationship between CD Baby and Snocap was our idea, and done for your benefit (as well as our sanity).

Benefit of our sanity? We can't wait for the detailed account, but is it any surprise, really, that Snocap is laying off the majority of its staff?

Snocap lays off 60 percent of its employees?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:17:54 EDT

A tipster reports that Snocap, the once-hot digital music startup from Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Silicon Valley bad boy Jordan Mendelson, has laid off 60 percent of its staff, and the company is up for sale. If true, it's not surprising, giving industry trends. Snocap was something of a second coming for Fanning; rather than fight the music labels, he aimed to help them release copy-protected files on peer-to-peer networks, so they'd get paid even if users shared files. But despite cutting a range of deals, the idea never really took off. And lately, the music industry has started to embrace the idea of doing without digital-rights-management software altogether. It's not clear who would want to buy Snocap, really. At any rate, this explains why we haven't seen Mendelson, pictured here in bubblier times, at many parties lately. Anyone hear more about Snocap's firings? Drop us a line.

5 lessons on how to triumph in the face of adversity

Tim Faulkner — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 18:36:10 EDT

Dalton Caldwell, founder of the little-known social network and media sharing site iMeem, is in the news because Warner Music has dropped a copyright suit against his company Instead, Warner has granted Caldwell's users free access to the label's entire music catalog in exchange for a portion of iMeem's advertising revenue. Caldwell may not be the most powerful social-network CEO, but he's certainly the scrappiest, and this is just the latest example in his history of responding well to adversity. You could learn a lesson from him Or five lessons, actually:

1. Your main business becomes legally problematic, as iMeem's file-sharing service did after a landmark case? Stay low profile — in iMeem's case, by recasting itself as a messaging network and warn users to uphold copyrights.
2. Desktop peer-to-peer applications go out of style? Migrate your site's functionality to the Web.
3. MySpace permanently bans your widgets? The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Caldwell's response? Build a Facebook application.
4. Your growth rate draws the attention of copyright owners? Make a deal for appearance's sake with Snocap to collect and distribute ad revenue to the artists. (Don't worry if the majors do not sign.)
5. A big media company sues you? Turn that legal frown upside down into a business-development smiley face. Instead of fighting it out in court, strike a deal.

Caldwell's willingness to bend but not break has kept iMeem afloat as it grew to a reported 16 million active users. The social-networking landscape iMeem competes in remains filled with also-rans who weren't as flexible. Caldwell's tenacity stands out as an example to any startup faced with threat after deadly threat.

Silicon Valley's golden men

Chris Mohney — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:00:07 EST

This weekend's must-see movie isn't anything out of Hollywood — it's "Living Pictures/Men in Gold" at SFMOMA, a 40-minute video homage to seven Silicon Valley rich dudes. Created by French artist Sylvie Blocher, the video includes interview-montages with Snocap's Rusty Rueff, former Apple exec and "recovering assoholic" Jean-Louis Gassée, Eventbrite's Kevin Hartz, McDougall Creative's Eric McDougall, Eight Inc.'s Wilhelm Oehl, and Mayfield Fund's Chamath Palihapitiya (pictured). Yep, that's only six — no idea who the seventh is, though Kathy Levinson, formerly of E-Trade, had her footage rendered unusable due to "technical problems." Mmmm-hmmm. Read the Chronicle story for several good sexmoney quotes from the stars, and let us know your opinion if you see the exhibit.

Jordan Mendelson parties down, hires publicist?

Chris Mohney — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 17:00:46 EST

Snocap's Jordan Mendelson is quite serious regarding his duties as the Valley's new symbol of personal bacchanalia. Witness these pics of a private cocktail party held this past weekend, sent along by a Mendelson fan who claims not to be his publicist. Large, lurid editions of the photos after the jump. And because we can't resist, there you'll also find the accompanying "party report," which is one of the funniest things we've read this month.

What started out as a 70 degree Saturday in San Francisco turned into one hot winter night for guests in attendance at Jordan Mendelson's exclusive, invitation-only cocktail party. It seems the Snocap co-founder wants to be more than a techie with a penchant for beautiful women—he also wants to be known for throwing some of the best parties in SF! Guests were treated to fabulous food, fantastic cocktails, and an unending flow of champagne

The SOMA loft was sparkling but the light from the party paled in comparison to the beautiful guests. What a smokin' hot crowd! The young, hip, well-dressed and successful attendees made for a ridiculously high concentration of hot people and more than one person commented on the fortuitous ratio of straight men to enticing women. Guests, who included several well-known straight and gay couples (and singles) in the SF social scene, drank, nibbled and flirted while eyeing and admiring each other's party outfits.

Though the party was scheduled to end at 1am, those who left early missed out on rounds of shots of Don Julio (Jordan's favorite tequila) and the impromptu, 3 a.m. dance party, which included, among the bumping and grinding couples, a dozen gorgeous women kicking up their heels and letting their lovely locks down. Everyone wanted to know who would make it onto the list for the next party—but lips are tightly sealed. Jealous on-lookers will just have to wait by their mailboxes for the next invitation.

When the music was turned down at 4 a.m., most of the girls left... although I can't (and won't) say who stayed over for the even hotter after party. Which begs the question—just who at the top of Jordan's seemingly endless harem ladies? It may not be as clear as it seems! Rumor has it, the Valley's newest bad boy plans on taking his favorite ladies to the VergeLA party in Southern California this week. Could it be the two pictured below [or "above" — ed.]? Maybe... but I'll never tell...

Developing!