Project Complete: FireAnt

FireAnt, a video aggregator that I helped create back in 2005, was sold this week for $400,000.
Read about here and here.
It's kind of a bittersweet ending.
Glad that our work found a home and all bills paid off, but wish we could have done it all differently.

In 2004, the small Videoblogging group began intentionally using video to document our lives and then distribute them through blogs.  A question quickly arose: "How could we more easily follow lots of different videoblogs?"
Peter decided to make Mefeedia. Josh and I decided to make AntNotTv (later renamed FireAnt).
We hooked up with Daniel Salber and Eric Radmall who singlehandedly developed the mac and PC versions.

(First version of FireAnt, Dec 2004)

It's the old story.
Four guys working full-time jobs, making software in their bedrooms at night.
The Videoblogging group was our main testing peeps, giving such great feedback and urging us on.
Remember, this was a time when 99% of humans couldn't conceive of RSS...let alone a video aggregator.
When iTunes enabled RSS subscription and video playback, we felt totally validated.
When Apple launched the video iPod, we thought we had arrived.
We worked ourselves to the bone for 18 months for no money.

The old story continues.
Now we felt we needed to become "serious".
We needed "money".
So we got a couple "business guys" to solve all our problems.
I remember how naive we were.
"You're excited about what we're doing? You know about business? Cool, we'll share this with you!"
Suddenly we became a "corporation" and voted on "board members" and issued "stock".
We went to VC meetings looking for "investment".
After a while, the Bizness guys said they couldn't get money because the technology wasn't good enough.
We said they needed to be businessmen and get business...and then realized they had no contacts, the currency of dealmaking.

Reality set in. Lots of phone fighting.
I was forced out of daily decisions in the summer of 2006.
Josh was the only founder who stayed on with the biz dudes.
FireAnt racked up tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, development costs, and legal fees.
Infighting seemed to bring any momentum to a halt.

To Josh's credit, he was able to get things organized enough to sell the good technology that FireAnt developed. The $400,000 basically pays off all loans and debt the company had. The story ends.

So I guess I become one of many software entrepreneurs who pass on this advice:
Do it for as long as you can on your own.
Success is definitely about good ideas, team, and execution...but it's also all about contacts and luck.
Don't believe the hype of quick riches.
haha and trust yourself.

UDPATE: Josh was worried that I made him look bad. He and I definitely had core disagreements over the past couple years, but he deserves the credit for sticking with FireAnt and saving it from the dead startup graveyard. Hopefully he will take time to share his experiences on his blog. FireAnt started as a community project and I know people would really benefit from hearing what he learned.   

UPDATE: In my rush to write a port-mortem, I forgot to mention all the work that Clint Sharp did. He was with the project for a relatively short time, but created the entire website directory  that had a huge impact on the public seeing what FireAnt could do. Clint always was able to bring reality to all our conversations. He has a great blog post here about how it all went down.

Comments

[Pete Prodoehl]

Jay, I have been out of the videoblogging loop lately, but saw the news about FireANT and said "What!?!??"

This post of yours is awesome. It tells the story. I have great respect for you and your work, and even more so after reading this.

Good luck in your next endeavor. I'm sure you will put what you learned to good use.

[Bev]

That's absolutely fantastic, Jay! Congratulations.

[Robert]

Kudos to you. Oh yes.

[Chuck]

Oh man what a ride.
I sometimes wondered what was going on behind-the-scenes with FireAnt.
It morphed from a player to a guide to ???

If you're going to live in SanFran you gotta have at least one startup under your belt, right?!

[Steve Elbows]

Thanks for the fascinating insight, Ive long wondered about detail of what really happened.

Personally I always thought it would be much easier for fireant to be a useful success used by a lot of people, than it would be for it to make money or become a confortable business.

Thats one reason I ranted when the idea of fireant being opensource was dropped. In my opinion you guys should either have tried to sell it the moment you all started to think of it as a business, or else should have kept it growing as a volunteer & opensource project until it grew to a stage where it was mature and popular, when a for-profit ofshoot could then have ben feasible.

But if I recall there were many factors beyond your control, where once fireant seemed so central to vlogs, a combination if itunes and flash video in browsers changed the dynamic quite quickly.

To be honest Im always a little shocked to hear how much money companies manage to spend I know costs soon add up but I had no idea fireant was really burning any cash at all for the early part of its life where it seemed to evolve best.

Anyway thanks again for sharing some info, the lack of info always infuriated me over the last few years, only hearing the positive spin from Josh, which was understandable but rang hollow.

This tale does nothing to increase my faith in many of the people who present themselves as the ultimate business partner you need to turn our tech into profitable realiy. Frankly there seem to be rather a lot of incompetant lazy lying chancers out there, and whilst I obviously dont know if anybody fireant go saddled with was like that, I shed a tear for every creation and vision that people have and work for, that turns to dust in the hands of others.

[Frank Sinton]

Thanks for the story. It is great that Josh and team were able to bring this to acquisition - a very difficult thing to do for companies this size. Congrats on that.

Mefeedia keeps humming along since I purchased it from Peter back in Dec/Jan. I agree with your advice, which is a big reason why we have not taken outside money and continue to focus on building a great product with the passionate team that is in place. I hope you come visit us soon.

-Frank

[Levois]

Congrats!

[Chris Ritke]

Life sure is a roller coaster ride. Slow going up, fast coming down. But it's fun. And you learn stuff. And you move on. And you meet great people. Like you.

[john]

but jay, you made money from all of this - why aren't you telling people this? you make it sound like they screwed you over.

[jay dedman]

when I get a check in the mail, you'll be the first to know Anonymous John!

[Clint Sharp]

A post-mortem from my perspective on FireAnt is available on my blog.

http://clintsharp.com/my-fireant-story/

Best of luck to all of us who were involved in the little video startup that didn't make it.

Clint

[Richard Jochum]

Thank you Jay on this. I noticed this weird link in FireAnt yesterday leading onto a "gourmet" website and thought, oh dear, is everything now sold out for freaking commercialism and the continuous accumulation of noise? Until I found your post which tells the story and gives me comfort. Thanks again.

Richard

[Pete]

Congrats Jay. Hopefully there will be at least enough loose change left over for you to get that shiny new Macbook Pro and iPhone.

[Jenny Ryan]

Jay, did you ever bet paid back? I am pretty sure the SonicMountain guys are millions in debt with major negative cash flow. (They are knocking on VC doors like madmen!).
I hope the "cash is in the bank"! Good Luck and great post.

[Dave H.]

Coming late to this post Jay, but really appreciated it. I have a tremendous amount of respect for you (and Josh!) and love your candor and the direct way you tell the story. You show us much just by showing us something of yourself! This is good.