Fusion Garage's story is infinitely more believable than Arrington's. After both sides have spoken, I imagine it went down like this:
They show him their OS in hopes of getting press and subsequent funding. Arrington loves the idea and wants in on the concept. Fusion Garage goes and actually builds the thing. Meetings take place with Fusion Garage probably passively hoping for funding through Arrington's connections and Arrington monopolizing the conversation with "product ideas" that are more pie-in-the-sky thinking than actual engineering.
In the meantime, tablet fever grips the nation and a Fusion Garage with a working prototype has no trouble scoring VC meetings. They probably had to fight off the cash being thrown at them. Suddenly they don't need Arrington and those that actually came through with funding demand they end the charade of him being a participant. All they have to do is come up with a new name (Joojoo? Come on...)
What remains to be seen is how TC's audience will react. The idea that Arrington apparently tried to glom onto the project with no engineering contributions perfectly fits the tropes discussed on HN: MBA-types make a buck off the back of those who actually built the thing. I wonder if this tale will actually hurt his rep?
Who here will approach TC and Arrington differently after today?
The fact that you already have so many upvotes just perfectly illustrates how so many people still don't get that sales and marketing are just as important to product success as engineering. Maybe more. Characterizing Arrington's involvement as an attempt to "glom onto the project with no engineering contributions" is both unwarranted idle speculation and irrelevant, as there are many other contributions to be made beyond just engineering.
EDIT (for some reason reply doesn't seem to work): TC is a hugely popular site, of course, but my point is that sales and marketing is a lot more than what any website can do. They can have huge impact on a website's traffic (though the long term effect is arguable) but getting readers to follow a link isn't the same as getting them to pay a few hundred $ for a product.
Marketing, of course, is not about the product name. It's feature/function, pricing, ship dates, channel development, and general promotion/branding.
If Arrington signed a contract with fusion garage to do their marketing, than he is entitled to what the contract gives him. But to say that he has an ownership interest in the product just because he did some marketing for it is imo just not true. While he may have ownership interest in marketing materials he may have created (such as the crunchpad name) I don't see how he can get ownership of the actual device.
BTW -- this is just wild speculation based on incomplete facts, none of it is legal advice.
Perhaps I wrote that sentence a bit odd, but I don't mean to imply myself that this is what happened. The 'idea' central in this story simply fits similar tropes and themes I see on HN all the time. And you're right, the up-votes verify this.
If you have no product, having the best marketers in the world will not make you a single penny (unless you do preorders, which you still need a product eventually).
If you have a product and no marketers, will you still be able to sell some units? Most certainly.
Because of this, the actual engineering of the product is more valuable than the marketing if you were forced to choose between all engineers, or all marketers.
Well, no doubt many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right.
I will make no such assumption; "infinitely" is more than a little strong. ;) All I will say is: What a lose-lose situation.
Well... If it were a chainsaw, then there would be no question whatsoever.
As it is, it's the team who has the soldering iron, who wrote the code, who designed and built the prototype, who figured out production against the other guy who is known for having occasionally hidden ties to companies he talks about on his blog, who has thus doubtful journalistic standards and who posted a couple pictures, promoted the device and published stories about how it would change the world, painting himself as an internet visionary turned hardware mogul.
I stay with the guy with the soldering iron on this one.
Interestingly, I also can't see US$ 299 as such a ludicrous price. I doubt an e-paper display is much less expensive than a LCD twice its size and there are devices in this space that cost $299.
That doesn't get them out of the woods legally, but if all TC has is incriminating snippets of email, it does make them more credible than TC.
I can't believe how many are making that assumption. I had been reading TechCrunch for years before the day I saw Arrington post the original hypothesis for the CrunchPad. In fact, I can probably look up my comments on Google encouraging his going forward, and suggesting features. I'm blown away at how off track this has turned out. Unfortunately, if he didn't handle the legal stuff he has to take the turmoil I guess.
Me too, considering it's basically an attack on Mike Arrington based on an imaginary situation where Arrington/Techcrunch do things the author dislikes so he can paint him in a bad light.
It's no more worthy of upvotes than: "I imagine Mike Arrington met the CEO of Fusion Garage and kicked his children in the face. Isn't he a horrible person?"
This guy is a complete scammer and has a track record of doing exactly this. Watching HN people take his side after watching his video spin and not knowing anything else about him is just sick.
That being said, Fusion Garage really fell on their face. The only thing they needed to do is come up with a name better than crunch pad, which should not have been too hard. And they come up with joojoo??? Ouch.
It seems to me the FusionGarage people have gotten what they need from Arrington; attention. Now that he is no longer useful he's been sidelined. Kind of a Machiavellian move, since no lawsuit can undo the press they got.
Arrington was using them and they were using Arrington. Which, in the end, is the nature of all business relationships.
ChromeOS just went public, Apple may or may not do some tablet thing, Arrington is somehow involved and seems to be acting like an ass again, etc.
I think someone pushed the panic button and said something along the lines of 'we go live now or the whole thing is dead!'
All-in-all not a good way to start. My magic eight-ball tells me this project is doomed.
I do think the TechCrunch PR and marketing probably could have made it better, but perhaps there is a bit much credit and attention given to the louder mouths then is deserved.
In any case, interesting to watch, and a device like this for that price point would be awesome if anyone can pull it off.
The sooner you wake up to what marketing really is the better
My netbook will do the web and lots of other things. Like let me play Civ II.
For a device offering so little it's overpriced.
I wonder how things will evolve once Chrome OS hits the scene.
The thing has a USB port that could (presumably) be used for a keyboard if you required one. Wish I could get one with a full-fledged OS on it. In that case, I'd consider it.
Meantime, Chandra is certainly being assertive about his side of the TechCrunch saga. If his claims are true then Michael Arrington's business cred is going to take a major hit.
While this may prove to be an incredibly useful device in the future, it hasn't yet. At the moment it's in the toy category, like the ipod touch. It's almost twice the acceptable price for a toy.
I'm really confused as to why they decided to roll their own OS rather than put a customized Android system on it.
Android actually kinda sucks (second post on page): http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2009/11/04/
It's looking more and more like Arrington has totally screwed up contracts, agreements etc. And then it looks like this Fusion Garage CEO has a complete lack of understanding why the CrunchPad was a great name (etc)....
Im willing to bet we never actually see a product - either that or it will bomb.
"Let's call it JooJoo and have the logo read iooioo even though it's supposed to be spelled JuJu![1]"
For people that are not aware of the website, the word "crunch" provides connotations of (i) doing numerical computations (ii) working for long hours and (iii) working out, all of which are negative connotations for a device like this.
So yes, crunch pad was a terrible name, but I think joojoo is even worse. That will just elicit bad jewish jokes.
Actually, it had two huge benefits: a lock-in for early adopters, and it is memorable. Don't discount the second benefit. Once enough early adopters talk about it, the general public will come to remember the name. This is extremely important for a consumer product.
(remember the FatBrain naming story).
Holy crap. I knew there was going to be more to this.
My gut tells me the whole venture is going to crash and burn. One shady business practice is indicative of a whole sh*tstorm of shady business practices and I would bet the launch of this product is met with delays, unmet promises, logistical mistakes, etc.
He put up the lawsuits that were filed, but I haven't seen any contracts which lead me to believe they never existed.
This is definitely a story of botched communications, but don't be so quick to believe this guy. I think when the dust settles, the truth will be somewhere in the middle of the two stories we are hearing.
IANAL, but I suspect that from a legal standpoint his best plan is to say nothing. Even what has been said so far is much too much. If TC hadn't made such a big public push for the product that it was impossible to just let it quietly fade from view while the court battle was fought, I suspect TC wouldn't even have published what we've already seen, let alone more internal contracts and communications.
What a clusterfk.
The other obvious point that even a non-lawyer can make is: The absence of paper is not the same thing as the absence of contract.
Also, I love how the camera made the screen green. It's pretty much the worst possible thing you could do in unveiling a product. I wouldn't buy it unless I saw it in real life, but I find that unlikely.
All things considered, if I really wanted one of these things, I don't think I'd let this flap deter me from buying one. But I don't want one, so take that with a grain of salt.
The domain "thejoojoo.com" was registered on Nov 10th.
They told TechCrunch about the split on the 17th, and that day TechCrunch applied for the trademark.
I mean, who was running this show? Domain names and trademarks are supposed to be lined up and checked much further in advance. (Not to mention contracts...)
On a side note: this is the tech equivalent of celebrity gossip... I'm sure that much worse has happened in the past, but never this publicly.
Which is why I'm surprised the submission is not a techcrunch URL.
That's quite an indicator that he likely had little to do with this device as Fusion Garage claims. If he'd actually done more to bring it to fruition, he would probably have taken the appropriate steps to safeguard his investment. For anyone else I may attribute a lapse like this as simply a mistake, but for an attorney to drop the ball this badly sounds quite suspicious...
You make all that hardware and then cripple it with limited software? Whateva. I would pay $499 if it had bluetooth and could run a normal OS.
Also, these Fusion Garage guys need to hire a marketing/PR firm STAT. Fingerprint-marred green screen and scary looking nerd glowering at the camera is bad for business.
"I wouldn't buy that. Why didn't they make it into a completely different kind of product." It's like looking at a motorbike & saying "They should have given it four wheels & aircon."
A tech news blog is itself a subject of news because of its hunger for drama.
It's not a cheap netbook with a small screen and a small keyboard, and it's not an expensive tablet PC with PC laptop innards - it's a cheap netbook innards/tablet PC form factor/touch screen browsing device.
Because despite the price they were aiming at sounding too good to be true, everyone went "oh that sounds too good to be true ... but they say it so it must be true! I'll buy two!".
http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/268088826-touch-scre...
http://wholesale.alibaba.com/product-gs/268087366-10-2-inch-...
10" touch screen, Atom Processor, standard netbook specs in a touchscreen tablet, prices from $288 in bulk. (I suspect it isn't a capacitative touchscreen but it's still inaccurate to say there is nothing like it out there)
I was looking forward to buying several Crunchpads, but it will be a cold day in hell before I ever buy a JooJoo, just from principle.
That said, I find fusion garage's side of the story pretty suspect, and even if it's true, I highly doubt they'll succeed. They seem way too focused on the product and the technology and seem to think it will market and sell itself.
I hope TechCrunch sues. Even without a written contract, there must be heaps of verbal and written evidence as to exactly what the relationship here was. Letting the courts sort it out might be the only way to get close to the truth.
Mr. Arrington originally said the CrunchPad was not about profit. So what's the problem with Fusion Garage selling their own device? Or even selling the design to other companies? Again this strikes me as being very suspicious. Wouldn't more manufactures competing against each other be true to his original vision? Was FG unwilling to sell him this hardware to be re-branded as CrunchPads or were they unwilling to give him exclusive access to it?
In between, TC claims that they did initial marketing for the product. Technically it may be correct. But From risk factor, what was at stake here for TC ? Actually TC biz model works on buzz factor. More Buzz equals more readers and Revenue. So at worst (if product fails), they made some money out of the whole buzz. But for FusionGarage (and their investors), everything was at stake.
Arrington might be correct, they could have negotiated on the product stake. ( How about : 2% for initial idea discussion, 2% for initial marketing, and 2% bring in new investors and team .) I guess such a 5-6% offer would have still led to such a breakup. (But can u give a 30% stake just for blogging about a product ?)
To me, Arrington is a Bad (Scary) Startup-Investor here (keeping the startup in guessing game till end ..), and FusionGarage has a bad CEO who could not anticipate what was to come. And those investors are smart to bring the whole stuff out before the product is actually launched.
The flap over who owns it doesn't matter, it's already dead. The whole advantage of a "small team" development is to avoid issues like these all together. If Fusion and Arrington had both put everything into this project, it might have gone somewhere. But mediocre product + fractured team = failure.
Best bet now would be to open the platform and hope someone with an open OS looking for hardware saves you.
thejoojoo.com
Created: 2009-11-10
Expires: 2011-11-10
Updated: 2009-11-10
To ditch crunchpad or to go with joojoo
The racism in the comments over at engadget sure is unpleasant. Also, the green screened pictures is certainly doing them a disservice!
Hasn't the Archos9 existed already at that price point?
http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/
Possibly with more features? Or is it vaporware?
But it seems to have been killed. I think he is right, though; the Archos is a much nicer device that's already shipping and that's cheaper.
I'll continue to wait for the Apple Tablet.
