A tipster informed us today that online storage solution Omnidrive has been having technical difficulties; and that the CTO has just left the company.
Omnidrive's forums, both the official one and the Tangler one, are filled with messages complaining that the service is up and down - messages which the company doesn't appear to be responding to.
The last post on the company's blog is dated August 31st and is entitled 'All technical difficulties have been resolved!'. There's also no recent postings on CEO Nik Cubrilovic's blog.
As we wrote in August, the online storage space is very crowded - and there are a few monster players in the form of Microsoft, Google and Amazon. But Omnidrive was doing some great work in the space, driving for open standards and partnering with other Web Office companies like Zoho.
We've put in an email to Nik to clarify. I know him personally and it would be very sad if Omnidrive fell into the deadpool, particularly given the recent 'deaths' of Blognation and edgeio - two other web 2.0 startup collapses. As of now we're not ready to call Omnidrive in the deadpool, but there seem to be major issues with the site judging by the forums.
UPDATE: Nik Cubrilovic has replied in the comments and via email. He says:
"Omnidrive is profitable at the moment, and we actually knocked back a round of financing recently (we will likely raise a round in the new year)
Our new 1.0 release, which we have been working on for a while now, will be out by the end of the year.
So while some might view not responding to forum posts and/or posting on our blog as a sign of being dead, it is just because we are so overloaded at the moment and have a lot to work on."
UPDATE 2: Ex-CTO Phil Morle responds in the comments:
"...as far as I know there is no one working at Omnidrive today. No one is supporting the customers. No one is developing version 1.0. The Wollongong and Sydney offices have been vacated."
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A tipster informed us today that online storage solution Omnidrive has been having technical difficulties; and that the CTO has just left the company. Omnidrive's forums, both the official one and the Tangler one, are filled with messages complaining t... Read More
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Unfortunately this seems to be the case. My account has been having several problems and emails to the company have been left unresponded.
Posted by: Danilo | December 13, 2007 6:16 PMI keep saying I get a most funny feeling in my gut whenever I see another Deadpool post. It's a growing attachment that makes me feel that someone near and dear has fallen by the wayside.
I see new companies, I hear the hype but wonder if the majority of us will ever find a model to prosperity. Web 1.0 was a disaster and so far Web 2.0 has had some real gut-wrenching cases...someone please tell me there is a way.
Posted by: Adrian Keys | December 13, 2007 6:25 PMI was once the UI developer for this company in its early days. I left due to disputes over salary agreements and knowing the stability issues of the backend. I'm more surprised that it has been able to bullcrap its way through all this time, with the new and now gone CTO and all.
Posted by: Rex | December 13, 2007 7:08 PMHope it's not true.
Posted by: Paul Montgomery | December 13, 2007 7:58 PMOr is it Web 2.0 that's gradually heading to the deadpool?
Mightbe it's time to boot up Web 3.0..
Alongside Desktop 2.0.
Posted by: YDRIVE | December 13, 2007 8:51 PMI presume yr tip came from Sydeny :-)..
Anyway it will be sad if this goes down beuase we realy dont have many young startups coming from downunder.
Vishal
Posted by: Vishal Sharma on Techology, Starups, Current Affairs | December 13, 2007 10:10 PMSecond Paul, I hope it's not true.
Posted by: Duncan | December 13, 2007 10:16 PMThere was a company called XDrive that was finally sold to AOL. They lost all my files (though I was paying $1000 fees for the enterprise account).
The bad thing was that they just never even responded to my calls and emails on that.
I hope Omnidrive does not disappear.
Posted by: Joseph Pally | December 13, 2007 10:50 PMHi Everyone, I just replied to Richard. This post did take me by surprise, but I want to let everyone know that we are fine. We are a very small team so we lag behind on getting back to people in the forums and on email, let alone Tangler and all the blog posts.
Omnidrive is profitable at the moment, and we actually knocked back a round of financing recently (we will likely raise a round in the new year)
Our new 1.0 release, which we have been working on for a while now, will be out by the end of the year.
So while some might view not responding to forum posts and/or posting on our blog as a sign of being dead, it is just because we are so overloaded at the moment and have a lot to work on. Fact is that we are a small team trying to juggle a lot at the same time, and with a recent unexpected influx of users, managing our user base has been a lot of work (especially while trying to get a long-overdue release out).
Its not easy being a startup, especially one which has a lot of users - something that armchair commentators might not appreciate.
Posted by: Nik Cubrilovic | December 14, 2007 12:53 AMOh and we did have technical difficulties, that was around 3 weeks ago after the WSJ piece. We spent 3 days straight getting 8 new servers online.
Posted by: Nik Cubrilovic | December 14, 2007 12:56 AMThe head of engineering in Sydney left too.
Posted by: Jon Tyson | December 14, 2007 2:27 AMThe truth will come out in time.
Nik, why did the CTO and the head of engineering leave?
Posted by: Mick Liubinskas | December 14, 2007 4:09 AMSigns that web 2.0 has gone too far.
#420. A company that is too busy to update its blog is considered dead
Posted by: Rojo | December 14, 2007 7:01 AMThank you Omnidrive. I now know you are a very responsible and very respectable company. I wish you will get your new money in the new year.
Posted by: Omnidrive User | December 14, 2007 8:24 AMI was CTO at Omnidrive from April through August this year. When I started, Nik Cubrilovic said there was $170K USD available and from this we collaborated on a technology strategy; hired a local engineering team in Sydney and strengthened the relationship with the Indian team. I now believe that this money we planned against didn't exist because I have never seen any of it.
When I finally left in August I had never been paid. Only some of my expenses were paid. The debts to me and debts I have personal knowledge of are around $AU200,000. The office manager, five Indian developers including the VP of Platform Development, the VP Engineering, the office manager, 2 QA testers, a designer and a web developer all ceased working for Omnidrive because they were not paid.
I also understand that a number of people left Omnidrive just before I started because they had not been paid.
In regards to Nik's response, as far as I know there is no one working at Omnidrive today. No one is supporting the customers. No one is developing version 1.0. The Wollongong and Sydney offices have been vacated.
Users pay for Omnidrive via a PayPal account which Nik uses as his personal account. On two occasions I know, this account was empty and servers were taken offline by the supplier because the bill was unpaid due to insufficient funds. Users in each case were told something different. e.g. It was a Denial of Service Attack: http://www.omnidrive.com/blog/2007/08/31/technical-difficulties-with-omnidrive/
I never saw any evidence that the $US170K existed. We were also told on many occasions that a number of investors had 'committed' but money never came. These so-called commitments were quite specific and the failure of money to arrive was almost a daily event.
One such event finally exposed the situation when we were told that a named investor had committed $US50K, he had wired the money to Australia and we had been given a transaction ID to prove it. More than a week passed and I finally contacted the investor directly over Skype and he told me that Nik hadn't even asked him to invest.
At this point I contacted those that I had been told were on the board of Omnidrive only to discover that there was no board.
A couple of weeks later I resigned.
I hope that this illuminates what happened at Omnidrive sufficiently to suggest that Nik's response above is dishonest at best.
Posted by: Phil Morle | December 14, 2007 4:40 PMDishonest? No big deal. Omnidrive is heading for $15 Billion valuation like Facebook. No board? It is common knowledge TechCrunch's Arrington is an investor, according to Arrington's own disclosure on TechCrunch/About writeup.
Posted by: Big Deal | December 15, 2007 12:27 AMwatch a video interview of Nik Cubrilovic CEO and Founder of Omnidrive on Intruders TV. that interview was shoot on April 2007
Posted by: Thierry BEZIER | December 15, 2007 3:37 AMhttp://us.intruders.tv/Interview-Nik-Cubrilovic-CEO-and-fouder-of-Omnidrive_a104.html
Let this be a good example as to why:
a) you should make very certain you can rely on the company you store your data with. This is exactly why a Mozy (now backed by EMC) is better used than something like (if using for backup)
b) again, as above, why you need to have some trust for the company that has your data. Given what as been written by Phil, how would you feel about this company having your data? If these lies and apparent fraud is true, one wonders how anyone would want to trust this company with ANY data.
Posted by: benb | December 18, 2007 3:38 AMWhat a story this is turning out to be.
I think its Safe to be Sorry as John Howard said recently and Facebooks founder Mark Zuckerberg did with Beacon stuff.
By putting a spin here hasnt helped Omnidrive and Nick.
I hope thee hard work put by everyone pasy off to _everyone_
including Phil Morle.
Posted by: Vishal Sharma on Techology, Starups, Business Development | December 18, 2007 4:56 AMIs this true?
Posted by: Martin | December 20, 2007 4:22 AMIf you read the forum at OmniDrive, you will be convinced that OD is quickly dying.
FYI - I have had very good luck with http://dropsend.com/pricingsignup.php over the last year. We have been using the $99/month service and it works very well.
Posted by: Dave Barnes | December 20, 2007 6:13 AM$99/month, kidding.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 20, 2007 7:35 AMWhen blognation had problems paying its suppliers (editors who were not employees) Arrington ripped it apart but when co-writer and buddy Nik does the same (read the CTO comments above) Arrington says nothing!? What a hypocritical wanker.
Blognation had a termsheet ready to sign, 95% its editors had stuck in there to get paid before xmas and grow the business but Arrington was not going to let that happen.
I hope Arrington analyzes and criticizes Omnidrive and Edgeio CEO's in the same way. Somehow I doubt it given they are in his "gay gang"
Posted by: Paul Smith | December 21, 2007 7:06 PMQUS: Why hasn't Scoble, Shel Israel, Calacanis, Loic Le Meur, Matthew Ingram, Debi Jones and the TC trolls or Twatisphere picked on Arrington or Nik for this and blogged it?
ANSWER: They all fear Arrington who claims to fear no one. Arrington will try and bury this for Nik and his "paid friends" will help him.
QUS: Why is this story not on Techmeme if it is truly just an alogrithm.
ANSWER: It is not a algorithm it is just what Techcrunch lover Gabe Rivera chooses. No suprise TC is the no1 source on TechMeme.
Posted by: Dave Jones | December 21, 2007 7:15 PMArrington engaged with me on a couple of video discussions via Seesmic. This one should be enough to get you going: http://seesmic.com/v/fRI9ZMrMrf
Posted by: Dennis Howlett | December 22, 2007 5:44 AMHey everyone. Just so you know, commentor "Paul Smith" above is actually Sam Sethi, the scamster who set up and screwed up Blognation and who has an axe to grind against Arrington (but who keeps swinging it into his own foot). Only he knew "suppliers" were not employees because he wrote the Blognation contracts. Only Scam Sethi would describe the "problems" in playing editors (actually a 6 month delay) in such flippant terms.
Posted by: Dave Smith | December 22, 2007 3:34 PMRe comment 26, I have checked and I can tell you that comments 23 & 24 came from the same ip address. They are almost certainly from the same (anon) person. But there is no proof to suggest it is Sam.
And let me take this opportunity to say that the most important people in this post are the Omnidrive users. In all the personal blogger squabbles (which frankly I couldn't care less about), that fact seems to be overlooked. Is Omnidrive going to be able to serve its current customers, many of whom are paying money for the service?
Posted by: Richard MacManusRe @25: Hey Dennis Howlett... what do you mean by "Arrington engaged with me"?
You Seesmic video only shows you talking... there's no indication Arrington was even on the other end of the conversation much less "engaged".
Posted by: TechCrunch fan | December 23, 2007 12:08 AM