It seems to be a day for shutting down. ScribbleSheet, a citizen journalism portal which only launched in September last year, is no more. It turns out there are a lot of other places on the Internet where people could write about politics, technology, business and culture.
The London-based self-funded startup from co-founders John Ndege (22, formerly with Accenture), and Brian Oula (22, former IT consultant, was a brave, but I’m afraid naive, attempt to reproduce the success of OhMyNews or Newsvine. As I wrote on their launch “I fear they will get nowhere near those sites”. Ndege told me then that Scribblesheet would be a better alternative than all the “dead blogs” people create and then let die. He appears to have been quite prescient. [Update: He blogs about the experience here].
If we had a deadpool on TechCrunch UK I’d put this ScribbleSheet there. Definitely not mothballed…
I also have to say (sorry guys!) that ScribbleSheet felt like one of the frothy companies that appeared last year where just about anyone was trying to launch a social media site. I would not take it as indicative of a ‘slump’ in the UK startup space by any stretch. However, it’s clear the bar is getting higher to winning investment, especially for first-time entrepreneurs.