It's LOL over folks – Popjam finally deadpools

I think he gave up too easy.. Why not relaunch with the integration of FB and Twitter?

Low 6 figures is A LOT of money in my book. 100k is the lowest of six figures and that is BIG.

It’s a real shame that it couldn’t get traction. There were some fun times early on but it really seemed to struggle to grab new users or carve out a particular niche to call it’s own.

Most web comedy properties tend to be fairly tightly focussed in one way or another. Big shame that someone had to loose “low six figures” to find this out though. I wonder if it couldn’t have been done as a side project with outsourced development for a lot less money?

Wierdly we considered renting a few desks from them a while back. Somewhat glad we didn’t now.
Still god luck with the next project Alex.

Low six figure not bad? The start-up I’m involved with is looking to launch with less than six figures!!!

It’s sad that Techcrunch thinks it’s ok to crash with with six figures worth of investment.

Such a shame. Popjam had potential and I even had my name on the top 50 leaderboard at one point!

I’m surprised Alex doesn’t put the site up for auction and get a little return on it. Would also be interesting to see if someone could turn the site around as it probably still has a little bit of potential and ‘a cool name’.

Good luck with your next startup.

@Mike, I’ve started my last webservice without a six-figure pile of cash, even a four-number one would have been nice. I wonder how they burned that much in only a year.

“Popjam was angel-backed but though no numbers emerged we hear it was in the low six-figures, so not a hugely costly mistake.”

Do you have any idea how much six figures buys in the right hands?

Many business owners get three figures and they start successful businesses.

I think business angels and government officials share one common value: they know how to lose money.

Predictable … lame, run of the mill idea and execution, lack of twitter integration the least of this site’s problems.

Saddest aspect is that the angels who fell for the hype of Alex Tew, wunderkind “entrepreneur”, won’t be dipping their toes in the startup sector again anytime soon. Where exactly did the six figures go? Most people reading TC could knock up an identical site and still have change from £5k.

6 figures… guys appreciate that yes he is Alex Tew Million dollar dude but that was 4-5 years ago and a lot of that success was slick PR.

The site could probably be knocked out pretty quickly by some coders but think about the fact we all knew enough about it to actually comment on it even though it entered a crowded space.

The exposure he got for this idea can’t have been cheap especially with all the “funny/fail blogs” etc out there already.

perhaps they would have been hungrier and quicker without the 6 figure backing.

This guy Tew got VERY lucky (fair play to him) with MillionDollarHomepage, which was a gimic with no sustainability or even short term business model. The businesses that paid for pixels on there couldn’t of seen a return. Does anyone even go there now? Traffic figures for MDH are non- existant. He got tons of air time (TV,radio,press) to raise his personal stock and awareness and then decided to start up another business with no sustainability or short term business model…..and this time his been found out.
Entrepreneur, yes. But not a smart one.

On the one hand, you have to credit Alex Tew’s determination and entrepreneurial spirit for having the balls and appetite to realise his ideas and turn them into ventures. On the other more serious side, its story’s like this, where founders squander great opportunities and cash with bad strategy, business models and even worse execution, that prohibit investors from taking risks with seed/early stage ventures.
I hope he sits down and ensures his next venture has a robust business and revenue model and as someone above suggested, a sustainable one.

Even if you say Alex was luck with his first venture, what about this http://tinyurl.com/yke2hx4

“Alex Tew thought up Sock And Awe a week ago and within days 45 million shoes had been thrown by 4.5 million unique users.”

As Mike says, the amount of money you spend is determined mostly by what you’re trying to achieve. That’s not to say you can overspend – but it’s unfair to assume – especially when a company has gone under.

Alex will be back with another startup I’m sure.

It’s sad, but not all projects work out. Such is life. Real entrepreneurs get back out there and work on the next idea, not sit around whining about things in TechCrunch comments.

Alex is a great entrepreneur and those who know him personally will attest to that. Those who don’t know him, or anything about Popjam, should leave their ill-informed opinion at the door.

My $0.02.

Why do British people diss others’ failures as if it’s a personal affront to them? What’s with that? Nice way to make yourself a valuable part of the startup community – by telling your potential friends and future business partners they are crap for trying something that didn’t work out.

Best of luck with the next project Alex!

Fail Fast!

Good luck to Alex, I expect he’ll be back soon with something interesting.

However, I tend to agree with those who suggest that “low 6 figures” was a LOT of money to get to this stage with this concept. Surely the site itself could have been built for “low 4 figures” and then they could have adopted the approach of prove there is a market willing to part with their money before ramping up and spending 6 figure sums.

Look, it is simply human nature to re-use a pattern/ technique which has served you incredibly well in the past. The difficult part is understanding what’s still relevant when the world has moved on. The key for Alex will be what he has learned from the experience. In tough times like these, business models and cash-generation matter in a way they did not a year or two back.

Really cannot blame a guy for trying and I hope he come up with something more robust next time. That’s where real kudos lies.

This is such incestuous piffle – it was a small, irrelevant and uninventive idea that regurgitated other site’s content with the incredibly innovative and value-adding addition of a ‘LOL’ button.

The only reason stories like this make TechCrunch is because Mike Butcher is an associate of the likes of Acton-Smith and Tew.

“Co-founder and CEO Alex Tew” – this is so laughable – how you could call yourself a CEO of such a creation and keep a straight face I’m not quite sure. A better description would be “The kid who made the site – Alex Tew”.

This article serves only to highlight the woeful state of the UK / London startup scene in comparison with our boundary-pushing Silicon Valley equivalents.

Welcome to the small time.

Guys thanks for the all comments, and I appreciate the support from those who gave it.

In reality we didn’t spend all the investment and we still have cash to launch new ideas in the future. We learnt a tonne of lessons and we’ll be back soon.

On the broader issue of success and failure, the brits do have a bad habit of character assasination if people have a “failure”, especially if preceded by an earlier “success”.

This is sad, but the upside is you develop a thick-skin.

I’m personally aligned with the view that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. And you only get feedback by trying.

So the key is to keep trying, keep learning and keep hungry.

Have a great 2010 everyone

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

It seemed like the site really stalled in the latter period of its life. Whilst it’s difficult to do, especially when there’s seemingly a fair amount of money behind it, the best and only thing imho is to kill a lame site. If it’s dwindling a bit with no real hope of recovery, just let it go asap and move on. Teh internet moves too quickly to keep things on life support…

My 0.02

well put Mike..
Alex.. Well done on discovering what didn’t work.. It’ll bring you one step closer to finding your own formula for success.
forget about the criticisms that are just empty and noise… If you haven’t failed a few times then you can hardly learn and grow..
Besides.. Only you as the entrepreneur behind a startup can know what ur instincts and gut tells you.. And I’m sure this experience will help you understand better what works, what doesn’t, and what early signs to look out for… It’s not about ‘arriving’ at success, but knowing how to course correct the hundreds of times before you get there, and sometimes things like recessions will come along and help you figure out quicker what doesn’t work…

Just make sure to celebrate your learnings and grow from them! Good luck with the next one!

Whinging Poms as my Mother-in-Law (who is afraid of snow) would say, let’s show a little respect. Alex is rightly a wunderkid, with the sort of entrepreneurial drive we are derided for lacking in this country.

Frankly it’s not a fail but a lesson that leads to other things. That’s sounds a bit crypto religious, but you get my drift.

I wish him well in his next venture.

Some people have way too much bile, try taking those stomach cleansing yoghurts Martine McCutcheon is flogging on TV, you might just unwind a bit.

Hmmm. Maybe billiondollarhomepage.com could solve this problem.

So many critics here.

I wonder how many of these people have actually tried to create a successfull startup. Very few a imagin.
Hope Alex does better on his next venture. Good luck to him.

I couldn’t agree more with @adammartin. Don’t bitch, show some support. I thought the MillionDollarHomepage was a frickin masterstroke – both viral and PR. Who cares if it was written in 5 minutes? You guys obsess about technology so much that you forget about ideas, commercialization and marketing. Good luck, Alex! I’m positive your next venture will be an amazing success.