I used to work for "Grand Central Communications". It was really a vision of what not to do with a startup: Enormous development cycle, bleeding money (Hasley Minor, the principle investor and CEO, used to compare it do driving an Audi off the roof of the building every day), way too many people, sales team constantly selling functionality we did not support.
In late 2005 after multiple rounds of layoffs they cut their losses and folded. Existing team members willing to stick around formed Swivel (http://swivel.com) based on what we were working on at the time (which had nothing to do with what Grand Central was doing a year earlier). The name (and I guess trademark) "Grand Central Communications" got inherited by a VOIP company that was also funded by Minor Ventures (http://minorventures.com/) and that's the company O'Reilly is talking about. Good to hear they're turning the name around.
I used to work for "Grand Central Communications". It was really a vision of what not to do with a startup: Enormous development cycle, bleeding money (Hasley Minor, the principle investor and CEO, used to compare it do driving an Audi off the roof of the building every day), way too many people, sales team constantly selling functionality we did not support.
In late 2005 after multiple rounds of layoffs they cut their losses and folded. Existing team members willing to stick around formed Swivel (http://swivel.com) based on what we were working on at the time (which had nothing to do with what Grand Central was doing a year earlier). The name (and I guess trademark) "Grand Central Communications" got inherited by a VOIP company that was also funded by Minor Ventures (http://minorventures.com/) and that's the company O'Reilly is talking about. Good to hear they're turning the name around.