I bet the IP TechCrunch owns is simply the brand "CrunchPad." Good luck with that suit.
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 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.
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.
Since when is TechCrunch just a blog? They have multiple blogs that get millions of readers. They have conferences and meetups throughout the world that are covered by major media outlets. They run the most successful startup contest around, where companies like Mint, Dropbox, and Yammer publicly launched.
It sounds like Fusion Garage and TechCrunch did a terrible job at setting clear expectations about the partnership from the beginning, but to call TechCrunch just another blog is not accurate.
The "53,651 readers in the Silicon Valley echo chamber" argument in 2006 had more force than "only 3,739,000 readers in 2009." TechCrunch now clearly has a larger reader base than early adopter in Silicon Valley.
Good point. But TechCrunch has become 1 or 2 orders of magnitude bigger since this post. Also, I think a large segment of the target market for this product is this exact market that is very familiar with TechCrunch.
It does look like they did more than just lend the project the blog; for instance, TC sent people physically to Asia to do some unspecified thing. But that fits with a narrative of the original agreement being fuzzy, and TC getting more serious towards the end when they saw the project was actually going to come to fruition.
People tend to forget, and especially so here, that there is another world outside of interwebs - with different approaches to marketing/sales, and those work on a few levels above web in terms of volume pushed.
You're right, but in a case where one side is contributing mostly intangible business value, you expect written contracts. The alleged lack of them is damning.
Marketing, of course, is not about the product name. It's feature/function, pricing, ship dates, channel development, and general promotion/branding.
But marketing does not give you an automatic right to the product. (Note I am only mentioning marketing, because Arrington did not sell any of the products, obviously). You may tell how great your iphone is to all your friends, but that will not give you a right to any share of the iphone's profits.
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.
As an employee at an ad agency, I completely agree. (I mean JooJoo? Really?)
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.
JooJoo is pronounced "joujou" in French, which is the diminutive form of "jouet", a toy. This form is only used when referring to the toys of little kids up to 7 year old. $500 for a little kid toy? Not for me, sorry.
They are definitely missing the TechCrunch ad agency now to not make such a basic check.
The name sounds _exactly_ like 'little kid's toy' in French, so, indeed, it follows that it will carry those connotations to French speaking people (you're not one, I'm guessing). Shakespeare may have found a rose by another name smelling just as sweet, but in the centuries since his time we've learned that varieties called 'poo-poo' just don't sell at the garden center.
That's an urban legend, kind of like saying a dinette set called "Notable" would flop in English speaking countries because we would assume it has "no table".
That same french term became synonymous with supernatural fetishism in the US (via west african slaves) and was turned into "juju", which is almost always preceded by the word "bad" as another way of saying bad luck or a feeling of impending doom....
Same way with softimage back in the day. It is pronounced softimazh, but it took bazillion of dead trees and marketing to explain to users how it is pronounced. You're doing something wrong if you need to use dictionary explanation in your marketing material imo.
Which is just lazy, terrible marketing. If you don't own the most obvious domain, do not use it as the name of your product.
If I go to joojoo.com and don't find what I'm looking for, there's not a chance in hell I'm going to start iterating through other possibilities. I'm either going to hit up Google or give up.
You're missing the fact that most people use Google as their 'location bar' and not the actual location bar. People literally do a Google search on Yahoo.com to get to Yahoo's site.
That was a great recovery for dropbox - but note that at the end of the day they still needed dropbox.com. This isn't to say that you can't succeed despite a crappy domain name, but rather that when you haven't even locked down your brand yet, why commit to something that you can't secure the domain for?
I don't think anybody believes that sales and marketing are as important as engineering. I think instead that most people here believe that all the sales and marketing people treat engineering as if it doesn't matter at all. And we'll cheer for anyone who says it's not the case.
That may be true but Fusion Garage has decided to go without Arrington's marketing. That may be a bad idea; I'm already not impressed with the name. But the point is that there's no evidence that Arrington has any claim to the product.
IANAL, but I highly doubt this is automatically the case. The lack of written contracts is troubling, but I suspect that a competent legal team could demonstrate significant enough contribution to warrant joint ownership, assuming such contributions exist.
IANAL either. Arrington says they contributed IP to the project -- that's pretty significant. I'm curious to find out exactly what it is they contributed. They do have the staff for it.
As for marketing, so far it's consisted of a few blog posts. They do blog posts for other products too. I don't see much in the way of any ownership coming from that.
The last time I heard this much pissing and moaning about a product's name, it was aimed at another Asian tech company who came up with the ridiculous name "Wii."
TechCrunch is a technology blog, they give lots of products visibility. You're not going to claim they own everything they report on? They own the name Crunchpad, but this product isn't the Crunchpad.
If they had a business relationship, they should have had a contract. One that locks this product into using the Crunchpad name. But they (apparently) did not.
If they never had any prior involvement with TechCrunch, they'd still be in the press. On Engadget just as they are now. Hell, they'd probably be on TechCrunch too.
The difference is, the press might be a little more positive that it is now with this big mess.
Thank you for your $0.02; this might be really obvious to you, but could you be kind and enlighten the oblivious engineering crowd on this forum and be more specific as to what kind of value-add does sales and marketing add to a early-stage hardware startup or any consumer-oriented tech startup in general?
I disagree with your assumption that this is an engineering crowd. I would say entrepreneurship is at least as important to the HN culture as engineering.
You ask a huge question, which is discussed every day all around the internet.
But to take a high level stab at it:
Marketing is crucial to an early-stage hardware startup to start to determine if anyone actually wants to buy what you're proposing to build. Good luck getting money from a VC, much less a customer, if you can't talk intelligently about your target market, and demonstrate an ability to connect with it.
Sales becomes paramount after Version 1.0 is released, when you have to demonstrate that your business is actually profitable. Many engineers are under the impression that, if the quality is high enough, the product will sell itself. While this is true for the (tiny) subset of your market that cares enough to really investigate your product, it seems that a great sales team with a mediocre product will outsell a mediocre sales team with a great product more often than not.
There's a lot of nuance to getting partnerships and getting distribution on your product. It's a different mindset that needs to be learned. In most cases, early-stage web startups should have at least one person who is capable of getting in the door (at minimum, an engineering person who can also do biz dev). It is rarely the case that you just make something and let the orders stream in. People don't know about the product yet and there's a lot of work involved in convincing them that you are capable of actually producing the device at scale or even at all. Just off the top of my head, if you see things like Twitter using bit.ly instead of tinyurl like what happened earlier this year, that wasn't a technical decision, that was done through business development and leverage.
It really depends on what it is you are producing, but in this particular case of the JooJoo/Crunchpad/whatever marketing and sales is probably part of the fundamental strategy. If a lot of time and money has been invested in something, it would be a major oversight to not have somebody who can specialize in distribution/marketing.
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.
If you have no product, you wont make a single penny, Sure. But, if you have no marketers, you will not be able to sell enough units to make up for the fixed costs involved, and you would end up with a loss, which is even worse.
I am absolutely speechless that I am being downvoted while you are being upvoted...
What exactly are these imaginary fixed costs that marketers don't have? You mean hiring advertisers is free? You mean buying commercials is free? You mean flying out to conventions is free?
I can tell you of quite a few startups led by MBA marketers who burnt all their cash trying to outsource their technical work. All the money went into hype which they don't even have a product for. Would you rather have imaginary hype or would you rather have a physical product?
I believe he is referring to an economies of scale type scenario. With a high-tech product (or most any for that matter) the manufacturer/developer has to pay huge sums of money before a single commercial unit is shipped. Fixed costs such as plant and manufacturing equipment are cash drains whether one or one million units are sold--hence the name fixed cost.
Yea, Fusion Garage has created a tangible product. To get it to the masses, however; they must convince the public they want it. Of course theres people who are already excited about it, but that certainly won't bring in enough revenues to keep the lights on at the end of the day.
I'm personally just getting tired of the same tired Business vs Tech banter. If we are to advance our industry and continue to create great innovative products, we must recognize eachother's strengths and weaknesses. Thats when the magic happens IMO.
With a high-tech product (or most any for that matter) the manufacturer/developer has to pay huge sums of money before a single commercial unit is shipped.
This really only holds true for a cutting edge product like a new CPU or the first iPod.
For everyone else like the JooJoo/Crunchpad, these electronics are assembled from commodity parts and manufactured in Asian factories on the cheap.
If preorders are taken, there is absolutely no reason for Fusion Garage to maintain a huge stockpile and the corresponding risk. This is why made to order companies like Dell are so successful.
Have any of you bothered to see how much it costs now to produce a prototype in China now? And do you really think that Fusion Garage is funding these factories themselves?
Wake up to the 21st century please.
Non-cutting edge electronics are cheaply produced in Asia. The "JooJoo" is made up of commodity electronics which means that these "low-tech" plants are easily able to solder and assemble the components together.
Fusion Garage is not building the factories, mining and smelting the ore, nor fabricating their own silicon...
Could you elaborate on how much it actually does cost to produce a prototype in China? Further, how about a finished and consumer-ready product? I understand that what you are alluding to is a cornerstone of the modern economy, but I find it difficult to believe that the affects of manufacturing costs are essentially null on a small firm from Singapore.
Like I mentioned above, it depends on how cutting edge your product is. I can't give you any specifics but you can try contacting a Chinese supplier through Alibaba.com they will be able to give you a rough idea. I know from the downvotes I've received that I won't be wasting more time trying to convince people about their misconceptions.
As a rule of thumb, the more exotic and cutting edge your product is, the more savings you will get from mass production obviously. The JooJoo/Crunchpad is not unusual. From what I've read, it's a commodity touchscreen attached to an Intel Atom motherboard.
If your product is unsellable due to a small difference in the quantity you are able to sell, you have bigger things to worry about: namely the quality of your product. There's a reason why the cost of new products such as consoles or cpus are sky high in the beginning. Why should your company be any different?
I don't have the exact data for an item like the crunchpad/joojoo, but for nearly everything I bothered checking, the price differences are quite often less than 25%.
Regardless of exactly how much this margin is, it is not wise for anyone to be straddling the fine line between the maximum consumers are willing to pay and the minimum a factory is willing to charge.
I leave it as an exercise to the doubters here to investigate by themselves. I am done wasting my time finding specifics just to further an argument on the internet.
I am absolutely speechless that I am being downvoted
Let me propose an analogy of what you're saying: some say a roof is important on a house, but without the basement, a house would collapse. Without the roof, on the other hand, the house would be fine for quite some time, especially in a warm summer climate, like LA.
In reality, a roof and a basement on a house are like marketing and engineering: both are necessary and neither is sufficient for a good product. Engineering without marketing is blind, and marketing without engineering is lame.
You made a nice analogy there, but other than you saying so, why is it exactly like selling a product? I can make up an analogy too.
Let me make this clear. I am not saying that marketing is completely useless. What I am saying is that when you go up to a marketing guy, chances are that he has no idea how to make the actual product. When you ask an engineering guy how to sell the product, he at least has an idea of how to sell it.
What I am saying is that when you go up to a marketing guy, chances are that he has no idea how to make the actual product. When you ask an engineering guy how to sell the product, he at least has an idea of how to sell it.
Marketing != Sales. Deciding what to make (market research) is the first part of marketing. If you make the wrong thing (if you are blind to the market), you're not going to sell a lot of it.
The analogy to the house holds because both a roof and a basement are necessary for a good house. Similarly, both good marketing and good engineering are necessary for a good product. Both are necessary, neither is sufficient on their own.
The analogy to the house holds because both a roof and a basement are necessary for a good house. Similarly, both good marketing and good engineering are necessary for a good product.
Again you offer no proof to the validity of your analogy other than because you said so.
Just because you are a marketer doesn't mean you can't build some crap and sell it. Just because you're a prod dev guy doesn't mean you can build it and sell it.
Actually it does mean you can't build some crap and sell it when your product is high tech.
In this case Arrington only had pie-in-the-sky hand waving ideas about a $200 touchscreen computer that could do everything. He clearly wasn't interested in putting actual effort and resources into the project until someone else started working on it. The project would have died if Fusion Garage didn't start working on it.
And in this situation, a "prod dev guy" actually did build it. And I am willing to bet you that he can sell at least one.
And I am willing to bet you that he can sell at least one
Okay, even if he can sell one, so what? That "one" is pretty arbitrary.
I can bet you if Arrington put up a preorder page of a product called SUPER-CRAP, he could sell more than one. Again, so what?
The end goal is not to sell one. It's to build a successful business. And that requires significant(even if unequal) contribution from both prod dev and marketing.
I can bet you if Arrington put up a preorder page of a product called SUPER-CRAP, he could sell more than one. Again, so what?
People like to exaggerate that a good marketer can poop in a box and sell it, but at some point it becomes scamming. And I guarantee you that the likelihood of getting sued and losing even more money goes up astronomically.
The lack of contracts seems to indicate that Fusion Garage's story is more accurate. It's entirely possible that the original idea, however, was Arrington's and that Fusion Garage simply decided to build it. However, Arrington says that they contributed IP to the project -- I wonder what that is supposed to be.
Nah, a phone that you need two hands to use? When I can use the magic wheel of a blackberry and do everything with one hand? Preposterous. It'll never sell.
I'm honestly really surprised (and a little appalled) at the number of upvotes your comment has received. There's a mob-like response whenever a story comes up about MA or TechCrunch. As far as I can tell, Fusion Garage's response (from this Engadget article) is hearsay as well.
FG's claims are more easy to refute than TC's. FG says they did virtually all the technical work and they signed no contracts. Easily refuted claims are more credible than vague ones.
> I'm honestly really surprised (and a little appalled) at the number of upvotes your comment has received.
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?"
The last time this lawsuit came up on HN, people were saying how Arrington was arrogant and they said that parts of the story probably weren't being mentioned.
"many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right"
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.
The existence of the device is hardly evidence of who was responsible for creating it. The claim in question is that Arrington and crew contributed nothing to the piece of hardware in question. Michael Arrington could have built the entire thing by himself in his basement and the situation from our perspective would be the same as long as FG could get ahold of one of the devices.
> Well, no doubt many people are happy to assume that the person holding the soldering iron is automatically the one who is right.
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.
this guy would be talking to a wall if it wasn't for Techcrunch. He would have never been able to raise any money either, since most of Asia won't talk to him and certainly nobody in Singapore does since he burnt his last startup in much the same way.
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.
I agree. When reading those Arrington articles, it was obvious that he had no technical contribution to the thing.
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.
Significant missing detail: there seems to have been disagreement on the pricing, with Arrington presumably wanting a lower margin product that was closer to his original vision. This seems to be the thing that Fusion Garage's investors balked at.
Engineering is not the only story here. They got a lot of attention that they never would have gotten w/o the biggest name in tech news singing their praises from his bully pulpit. Imagine the uphill battle these guys would face trying to sell what is essentially a new computer on its merits alone.
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.
I have no idea about the whole mess, but I think the statement "techcrunch is just a blog" would probably resonate with a lot of people and actually get them sympathy.
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.
If Arrington is spouting off and doesn't have contracts in hand, he's severely hurt the credibility of FusionGarage among their core market for the product. A countersuit might be in order.
definitely. I mean both HP and Apple have engineers, but I could never figure out what makes Apple better - please explain? Since the argument is that it is all engineers and 'lines of code', that means that it comes down to who writes the code, right? Which explains why Apple is so great, or maybe not.
The sooner you wake up to what marketing really is the better
So, here it is: Fusion Garage's side of the story. And what do you know, it doesn't exactly match up with Arrington's version. Best bit: "There are no contracts between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch."
Holy crap. I knew there was going to be more to this.
I have made some harsh comments toward TechCrunch recently about this very issue (just check my comment history if you're unfamiliar). My suspicions were true. But now it's time to dish it out toward Fusion Garage. If I were Fusion Garage and an entity was marketing MY product as if it were their own, I would send a cease and desist letter immediately. Fusion Garage isn't exactly coming out of this story looking perfectly clean. TechCrunch probably does have some substance to a lawsuit should they file any.
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.
I have to agree with you. With Arrington's resent openness about the whole issue, you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible to refute any claim like this.
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.
you'd think he'd slap those contracts up on TechCrunch as fast as possible
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.
Not having firm contracts up front was just silly - on Arrington's part. They've pulled a Microsoft on him, and it's fair enough. It's a jungle out there, and on a personal level, I don't feel any sympathy for tech crunch at all.
Many people said the same thing about netbooks, when they first came into the picture. In any case there might be a market for it, and it might be too early to decide the usefulness of the device.
Yes, but now netbooks exist. I got mine for $279 and I can comfortably run Visual Studio on it. This device is significantly less powerful, not particularly more portable, and costs more. For the right price, I'd buy one -- this is not the right price.
So you're saying that single convenience is worth purchasing a significantly less powerful device for significantly more money? For what I can do standing on the metro, I have a smartphone and it still does more and is cheaper than this device.
I'm guessing that your smartphone probably comes cheap but locks you into an expensive service contract. Not that this obviates your point, but it modifies it. For that matter, the iPhone was very expensive at launch compared to now; I thought that would kill it straight out of the gate, and boy was I wrong. Similarly, I doubt your smartphone has such a large screen - perhaps an advantage when you're on the move (this tablet won't fit in your pocket) but more desirable when sitting down.
I'm a little perplexed at how this device seems to generate such strong opinions and armchair quarterbacking. It seems to me that there is a lot of pent-up demand for a decent-sized tablet but people have been disappointed so many times they're a bit paranoid about it.
My smartphone contract isn't ridiculously expensive -- and lets face it, if you've got an Internet tablet you're still going to need that service contract to get connectivity.
The small screen is an advantage when on the move. The small footprint as well -- it's pretty hard to even remove a large device from your bag while standing on transit. If I can sit, I can use my netbook.
I work an web startup that provides business software for users who are typically not at their desks. An affordable tablet would be a huge boon for us -- we could distribute them to our users (or just recommend them) and they would love it. But at this price it won't work for us. I fully expect that Chrome OS is built entirely for this market and we'll see a lot of tablets from netbook manufacturers next year.
My Archos may be much less relevant when the Xperia X10 comes out (which I plan to get) but until then I have a dumb phone and want something to do on my 40 min ride to work. The Archos right now is my only good option.
Even when the X10 comes out, depending on the screen, I may keep using the Archos anyway. The screen size is nice enough to watch a tv show and the resolution is great. The cell phone screen may be too small.
> So you're saying that single convenience is worth purchasing a significantly less powerful device for significantly more money?
Yes. Especially when the more powerful, cheaper device is really bad at whatever this single convenience is, whereas the new product is very good at it, and the single convenience is important to the user.
The Kindle has unique attributes, Internet connectivity, and is relatively affordable. I'm not saying an Internet tablet is a poor product -- it's only poor at this price point. It might even be just this tablet that isn't worth it.
I'd say it's this tablet - if I'm buying a tablet I want note-taking ability, drawing ability, and various features that really leverage the power of touch sensitivity. So far all they've shown us is a friggin web browser.
Because it's ugly and requires a stylus. (You asked.)
Things like the Archos tablets are much more realistic. My Archos 5 is great for web browsing, and I am sure the Archos 9 is a fine computer replacement. It hasn't caught on yet because it's not for sale yet.
I'm sure there's a market for Tablets but this thing is $50 more expensive than Dell's top netbook which comes with a built in TV Tuner or GPS. In addition to the 160Gb hard drive, full copy of Windows, WiFi, keyboard and a screen just slightly smaller than this tablet (12.1 vs 10.1).
To be fair here, a more accurate comparison would be people saying the same thing about the $500 Palm Foleo, a similarly limited device which was crushed by negative press and relative limitations compared to its launch rival the Eee PC.
That's a good point, but you can buy a legit laptop for $500 these days. I bet I could pick up a previous generation Thinkpad tablet for somewhere around there.
I wonder how things will evolve once Chrome OS hits the scene.
Agreed, but wow, this thing really gets style points from me. :)
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.
It is a bit pricey, but it's a nice size. I see Youtube in the photos so presumably it does Flash. If it handles HTML5 as well then the lack of local storage may not matter a whole lot. Much depends on the quality of the touch sensitivity.
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.
I think I agree, though you never know. My instinctive reaction is they should have pushed on the price. Smaller screen, whatever.
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.
Good points, I suppose. Personally, I'd rather have a tablet computer that had an android-like OS on it, instead of just a web browser. Being able to use apps that aren't necessarily suited to a web page would be nice.
So would a 3G connection.
It's the same price as the iPhone when it first came out, but it does radically less on a larger screen. Maybe if it were $100 it might be worth it - but at this price point it's fairly worthless, IMHO. That, of course, would be different if it had the kind of app capability droid does.
As it is, it's overpriced backpack webtv. With a touchscreen.
I get a feeling this is going to become a case study in how not to develop a product.
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.
It looks like they have no marketing or branding experience. Their logo is astonishingly confusing considering their name: https://thejoojoo.com/images/logo.jpg
"Let's call it JooJoo and have the logo read iooioo even though it's supposed to be spelled JuJu![1]"
Crunch pad was not a good name. The word crunch is a terrible word to put in there. It is related to a website, whose audience is rather specialised and much smaller than the intended audience for the device itself. Also, you do not want to name a general browsing device after a specific website, because people that are actually aware of the website may take it to mean that it is intended to browse that site only.
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.
Indeed. You only need the appearance of impropriety to erode trust. Just because they can win a lawsuit doesn't mean they have a chance at making it.
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.
I agree this looks bad. In their place, I would have tried to smooth things over ahead of time, to keep Arrington from writing the incendiary blog posts which started all this. But who knows? Arrington isn't known for being the easiest guy in the world to communicate with. Maybe they tried to do just that and failed.
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.
I am most intrigued at how Michael Arrington, a former attorney, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Arrington] would have failed so miserably at doing anything to protect his interests. No contract? No formal IP? Nothing?
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...
Why does it only browse the web? How hard can it be to throw a desktop on there?
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.
You can already get a tablet that does that. I never understand these kinds of comments.
"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."
I'm not saying this is a good product. I'm not sure it is. That is besides the point.
I think the point is that it is a different approach to what the Archos 9, a Windows tablet. This is a browser in a box. Maybe browser in a box isn't a good idea. Maybe it will bomb.
There are two main features/bugs to this: Browser in a box & tablet. Saying "why does it only browse the web?' is like saying 'Why doesn't it have a keyboard.'
Not having a keyboard is a good idea. The keyboard is a waste of space.
It should just have bluetooth so you can hook up a keyboard if you want.
They have all this hardware... it wouldn't be hard to turn it into something good. That's why I said what I said. Because all they need is an OS and bluetooth and IMO it would be worth the price they set.
I find it interesting that this all apparently happened so quickly, but the timing still seems off.
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.
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on here, but clearly Arrington was an idiot if he didn't have any contracts in place.
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.
The only thing I liked about the whole webcast/interview is that fact that he said it the way it is, "Techcrunch is just a blog". Not only that, its a tech blog with authors that has little to no tech knowledge about the underlying technologies they write about.
A tech news blog is itself a subject of news because of its hunger for drama.
I get the feeling Techcrunch is doing a whole "Tomorrow Never Dies" thing here both with the "Twitter Leaks" and now this "argument about the Crunchpad"...
My theory, which is pure speculation, is that Fusion Garage misinterpreted Arrington's support. He promotes many companies on his blog, TC50 and elsewhere. It seems entirely plausible that FG thought Arrington was simply an enthusiastic supporter trying to help a small company bring a product to market. Maybe they figured he would buy a bunch of units OEM and rebrand them as CrunchPads while they were free to sell the design to other companies or market a device at retail themselves. The fact that Mr. Arrington, who is a tech savy lawyer, apparently did not enter into any formal contracts supports this theory. He should know better. It's very suspicious that he would not clearly define the terms very early in the process. This suggests to me he wanted to swoop in and take control of the product only when it was nearing its completion. FG takes most of the risk -- he jumps in at the last second if they pull off the engineering side of things. The big question is who was paying the bills?
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?
It looks like FusionGarage was looking at initial funding (or acquisition) from techcrunch early in product development cycle. And techcrunch (i believe intentionally) avoided commiting anything earlier itself since they thought it as too risky. Techcrunch thought that they would bring in world class investors and team later around the product development ( few months before launch) and get a good stake in the product for that. And FusionGarage investors were frustrated that TC can come around later (when the risk is too low) and take a major bite of 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.
Looking at what he's holding versus what I saw in the hype pictures is a starkly different product in terms of size. I don't care if the green is a trick of the camera light or not Arrington was right if he wanted it priced topping in at 300-400. Netbooks are a much better deal.
Smartphones/netbooks have pretty much filled the niche for this device. You could add a radio to the cruchpad and it would be a bad cellphone. Even if there was any kind of success here, Quanta would zip in and build a netbook with a touchscreen and put them out of business fast.
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.
It says the weird green screen effect in those photos is a trick of the camera, but it's remarkably consistent given the different camera angles. What would cause that?
Well, they've certainly received a lot of publicity out of this. I read Tech Crunch an average amount and I actually wasn't aware at all of this device until recently. The device looks fairly average to me, and I can't image spending that much on a limited tablet style computer.
The racism in the comments over at engadget sure is unpleasant. Also, the green screened pictures is certainly doing them a disservice!
I'm betting this is a publicity stunt. This has all been too public for a real lawsuit. They have gotten much more mindshare from all the blogs due to their "fight" then if they had just announced the product in a normal way.
Pricepoint sounds more realistic yet still reasonable, glad to see it's still moving forward. Sad to see all the ugly behind the scenes business stuff (which is usually hidden from view, but all too common) airing in public.
I wonder how all this story will affect the sales of the "joojoo" and of Apples coming Tablet. I was actually planning to get me a crunchpad but now I'll wait until all this settles down...
Wow, all I can say is if they had nothing signed, Arrington committed a pretty amateur mistake. As a lawyer, he should have known better. That's assuming we know everything.
the only way i can see this thing succeeding, is if its extremely hackable. Allowing users to run any os.. would be the first start. Otherwise as web client - could be ok , but again, netbooks are much cheaper, and does possibly the same. I would like it mainly as an e-book reader as the 10" from amazon is around the same price point, but with no pdf reader, no sd slot, or any idea of internal memory its a fail as a reader.
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!".
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)
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?