Name Change Didn't Help: Jellycloud Defunct; $50M In Funding Down The Drain, 36 Staffers Out
This story was written by David Kaplan.
Adware purveyor turned ad network Jellycloud has had two other aliases during the past eight years, but now you might as well call it dead and buried. Last weekend, the company (fka Gator and, subsequently, Claria) closed up shop and had its furniture repossessed, Valleywag first reported, citing an unidentified tipster. The news was confirmed today by Venturebeat, which cited an unidentified source within the company. Repeated calls to Jellycloud were not returned. About 36 employees lost their jobs.
Last month, Scott Vandevelde, Jellycloud's CEO, was comparing the company's offerings to both traditional ad nets like *AOL's* Advertising.com and the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) ad exchange Right Media. In April, the company raised an $11.5 million round led by U.S. Venture Partners, SoftBank, Sand Hill Capital and Crosslink Capital. Dubbed Gator when formed in 2000, the company hoped to build its business around an online "vault" that let users store their various login data. But it gained more notoriety for its second activity: serving adware. When that didn't work, Gator tried to cast off the adware stain and became Claria. It raised $40 million in April 2006 after positioning itself as "personalized homepage" operator. The idea was to glean users' web usage habits and serve up content accordingly. As of Monday afternoon, the company's was site was still live and sporting a prominent message at the bottom of its homepage: "We're hiring!"
By David Kaplan