NewsToScreen Files For Bankruptcy
NewsToScreen, the service by Finnish marketing men that aimed to charge consumers for watching ads, has filed for bankruptcy according to Kauppalehti. We covered the company just little over a year ago in March. Later last year I talked to the CEO Marko Parkkinen back then and he quoted them having 80 000 users. Apparently not everyone was paying the 29€ annual fee as it would have brought in revenue of over 2 million euros.
The company had a very respectable board including Marko Parkkinen a reknown marketing man in Finland, Seppo Sairanen known for making his wealth from the private banking corporation FIM (and having invested into Fruugo). Other members of the board include Lauri Hulkko and Ilkka Seppälä. One thing that does surprise me is the resignation of Parkkinen as the CEO just 15 days before filing for bankruptcy. He had resigned the position on the 15th of June 2009 and the company had filed for bankruptcy on the 30th of June, 2009.
While it is never good to see startups going belly up, you have to admit and give it to people for trying. However, despite encouraging entrepreneurs - this is one idea that I never saw taking off, even in my wildest dreams. I remember talking to Parkkinen about the future of NewsToScreen and he was optimistic about the new course they had been taking with licensing the service to large corporations as a tool for communication. Needless to say, marketing without understanding the fundamentals of business does not work very well.
Shame. Though as well think that their business model of starting from desktop client and even more so, charging for the use of it was flawed from the beginning. As well I think their scope was a bit wide and unfocused in what to provide.
Something similar went on with Joost and it never took off:
http://gigaom.com/2009/06/30/what-went-wrong-with-joost/
As one of my mentor in London, Assia Grazioli-Venier always said Content is King!
Ouch, sad to see that go, but these things do happen; that's why it's called a growth company = plenty of risk in there.
Finland has a truly merciless bankruptcy system and now all of those gentlemen will get their names in the merciless black list for 8 years. Which means that every corporation they participate in for the next 8 years in any kind of role (CEO, Board, Auditor, etc) will result in that corporation's risk rating to be increased and a special note "negative background of company officials" will appear in the records.. that's a very harsh system and I would very much like to see it go away - would do wonders for the attitude towards trying and failing in Finland.
[...] News to Screen päätti lopettaa ja hakeutui konkurssiin. News to Screen tarjoama palvelu oli tietokoneen ruudunsäästäjä jonka kautta pystyi helposti selailemaan uutisia ja muuta kiinnostavaa sisältöä. Palvelu oli toiminnaltaan hieman samankaltainen kuin Netvibes tai iGoogle, mutta pyrki tarjoamaan sisällöt valmiina ja helpommin nautittavassa muodossa. [...]
Damn, I didn't know that, 8 years is quite long! And hitting the fallen one more time is little too harsh.. No wonder why entrepreneurs try to avoid risk of any mistake here; which is somewhat negative for business in ma opinion..