topics

Name Change Didn’t Help: Jellycloud Defunct; $50M In Funding Down The Drain, 36 Staffers Out

imageAdware 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!”

Related Stories
Oct 6, 2008 1:49 PM ET

Posted In: Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, jellycloud

Leave a Comment

Comments (1)

Oct 6, 2008 3:29 PM

Talk about using up all your chips. These guys are toast in the Valley. No one will ever fund them again!

Jenkins

Leave a Comment

Commenting is now closed for this article.

The Economics of Content | paidContent Newsletter

Know something we don’t?

Send Us a News Tip

All tips are anonymous and untraced.

Sponsors

Contributors