Source: P2P startup SkyRider has shut down

October 15, 2008 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

Troubled peer-to-peer technology startup SkyRider has shut down, a reliable source tells me. I’ve reached out to the company for comment but haven’t heard back.

Mountain View, Calif-based SkyRider took a round of bridge financing last winter, as we reported then; NewTeeVee subsequently unearthed a management shakeup.

Notably, SkyRider was a portfolio company of top venture firm Sequoia — the one that last week told its portfolio companies to cut costs as much as possible in order to survive the economic downturn. So, Sequoia is also apparently busy culling losses from its portfolio. Other investors in the company included Velocity Interactive Group (when that firm was still ComVentures) and Charles River Ventures.

SkyRider started as as anti-piracy company CRight, then switched to serving ads in P2P search results by posing as users with highly relevant files to share. One anonymous investor told us that the technology behind Skyrider is “incredible” and “totally wicked” — lets hope that has not entirely gone to waste.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • “totally wicked”?

    Hopefully the software is not from the 1980's also.

    Michael
    MarkTend.com (decidedly un-1980's)
  • joe
    it was totally fun working there :) and yes it all went down the drain ...
  • Jeff
    I found working there a vapid experience, especially since it was Kozel's company and his credentials are so amazing, a true pioneer.

    But this company had very little in the way of ethics, and these are also the people behind the hardware/software that compiles and parses email for the NSA and ATT.

    In bed with the Isreali's and not very embarrassed by past failures, they ended up going after anything to make a buck and failed every time. I agree the tech was amazing in potential but many of their ideas were completely out of sync with the music labels and what they want to do right now..

    As far as the work climate, I prefer places that don't have upteen execs sitting around watching the engineers work, and telling them they are working too slow. That's just annoying as hell!

    Sorry Ed.,
    Jeff-
  • anonymous
    Thats the best way to get someone to quit! I wouldn't put up with it,
    I would take a closet work area to that!
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