Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Sharefare Update: Ludi Labs & Roost

Six months ago, I posted that I had left Vitria and was working for a start-up called Sharefare. I couldn't say too much about what we were doing at the time, since we were in classic stealth mode. I've gotten some pings from a couple different folks lately about Sharefare, and there's been a lot going on, so I figured it was a good time for an update.


First, Sharefare changed its name to Ludi Labs (I think this still points to the old Sharefare site, be patient.) Ludi Labs comes from Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. The name change was made official about a month ago, and I even have a fancy business card with the new name.

Update, February 2: The CEO of my company has asked me to temporarily remove the information I had provided in this post. I was quite surprised by this request, since I didn't really think there was anything revealing, but c'est la vie.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

are you aware of the freaking scary number of people who have been fired by your company and of the weird ass rumors going around of what a place it is like to work at? just asking?

i cun understand why you might not want to post this, but you gotta ask yourself

Unknown said...

Ludi is a great place to work. It's a startup, and that's not everyone's cup o' tea. I was just commenting to one of my co-workers yesterday about how much nicer it is working at Ludi than at my previous employer (Vitria.)

Oh, and who was fired?

Anonymous said...

who was fired?

many people were fired, some quit, some were pushed out
way too many for such a small firm in so little time

so much money, so fast for so little, so sad, so many lies

I notice you left too

Unknown said...

You still didn't say who was fired!

Yes, I left Ludi Labs, as Ludi Labs has now closed down. I did leave a couple of weeks before things shut down, as it was obvious what was going to happen. I still liked working there a lot, and I think my colleagues there were brilliant. I consider Ludi to be another example of how financial success and technical innovation are often mutually exclusive.

Anonymous said...

I interviewed 3 years ago with the CEO. At this time, he could not disclose the business model. He described me 'Sharefare' as something like a combination of "Ebay+Google+Hotmail" ideas!

Well, I said to myself "How this guy can convince VCs to risk their money in this?"

I'm not surprised this place closed down.

Anonymous said...

Hey Michael,

Do you know who owns the IP for Ludi at this point or if they are still up for sell. Any comment will really be very helpful.