I'm only the peanut gallery?
Come on now, those were some pretty big peanuts 
Oh, and for the record - I don't agree with the somewhat bizarre sight of those armed security guys standing around menacing your employees (or whatever it was they were doing).
Disagreements over Adware aside, that's rather OTT to say the least.
Yes Ken!! smartshopper-Zango times were glorious. No grudages here. Only fond memories and cherished friends
God speed to all.
Thank you for all of the commentary (as usual) Ken!! I echo all of your memories above. For those of us that worked there for many years, it was not just work- it was good friends and a family. I will never forget the years of my life from June 1999 when Dan showed me how to use Outlook to answer ePIPO customer support emails to August 2007 when I sat in Ring's office crying when I told him I was moving on.
It was a pleasure to work with you guys for many, many years. I hope that you all fall on your feet.
Will be emailing Ken directly... but since a lot of Zango people seem to be reading this blog I thought I would ask...
Zango owes my company a lot of money, and I don't know who now represents them? Does anyone?
I am the founder of CampusPoint, over the years we helped lots of recent graduates get jobs at Zango/180, and at the end we still had some intern-type staff working there. Blinkx claims they aren't responsible for Zango's debts and we're now in a very difficult position.
If anyone knows anyone who knows anything, I sure would appreciate knowing who that person is, so we can try to get some answers....
Ken, this post and the corresponding post about what Zango got wrong are extremely thoughtful, well-written, and right on the money. I have sent the links to many friends and family, hoping to give them a better idea of what I've been doing for the last 4.5 years. Thanks for the summary.
"a unique and innovative business model" .... for Zango.
When did the content providers ever get payed? (You know, the ones Zango was supposed to be "enabling" in the first place)
I asked the question in 2006, still no answer.
http://blog.spywareguide.com/200...-
doubledip.html
As it turns out, Zango paid any number of content providers. I don't have the details -- that wasn't my area -- but I know that we cut deals with dozens if not hundreds of organizations and people to access their content. If you check the Zango.com site, you'll see plenty of content for which we paid the content providers.
Now, as it turns out, I think that one of the things Zango didn't do right is paying the content providers enough. But that's not for lack of trying. We could get all the second and third tier content we wanted really cheap. And we would have been willing to pay more for good first-tier content. But very few folks at that level were willing to do business with us.
And oddly enough, even when we WERE able to cut some first tier deals (e.g., with Warner Brothers), nobody wanted that content. It consistently remained much, much less popular than the second and third tier stuff.
so as blinkx taken over zango ,yes or no cos when you phone and ask blinkx they say NO deal as been done
Agree and disagree with this post.
1. "Zango had a great culture" - True until 2007-2008. As the company started to go downhill, so did the culture. No more free lunches, cutbacks on benefits, etc. The cultural difference between Israel and Bellevue caused some issues (beyond just my own problems). You could really feel the ball rolling downhill towards the end. The culture felt forced in 2008.
2. "Zango had great employees" - I agree with this for the most part, but I felt when the company got above 200 people, this really started to slack. We started hiring anyone to fill a void. But when layoffs came, I did feel those people got moved on first.
3. "Zango developed a unique and innovative business model." - Agree.
4. "Zango made some great acquisitions" - Not sure how I feel about this one. CDT/LoudCash was the best acquisition that Zango ever made. On the other hand, I somehow feel that the Hotbar acquisition was just something we did to keep the company alive, and wasn't really focused and fully thought out. I felt like a lot of moves made at Zango were out of panic to do something about a downturn in revenue, rather than a truly strategic move. Maybe it's just me, but I feel the money spent on acquisitions could have been used better in-house to develop products that were other than just "Search Assistant". I can't tell you how many times I heard fellow employees say how frustrated they were to not get the go-ahead on projects because of money/resources.
FB: Yes, a deal has been done. I'm not sure why anyone at blinkx would say otherwise. I'm not at liberty to disclose the details, and I'm an official spokesman for neither party, but suffice to say that blinkx has acquired all of Zango's assets (though not the corporation itself). It eventually ended up making job offers to most of the former Zango employees.
Ethan: #1 - I agree about the eventual decline in the culture. It's harder to have a great culture when there's no money. I think the fact that we weren't succeeding, and everybody knew it, was also a significant hit on morale. And the fact that some of the really amazing employees, like Danny Vo, had moved on by that point was also problematic.
#4 - I really was convinced at the time that the Hotbar merger/acquisition was a great idea. And it was as well thought-through as these things ever are. It didn't end up as positive as I was hoping, for all the reasons I outlined, and I've cudgeled my brain to see if there's anything we should have done differently that could have ameliorated the problems. I'd be open to suggestions.
Was it true the SmartShopper originally came with the Hotbar deal but was sold to Oren for 250K and then bought back from him for 9M after a year and a half?
You can attempt to justify your employment any way you want, and best of luck to you, but the fact remains zango and 180 solutions were justly one of the single most hated names in the tech industry.
Nobody wanted this stuff and the only way it got onto desktops was by deceit or by eula tricks.
When a majority of your customers experience with your flagship product and business model is an alarmed "Hey! I never consented to that!" then you have problems that a nifty office culture cannot address. If you can't see that, then I actually do question that culture, despite beer fridays. I question the ethics and morality of those that helped create this model.
By the way, other offices have beer fridays. But we don't require stuffing malicious and unwanted plugins onto the unsuspecting customers' desktop as a prerequisite.
I think I speak for any IT support person who ever encountered a broken zango app when I say ... Good luck peddling your experience around town.
If I ever see 'zango' on a resume, I'd have a good laugh at their expense, and move on.
Mango: No, that's not how it happened with SmartShopper. The original plan was always for Oren to take SmartShopper and make it a separate entity. A year or so later, when it had become clear that SmartShopper wasn't going to achieve the success Oren wanted as an independent entity, Oren finally agreed to let Zango acquire SmartShopper as well, for a fair price.
I'm sure that Oren would have been willing to toss SmartShopper into the original deal for an appropriate amount of money, but whatever that might have been, it would have been at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than $200K. And of course, when Zango bought Hotbar, SmartShopper didn't have a viable product. Oren spent the next year paying for SmartShopper to finish the product, and by the time Zango acquired SmartShopper, there was a real product, which was making real money. A company like that is worth a whole lot more than the former sort.
Certaindoom: That's certainly a very nasty company you describe, but it's odd that you keep using the term "Zango" to describe it. You must be referring to a different Zango than the one I know. It's certainly not the Zango I worked for 
.
Zango Spyware was a blight and harassment to many Internet users -- I gotta hand it to you for keeping up the front even during the fall. It's kinda like fight club, if you are going delusional, do it full blast.
Glad to see it's gone.
Keep drinkin the koolaid, Zangoids. Everyone loved 180solutions, really they did.
Of course it wasn't the Zango you worked for, Ken. You worked up in the ivory tower with your brother and the other executives, hanging out in the VIP rooms at the parties, traveling first class, and making six figures while everyone else worked for under $30,000.
You can believe all you want that the installs were all consensual at the end, but everybody else knows that nobody wanted Zango or later variants on their computers. You know that most people don't read EULA's and most of the time don't understand what they are installing and Zango took advantage of that. You washed your hands saying, "It's not our fault if people don't read the fine print."
I am one of the many techs who had to remove your GARBAGE from our equipment time and again, because it installed without user permission, and generally f'd up the entire machine's stability. Good riddance to crap business models. Good luck to you creating something USEFUL, non-invasive, non-viral, non-privacy violating, and so on and so forth.
What's fascinating to me about the last set of comments is that I KNOW that all of Zango's installs for the last several years were completely consensual, and that Zango went out of its way to make sure that everyone had very clear information about what Zango did and what they got in exchange. I'm not saying that the trade-off was always a great trade-off: indeed, one of my major points is that Zango generally, and myself personally, failed on exactly that front. But I'm very, very confident that all Zango installs over the last several years were completely consensual, and that users had every opportunity (no EULA fine-print nonsense) to know up-front what they were getting into. So it really is a head-scratcher to me that people continue to insist otherwise. I strongly suspect that if there were any actual evidence to contradict these assertions, PaperGhost, Ben Edelman and others would be eager to bring it forward. PG has certainly described some installs that didn't provide a great value proposition, but even he doesn't say that the ad side of the equation wasn't adequately disclosed.
so what happened? pwnage ?
Hi do you know if Blinkx are running smartshopper now ? seem reluctant to let shareholders in, bearing in mind rumours are that they have taken on staff from zango what for ?
I have to say, relative to the other adware supported companies available to work with, Zango have been nothing but a dream come true, their employees are nothing but the most helpful around and if you have actually tried to install Zango on a computer without making it well known to the user you will know this is a difficult task, I should know, I spent a couple days trying to just for kicks. Lets hope that things continue on the same great paths that I have seen to date with Zango.
Note: I too have been the one uninstalling various malware on users computers before as well, Zango has always been the easiest to remove and done the least damage compared to any of their competitors in my opinion and experiences.
http://blogs.wsj.com/
venturecapi...mod=rss_WSJBlog
Regarding consensual downloads of unwanted junk:
I think the "goatfker rule" might apply here.
In other words, no matter what, once you're the goatfker, you will always be the goatfker. Doesn't matter what else you might have done that was good.
Good luck job searching . Goatfkers.
karma's a bitch, good riddance.
Maybe you could also add to your musing about using copyright protected works on your site to trick people into downloading zango? About how you tried to trick kids into installing zango? How your great company culture created headaches and misery for millions of others?
Your postmortem is revealing. Only you could call hotbar the best acquisition ever and then show how it sunk your company. That is what you must do to get through the day, lie to yourself.
You are a scumbag. Time to admit to it.
Missed your begging ken that you insist your downloads were consensual.
No they were not. You targeted children and prechecked boxes that they were over 18. That isn't consensual with an adult, that is tricking minors. Remember your warner bros fiasco? That was just one instance.
Give me $150M and I'll create office culture like you've never seen. Culture is meaningless without a productive direction and sustainable business goals. Congrats on bilking retirees and non-profits $150M in harned earned/saved money.
Smark: The only thing I can say about the checkboxes, etc., is that the FTC, TRUSTe, and Richard Purcell, the former Chief Privacy Officer of Microsoft, all did an exhaustive review of Zango's install processes, and they all concluded that Zango's systems met the best industry-standard criteria for opt-in and notification.
So the FTC reviewed and found zango guilty:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0...3130/
index.shtm
Zango settles out of court, then goes right back breaking the spirit of the settlement, documented here:
http://www.benedelman.org/spywar...ngo-violations/
So much anger...
When Zango bought SmartShopper, we learned of Zango's past reputation.
Soon enough we found out the extent Zango went, investing huge amounts of resources, to change it's technology and way of thinking to meet the needs of its users. It really wasn't "following FTC rules", it was a deep, cross company understanding, led by its management and product team, of how things should work.
Being responsible for implementing the TRUSTe certification guidelines for SmartShopper back in 2006, gave me a good perspective of the effort Zango made to make its installation process more than just legit- it was USER friendly.
A support team of 10 guys made sure every user complaint was met with all the necessary tools to uninstall, re-install, or get any required answer.
I was proud to work in Zango.
Ken, don't feel compelled to answer these guys, they don't understand and can't understand what you've been through and that for every negative comment they write down here, we can produce a positive one written by our users.
Godspeed in your new adventure.
hey Ken, thanx for all the good info and education on the mistakes .. hopefully we can all learn from this. I have worked with a few different ad networks with you guys and have had great success over the years
I am curious though you mention that Blinxx has taken over the company yet i got an email from zangocash saying that a company named Pinball had taken over zangocash and that all past due balance will be mad good on and to keep pushing zango cash.
However i cant find any information on this company Pinball. when i asked my zangocash rep about it they told me that pinball dosnt have a web presence. I find that od and a bit discerning.. before i remove Zangocash from all the networks we have zangocash running in can you at least give me a state and maybe contact info for them. so i can see who I'm really doing business with now?? i really dont want to run up a big net 60 tab that never gets paied
thanx
Best regards to you in the next chapter of you life
Zivgo, actually I can understand and I do understand what the company did. I was a part of the company since nearly the beginning and was involved deeply with all aspects of the software, customers, sales, etc. I know how it worked and from the beginning it was never to "meet the needs of its users." It was only to meet the goal of "let's go make some money."
I do believe that Ken does not feel Zango was wrong with the software installs or their intentions towards the end. He is a prime example of how permanent the Kool-Aid stains can be. It is sad but not unexpected, considering he is the brother of the CEO. Hopefully someday Ken will be able to look back with clearer eyes and realize that Zango was built only to make money in any way possible, and never to benefit the users.
I do think that "Dango" has a point, and that this was one of Zango's blind spots. It's part of what I was driving at in my point about us never being able to provide adequate value for the consumer in exchange for the advertisements. There are some companies which have a singleminded focus, say, on quality, or on the customer experience. Very early on, Keith made it clear that Zango would have a single-minded focus on revenue. The justification he gave was that in the end, revenue was a fairly good proxy for the value you added to the world. That may in fact be correct, over the long term: and if that's the case, it helps to explain Zango's eventual failure. I think that if early on, Zango had focused on serving end-users in the same way that it quite admirably focused on serving its advertisers, it would have ended up very differently. This is certainly a lesson I will take with me into my next endeavor, and I suspect that it's a lesson Keith has learned as well.
Still, even with that said, I do think that Zango was unfairly singled out, and that it continued to pay for its mistakes long after they had been fully rectified.
Zango interviewed me for a Product Manager position when all the radio spots were abuzz with the employee candidate motto. One of the questions HR asked me was if I objected to products that included porn. What I don't understand is how one could go from a would be youth pastor to someone who pitches porn.
For what it's worth, I'm implementing a policy of deleting blog comments that are nothing more than "F-you". I'm fine with critical comments, even those that don't make much sense, but this is my blog, and I don't feel any particular need to put up with extended profanity.
Interviewed@Zango: I agree about the pornography. That's probably the part of Zango's business that I'm most ashamed of; and quite possibly, if I was a better person, I would have left because of it. The "justification", if there is any, is that pretty much all Internet advertising companies (including Google, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft and so forth) make money from adult advertising. Nor was it my call: it was a business rather than a technical decision. But that doesn't make it right, and we had closer links to that industry than I was ever comfortable with. If anyone wants to say that I should have had the guts to quit over that, I won't say them no.
Ken:
Isn't it cool when you can delete comments? Makes you feel like you can control the direction the blog is going? You might have control over that, but we all know it was Spyware.
Google:
zango spyware
Results 1 - 10 of about 93,900 for zango spyware.
zango adware
Results 1 - 10 of about 80,700 for zango adware.
That's more than 173 THOUSAND pages talking about your bogus operation vs. your little blog.
Mark Foo: As you can hopefully see, I'm not in the habit of deleting comments merely because they're critical, or even abusive. I've deleted precisely two comments so far because they crossed over the line from abusive to offensive.
As for the value and the limitations of using Google result counts to inform your opinions, you may want to read these posts of mine from a year or so back:
http://blog.wouldbetheologian.co...-
generated.html
http://blog.wouldbetheologian.co...-
generated.html
I've had numerous opportunities to watch "facts" about Zango that I know to be completely false be repeated and repeated throughout the Internet. I don't deny the value of crowdsourcing, but it can also lead to serious distortions under certain circumstances.
I'm hardly saying that Zango was always innocent. We screwed up, and royally, on occasion. My point is not that Zango deserves special treatment: just an objective reading of the facts. And I believe that an objective reading will show that Zango did in fact make serious mistakes, and for several years inadvertently made life more difficult for a number of folks. But I also believe that this same objective reading will show that Zango successfully reformed its practices, implemented some fairly sophisticated technology to make sure that all installs were appropriately consented, and conducted its business according to very high standards for the last four years. Perhaps our initial mistakes were egregious enough that our reforms don't cancel them out: but nobody with any knowledge of what happened can deny that the reforms took place.
That said, this is a free country, and you're free to believe what you wish .
I like how you compare yourself to google.
In my experience, google provides non-intrusive useful ads. They are text ads, they look natural on almost any page and they don't flash, blink or do other annoying things.
They are also highly related to the content on the page, I'm sure you've seen them on your gmail account as well (yes, I've read other of your blog posts).
At any rate, no matter what you say Zango was, and will in retrospect remain, a spyware application. That's it.
You can cover it up behind EULA's and user consent, but the sad fact of the matter is that most users don't know the first thing about what they are doing.
Hell, I've had my uncle phone me up and complain about his antivirus not working, only to discover he had purchased one of the "scarewares" that were very visible for a time. It's been a while since I've come across them.
You'd never be able to find any reasonably thinking person who'd agree to: "Why sure, I'd love to get plastered with ads at random intervals with no relation to what I'm doing. That's just FANTASTIC." And you know it.
You are lucky in two things, however.
1. Ken Smith is a very anonymous name.
2. If you leave out Zango on your CV, you might get employment somewhere legit!
Imagine the possibilities! With your insight in to the world of adware, you'd probably be a great asset to the anti-spyware companies.
Ken you never answered my concerns please do thanx
I am curious though you mention that Blinxx has taken over the company yet i got an email from zangocash saying that a company named Pinball had taken over zangocash and that all past due balance will be mad good on and to keep pushing zango cash.
However i cant find any information on this company Pinball. when i asked my zangocash rep about it they told me that pinball dosnt have a web presence. I find that od and a bit discerning.. before i remove Zangocash from all the networks we have zangocash running in can you at least give me a state and maybe contact info for them. so i can see who I'm really doing business with now?? i really dont want to run up a big net 60 tab that never gets paied
could you give some insight to the whole pinball company? i cant find any info about these guys so it seems a big odd. thanks
Zango Cash Affiliate: Unfortunately, this is the first I've heard about Pinball. Since I'm no longer officially affiliated with Zango (except as a completely swept shareholder), and have never been affiliated with blinkx, I don't have any new inside or official information. However, I know that internally, the folks in Montreal who run the ZangoCash website are acting as if they're blinkx employees. So if I had to offer a guess, I'd say that Pinball is probably a subsidiary of blinkx, perhaps like Platrium was a subsidiary of Zango. I've seen plenty of indications that blinkx is trying to downplay the extent to which they are now running the remains of Zango, and one way they might be doing that is to put a corporate veil of some sort in-between themselves and ZangoCash.
Ken Smith says:
"and one way they might be doing that is to put a corporate veil of some sort in-between themselves"
Isn't that awesome? I'd be so ashamed if I created a company and sold it and had to explain how the new buyer might want to "put a corporate veil" between two parts of the company.
Ken: Can you package up and sell your denial -- it would be an awesome product to market -- most people, at some point, hit rock bottom and have an epiphany that helps them start recovery, but if you can see all that's before you, all these comment, all of the pain, stress, lost productivity, etc. and still be this cool about it, you've gotta have a special skill.
Ever heard of The Moral Imperative? It asks "what if everyone acted or did what I'm doing now? Would the world be better or worse?" I can tell you what would happen, all the PCs would be b0rked, no one could use the web (all the pop-ups), people will be using exploits to install malware for affiliate programs (oh, they are doing that).
You are acting out of sheer greed and self interest and if they rest of the world did them same, we would DESTROY OURSELVES.
Can't wait to see what you work on next, we'll all be watching -- this time we'll pay closer attention.
ken,
do everyone a favor and stop engaging with all of this crazy people. I know u care but the more you do this the harder it gets for the rest of us who now have to go and get a new job. it's ok for you with all the money you and keith made, but the rest of us need this to go away quietly dude! respectfuly.
Nice analysis Ken, both on the pluses and minues. In the end, I think you're right, and so many of the comments here make it clear that Zango didn't add the value to the "users" of the software that we all wished it would have. When I was at Zango, we were doing a lot to try to clean that up -- but at the end of the day, the business model and the entire adware industry failed. Ultimately -- thought a nice idea -- time-shifted advertising bundled with "value-add content" failed, everywhere. That Zango was able to hold on for so long says something about the company.
I think Keith was an amazing salesman, and an awesome leader. Ken and Doug -- each in their own ways -- were both excellent leaders and extremely good with technology. I learned a lot there and from them -- both in terms of leadership/management, as well as technology. The fact is -- it was an awesome place to work, and the people were building really cool technology, and for a while -- making decent money doing it. I think Keith truly believed that if you were making money -- you were adding value, because that's what capitalism is all about.
Part of this entire economic situation were in, though, is that making money (or having it, or spending it, or even saving it) isn't what it's all about. When I was in the adware industry, it amazed me how much banks were willing to pay for a single ad targeted at the keyword "mortgage." Now I understand why, and don't believe that showing those ads (or any of the other stuff that went with it, which is a much longer discussion) was really adding that much value.
Still, there was a lot of craziness in the late nineties up to the dot.com bust. A lot of people lost money, and I lost a decent amount back then to some ideas that seemed good at the time, and even a non-insignificant amount when Zango folded. I, too, am not bitter -- Zango was an awesome place to work, and I have many fond memories of the great stuff we built, the good times we had, and the truly "scary smart" and cool people that worked there.
I still work with scary-smart people, but most of them aren't nearly as cool. I will say that by the time I left Zango, I was beginning to become a bit disallusioned with Keith's vision, or the absolute value of the software we were building. In the end, though -- if I'm truly honest -- it was the offer of more money and better benefits that took me away, not some altruistic goal of making the world a better place.
The first IT job I had was for the World Health Organization, where it amazed me the number of children in the world that went blind in developing countries for lack of a $.02 dose of Vitamin A. There is a disalarming irony that far more money was funneled into mortgage ads to people that couldn't begin to afford their own houses -- the money from each amounting to dozens or even hundreds of children saved from blindness, which -- ROI notwithstanding -- would have added more absolute value to the world.
In the end, though, I only made $10/hour in that job, and perhaps sometime I'll return to that line of work, and even perhaps at that compensation level -- but today I work to try to make a software product a little bit better that touches a great many lives -- and though it has significantly more detractors than Zango ever did -- I ultimately believe the world is a better place because of its existence.
That Zango never succeeded in adding the value that the founders hoped it would is sad -- I know they each believed in the vision, and having had the pleasure to know Ken -- he would not have put the energy and time into it if he didn't believe he was doing the right thing.
Thanks Ken, for the the thorough and fair-handed, if a bit wistful, post-mortem.
Thanks, RJ. Your comments are eminently fair. You were a hoot to work with, and I'm glad you're doing well. (Is your current company Microsoft, the one with "significantly more detractors than Zango"? )
Indeed -- that software is Windows, and I work in a group (Winqual) that tries to help people write better software to run on that OS. We're putting the final touches on a relatively decent piece of software, and with the latest leaked build -- even our detractors are relatively conservative in their criticisms.
I had the opportunity to read a book a few years ago that reshaped some of what I thought about the company everyone loves to hate -- "Microsoft, Rebooted." It presented in what I thought was a fairly even way why BillG ran the company the way he did, and what impact the DOJ case had on him personally -- and ultimately the company.
I think today everyone sees Bill Gates in a very different light -- particularly as he's gotten much more involved with the Foundation and since his retirement. In the end, though, he hasn't changed at heart -- it was simply made clear to him that even though he was playing by the rules, and clearly winning -- that he would never win using the strategy he had always played with.
We all learn from our mistakes -- it's not our abilities that make us who we are -- it's the choices we make in how we use them, and the experiences which result that shape us.
There's a lot to be learned from the Zango experience -- both those that were there, and those that were affected by the impact it had, both good and bad. Hopefully we can all take something from the experience, and use it to shape a better future.
- Now that the Zango company is no longer in operation, when will the website be shut down? It is still pushing out installs, asking publishers to sign up, etc.
No matter the differences in opinion, I think we can all agree that _at this point in time_ it would be better not to have any more installs, right?
- To reply to:
http://
blog.wouldbetheologian.co...ght.html#172618
Zango pulled in external content by the truckload, and slapped a "Zango Required" on it. Regardless of whether it was public domain, somebodies youtube, or a copy of "the dark knight". So don't tell me these people were paid. Did you ever pay a single cent to people who's content you took via revver?
Jan: (1) Blinkx is continuing to operate the Zango business, under the name "Pinball". It will continue to operate in something like its current shape for the foreseeable future, or until Blinkx decides to take it a different direction. (This is something that a lot of the folks dancing on Zango's grave seem to have missed.) (2) Actually, Zango had a signed content distribution deal with Revver, and my understanding (that wasn't the area I was responsible for) is that a good chunk of the money that Revver paid out to its content providers actually came from Zango.
zango was on way too many entertainment sites and users were pretty much forced to install it, how is this good?
Wow... well as one of the very first Zango employees (I think I was #2?) I can say that I have so much respect for Keith Smith. He is a true leader. I can't wait to see what he has in store next. I learned so much working for him (at 2 different companies). The true measure of a leader is not the % of wins they get in battle but the quality of the soldiers that will go to battle with them... and if you look at the team of amazing individuals that were at Zango from the beginning it is apparent that he must be in fact on hell of a leader. Cheers to Keith, Dan, Jeff, Rob, Ring, Heather, Ken, etc... I hope to see you guys again soon.
I have to agree with Ken. Most of what I read is accurate. Zango took excellent care of its employees. Kieth was indeed transparent, well intentioned and kind hearted and that made him a great leader. I never had a reason to doubt his convictions. Shit just happens..
On the other hand, not all employees were respectable and extremely bright.
The Montreal General Manager in particular (M.St.Denis) is a true spineless two faced so and so. In front of our very eyes he transferred allegiance from Kieth Zango to Blinkx; just like he did in the 180 solutions days by screwing his so called best friends. As a leader, he sucked, he took most of everyday off and only appeared to make pseudo inspiring gaseous speeches that truly amounted to nothing in the end. I cannot believe how he got to where he got to with no skills and spineless dis-loyalty. The only thing about him remotely impressive was his unbelievable ability to self inflate his own ego, mostly chemically but also speaking about himself in the third person."Zango is nothing without MSD" I truly hope this lapse of judgement of character when hiring him is not repeated by Blinkx or at least easily recognized by the 'smart' oxbridge brains running the show right now.
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