| September 13, 2000 | Dour Day for Scour |
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The evening I returned from Burning Man (I arrived in Los Angeles at 11:30 PM after unpacking my campmates' trucks in Sacramento and then driving for 7 or so hours), I had a full tape of messages on my answering machine. Among them was a message from my boss, Lawrence. He said, "Jess, it's really important that you call me. I have some news, and it isn't good. You can call me at any time." Well, I thought to myself, they obviously layed off the web production department, and my friends Selena, John, Steve, Lawrence, Arlene, Tim, and Michele and I no longer have jobs. Before I allowed myself to get too upset, I decided to call Lawrence. It was around midnight, but he said it was all right to call, so I did. As it turned out, Scour had not only layed off the production department, they had layed off *everyone*. Engineering team, business development, ad sales, everyone. Only the 12 founders will be staying onboard to try to keep the company afloat through the lawsuit over peer-to-peer file-sharing. Apparently, some big investors they were expecting to receive funding from, pulled out due to the lawsuit. (I guess they didn't want to invest millions of their dollars in a company that might be shut down in the near future due to a federal ruling. Go figure.) So, on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, Scour's founders realized that they had completely run out of money and needed to let everyone go. I had missed the emotional "suprise" company meeting on Friday afternoon where everyone learned that they were being let go with only one week's severance pay because I was out braving the dust storms at Burning Man. The weird thing is, I didn't freak out too much about hearing this. I suppose I'm getting used to my start-up jobs just disappearing overnight without much warning. CollegeBeat went under in the fall of 1998. WildWeb went under in the fall of 1999. So, I guess I'm just embracing the fly-by-night "anything can happen" mentality. Labels: scour, selena, startup, web, wildweb posted by Jess Barron @ 10:23 PM 
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