Adult Startup Zivity Cuts 1/3 Of Staff

[gonzo]

Zivity, the adult social network and media site that describes itself as a “community-powered showcase of female beauty”, has laid off 1/3 of its staff, cutting back from 22 employees to 14. (Again, 1/3 seems to be the magic number - Jive and Seesmic have both laid off about a third of their staff in the last week).

Zivity is in a unique position as one of the only venture capital backed sites with “adult” content (i.e. nudity), and has raised a total of $8 million. Earlier this year the site scored Napster co-founder Jordan Ritter as its CTO.

Co-founder Cyan Banister says that cuts were made across the board, and that the layoffs are a preventative measure that will ensure the company’s sustainability over the next few years as it has become much more difficult to raise further rounds of financing in the current economic climate. The site is still in private beta, and Banister expects that it will go public in the first quarter of 2009.

[RawAlex]

21 people to run a private beta of a social networking site?

It seems like another trend, massive over staffing.

[DannyCox]

And I've never even heard of Zivity!

[TheEnforcer]

LOL

That's an awfully large staff for a startup.

[gonzo]

They tore thru that 8 mill!

[RawAlex]

Perhaps the people laid off can get together with the layoffs from Playboy and open a social network for fat rabbits.

[DannyCox]

Sounds like 1998 all over again with start-up money for Internet companies. We had Zero Knowledge here in Montreal that managed to get over $75 million in investment back then, and blew through it in a year. Of course, the company shareholders (all family) all ended up with huge homes and expensive cars as they bonused themselves most of the money.

One of the brothers lives just down the street from me and is selling his house for $2.1m. It just went up on the market a week or so ago. I have a feeling he finally has blown through all the cash.

[EmporerEJ]

Constantly amazes me...this irresponsible use of money.
The things I could with all that money.......

[LAJ]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

Sounds like 1998 all over again with start-up money for Internet companies.

ZACTLY!

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by LAJ

ZACTLY!

PAR-TAY!!!

[LAJ]

Originally Posted by gonzo

PAR-TAY!!!

LMAO!!!

[Hell Puppy]

It's all a cycle.

In many cases, the VC's, especially the large ones are really pressuring CEO's of startups they're invested in to cut now. They should've been working aggressively toward positive cash flow all along, but now there's no credit, no big market for IPOs or buyouts in sight, so the investors want to see profitability.

The oversized staffs, herman miller chairs and half million dollar video conferencing and presentation rooms are about to go bye bye again. And are as we speak. And if you are a principle and you haven't taken some money off the table yet, you're not likely to get any soon. Kevin Rose probably feels like a genius right now due to timing. Digg got $20 million and he finally took some off the table and got paid just a couple of weeks before all of this crashed.

This has been circulating for a week or so, but Sequoia's presentation to the firms they're invested in is typical.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/10...ation-of-doom/

[Hell Puppy]

AdBrite sacked 40% of their 100 employees today as well.

I guess none of us think in terms of corporate structure because even after that, 60 people to run an ad network? Kinda makes you wonder what they all do all day.

[LAJ]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

AdBrite sacked 40% of their 100 employees today as well.

I guess none of us think in terms of corporate structure because even after that, 60 people to run an ad network? Kinda makes you wonder what they all do all day.

Maybe they assigned each employee to handle one ad?

Seriously though, I would assume that 3-5 employees there would be doing the work of 1 person in a company operating lean.

[RawAlex]

What I don't understand is this: Adbrite had all that staff, yet they claimed to be unable to track down accounts and check for obviously fraudulent websites, torrent sites, etc. The bullshit is laid on thick and wide, courtesy of the fucker Philip (pud) Kaplan who made his money gloating over the failures of others (fuckedcompany.com).

60 people to run an ad network? There is some serious stupidity at work there.

[DannyCox]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

AdBrite sacked 40% of their 100 employees today as well.

...and seem to have gone back to the old days of popups and bad cookies. Carol showed me the stuff Adbrite was doing on xPeeps earlier today with their popups and tracking cookies. I ran my cookie sniffer through it, and found some pretty malicious stuff going on.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

...and seem to have gone back to the old days of popups and bad cookies. Carol showed me the stuff Adbrite was doing on xPeeps earlier today with their popups and tracking cookies. I ran my cookie sniffer through it, and found some pretty malicious stuff going on.

Oh you can bet that crap is about to see a resurgence. The ad dollars are drying up, so the networks and publishers are going to be a bit less discriminating about what they run.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

...and seem to have gone back to the old days of popups and bad cookies. Carol showed me the stuff Adbrite was doing on xPeeps earlier today with their popups and tracking cookies. I ran my cookie sniffer through it, and found some pretty malicious stuff going on.

Looked to me yesterday like etology had been bought out by ad tech or they had sold one of the zones to their servers.