Should i remove the anonymous posting? Haven’t decided yet… Not super interested in provoking a DOS attack by an over-sensitive computer engineer.

First of all let me state for the record that the Foldera application is absolutely real. As a blogger with a reasonable following I am willing to (and have) staked my reputation on the fact that the application does everything we’ve said and will continue to evolve and improve as we roll it out to an ever larger group of users and make adjustments, modifications and additions based upon user-feedback. What else can we do but let people have the application and then take their comments to heart as we go forward?

Just so you know, the application, according to both Robert Scoble and also Ray Ozzie, is among the largest ever built using .dot net and now has around 2 million lines of code. This is no weekend coding project.

There was some criticism about the length of time that it has taken to bring this application to market. Let me address this. Initially this wasn’t an application intended for the general public but was rather something that Foldera Founder and CEO Richard Lusk wanted to help him run his large contracting business. It just so happened that as he and one or two developers started down the path he discovered that there was a huge hole in the market for the very thing he was building AND every time he mentioned what he was doing the project resonated so strongly that it became a business to build out a public application.

Thus, the first year or more was simply a private project and then it grew. Secondly, Richard bankrolled this himself for almost three years. This means small teams, and reduced infrastructure when compared with some big development shop with 30 or 40 people on payroll. Things take a long time when all the coding is being done by such a small group. The payoff, of course is that if you can hold it on track and keep bootstrapping until you have some tangible assets, you get a much higher valuation when you do raise outside funds. Richard’s plan in this regard has kept him (and the employees as well) in control of a far larger share of the company then most VC funded entrepreneurs will ever have.

Similarly, the strategy of using a reverse merger, a practice that undeniably has an unseemly reputation, has also been used very successfully and legitimately to access capital markets during times when IPO’s have historically performed poorly and in the case of Foldera, those people lucky enough to have purchased shares in one of the two private placements prior to the merger are very pleased with the performance of the company to date as well as its long term prospects- of course I can’t say anything else, as an officer of the company I’ll let our historic stock performance speak for itself.

Now on to the issue of credibility. I have to ask, who this anonymous person is to call into question the credibility of so many people that have very public personas and a lot to lose by damaging their reputations, while he (or in the unliikely event that it’s a she) hides behind an anonymous post and basically calls us liars for taking advantage of what many of us feel is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Keep in mind that not a one of us joined Foldera from the unemployment line. In fact, you have to see this in perspective for what it really is; top quality people all leaving very good and established positions for the chance to be a part of something bigger, possibly much better and certainly disruptive if we are to succeed.

Personally, I sincerely resent the intimation that I’ve been bought. I barely even run advertising on MoblieCrunch and Arrington has had gobs of money offered to him for TechCrunch posts and never once – not once, I repeat, has he allowed himself to be swayed by that easy money. Likewise, Marc Orchant and Michael Sampson have stellar – and even longer lived reputations of excellence and integrity. It takes an awful lot of nerve to suggest that our words ring hollow or our intentions lack integrity.

I left a position at a VC…believe you me, I could easily have pulled down the same numbers. The truth is that I saw a chance to do something remarkable and to be part of a team that you only see come together once in a career. Richard is a great and charismatic leader and working for and alongside him is challenging, interesting and rewarding and not only emotionally…if we succeed, and I suspect that we will or I wouldn’t be here writing this, each of us will be well compensated for our efforts, and no one is pretending that this isn’t the case.

In any case the proof as they say is in the performance of the application and the comments so far indicate that we’ve gotten off to a good start. Now I’m sure that there will always be detractors and I’m certain that not everyone will like the way Foldera works, but for a huge number of people I and the rest of the team at Foldera are betting that they will see a huge improvement in organization, collaboration and productivity and that they’ll get this benefit either completely free or at a fraction of the cost of comparable applications.

In fact of all the things that bother me about those that stand up and shout negative comments about Foldera the two things that annoy me most are that many of them have never seen the application in the first place and also that we’re giving it away so what is there to complain about anyway? It’s simple, if you don’t like it, don’t use it. You can try Foldera without any risk and you can do whatever you want with your data since we believe that anything you import and anything you create is yours.

With all of these facts and on top of them that we as a company are committed to actively seeking out user opinion and taking it into account as we continue to refine the application I simply don’t understand what it is that engenders such a negative opinion in people that appear to be at best under informed about the product, the team or the strategy.

Sincerely,

Oliver Starr, Author MobileCrunch and SVP of Biz Dev and Chief Mobility Officer, Foldera

I haven’t gotten to approving your post yet. Next time, use a name, instead of something cryptic like “all hype”. Something to hide, do you?

Richard, I am with Chris on being eager to get a login – I also wait!

See my previous commentary about the Foldera launch here:

http://www.freecollaboration.net/archives/2006/06/foldera.html
http://www.freecollaboration.net/archives/2006/06/foldera2reven.html

Kind Regards,
Nathan Doughty
CTO Asite

Reverse merger into public shell company, lots of bloggers on their payroll, they buy “credibility” (which if you are in the know leads to the opposite).

They overstated their “interest level” claiming more than half a million people signed up for their beta. Now the guy who disected their beta numbers is working for them:
http://www.shared-spaces.com/blog/2006/03/quicklinksmar_3.html

So far I dont see any substance here.

Very skeptical to say the least.

Reverse merger into public shell company, lots of bloggers on their payroll, they buy \”credibility\”.

They overstated their \”interest level\” claiming more than half a million people signed up for their beta. Now the guy who disected their beta numbers is working for them:
http://www.shared-spaces.com/blog/2006/03/quicklinksmar_3.html

So far I dont see any substance here.

Very skeptical to say the least.

http://haarball.wordpress.com/2006/04/04/shel-israel-you-bloody-wag/

It all started with Emily Chang. They paid Emily to “design” their blogsite and website. She then quickly writes a glowing review (along with her business partner) about Foldera. If you look at the “work” they did……well, Emily is much more capable then the work she did at Foldera.

Then, it was Michael Sampson……noted collaboration analyst from New Zealand. Somehow, they convince him to be the VP of WW Word of Mouth Marketing (what the hell kind of title is that?).

Then, there were the OUTRIGHT LIES about the # of registrations they had on their site and Scoble, Arrington and Israel start lapping it up like hungry kittens. Without ANY DUE DILIGENCE AT ALL bloggers all around the world put Foldera on their “list of the best Web 2.0 comapnies” WITHOUT EVER SEEING THE FRIGGIN PRODUCT!

They continue to amass highly experienced people ………my take is that they CLEARLY BOUGHT THESE FOLKS. I’ve heard rumours in some circles that some of these guys accepted their jobs without ever experiencing the product for themselves.

Next thing you know, Michael Arrington (from Tech Crunch) is on the Board at Foldera???

I’ve NEVER HEARD of a journalist/reporter/blogger (whatever the hell he wants to call himself) accepting a Board position with a company…..but, “its okay, as long as you disclose your bias.”

This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. This smells like sharks, scams and sleeping with the fishes.

Oh, and if it takes you “five years” to build a product….well, #1 it sounds like you aren’t a very good product development team, #2 it doesn’t sound very “web 2.0″ and #3 the technology they started with is probably already out of date.

Gimmie a break.

Hope Foldera is successful.