Sean Uberoi Kelly, CTO, founder and principal inventor of Wallop has left the San Francisco-based social networking start-up.
We were able to confirm this information with Karl Jacobs, CEO of Wallop. According to him, Kelly has no plans to work on any other project.
Kelly led the development of the Wallop prototype as a research software developer in the Social Computing Group at Microsoft. Jacobs says Kelly is going to back to New York, and described the departure as part of natural progression in the life of a start-up. “He has built the product and he has family in New York,” says Jacobs.
Nevertheless, when inventor/co-founder leaves a company it certainly raises eyebrows. With an impending launch of the final product, raises doubts, whether true or unfounded. We are still trying to reach Kelly and will update the story accordingly with his statements.
Jacobs says the company is going to come out of beta in the first quarter of 2007. It has fallen out of the limelight in recent months. Wallop has raised $13.6 million in venture funding from angels, Norwest Venture Partners and Bay Partners.
Disclosure: Wallop was one of the exhibitors at Widgets Live conference, organized by GigaOM and Niall Kennedy.
7 comments so far
5:33 PM PT
I think Wallop is overkill - Flash is too restrictive for your self expression needs. OK it looks great but what people want is flexibility, that’s how MySpace did it, IMO. I’m still optimistic though for the upcoming releases, very experienced team.
8:02 AM PT
I can’t image what caused Sean to leave his own company. As any founder knows, when a company you started is up and running, it takes a lot to walk away. I certainly couldn’t fathom a situation in which I would walk away from CavengerNews.com, and I think most CEO’s feel the same way.
9:42 AM PT
I can’t speak for Sean but Karl Jacob has a long track record of side-line founders. Either due to ego or insecurity he never seems to be able to work well with the founders in the companies he works in (probably both). I think more than a few people who have worked with him are not suprised and probably expected something like this.
8:51 AM PT
I totally have to agree with Emre on his point. people want flexibility and with the growing number of html applets versus the rather limited variety of mods or flash applications wallop utilizes, it is obvious and apparent to the user that he will not be able to enjoy the cbox he has on, say, blogger.
8:22 AM PT
It’s actually fairly common to see a founder leaving his own company. Often times there is a struggle when the money(venture capitalists, big partners) bring in new management. However, it’s probably not the best thing for company morale.
5:11 PM PT
[...] for the first time. Dizzywood, a tween oriented MMO launched on GigaOM show. It was co-founded by Sean Kelly, formerly of Wallop. We want to do more of this on our show. Write to us gigaom at revision 3 dot com, and give us a [...]
5:29 PM PT
[...] for the first time. Dizzywood, a tween oriented MMO launched on GigaOM show. It was co-founded by Sean Kelly, formerly of Wallop. We want to do more of this on our show. Write to us gigaom at revision 3 dot com, and give us a [...]
Leave a Comment