IP Communications and Beyond

RUMOR CENTRAL: Because of some chaos and accounting/financial screw ups, TICC (the company that invested $11 million in Pulvermedia) "decided to show Jeff Pulver who's boss" by seizing all Pulvermedia assets during the recent VON show. They have pink-slipped everyone in the company. No one there has a job until TICC decides what to do (which appears to be to shut down the company on Friday). Hotels & suppliers haven't been paid from the last show. Payroll has stopped. Pulver has a reasonable chance of raising money from his VC and investment banker buddies to re-gain control of the company. (Hey, if every blogger who writes about Jeff sends in a dollar, he could buy Ziff-Davis!) A battle between Pulver and TICC should presumably be in progress, though it looks like perhaps TICC "has had enough" with high-tech media companies! Jeff is running around "like a man possessed". Will Jeff save his empire from oblivion? Will TICC expunge the Pulver name from the face of Eternity? Stay tuned!
 

Why would Jeff care what happens until the smoke clear? "Man possessed" sounds like a fantasy. Is there a white horse involved?

Seriously.

Jeff Pulver, while a nice guy, doesn't work on water (that, my friends, is left to Dr. Drew on Celeb Rehab, but I digress)

Jeff has been out of the picture of the day-to-day operations (actively shunned would be a better way to put it) of pulvermedia since the June 2007 buyout of his stock funded by TICC. Chun-whomever, the hands-on guy running the show for a couple of years, would roll out Jeff for a token keynote and hosting a party, then kick him off the stage and bitch about "not getting the value" he wanted.

Anyone who read the TICC press release of March 13 and/or listened to the earnings call TICC did (unlike most of you conspiracy theorists) would understand that TICC basically lost nearly everything they put in.

So, if I understand correctly, TICC had notes, the notes had warrants attached, pulvermedia didn't pay the interest on the notes, the notes give TICC more stock, TICC ends up owning whatever assets pulvermedia might have left -- which amounts to a couple of mailing lists, some logos, and the VON name.

TICC can try to sell these assets any bidder. Jeff could in theory offer to buy them back at pennies on the dollar. But it is a done deal, so why would Jeff want to raise more money? Assets are effectively worth pennies on the dollar at this point.

Rather than asking "What is Jeff doing?" the better question should be "What did the pulvermedia CEO and CFO -- the guys running the show -- do in six months to blow through millions of dollars and end up not able to pay off the interest on the notes?"

We're talking 1) Leadership and 2) money management. Where has it been?
 

Well the phones don't pick up at Von so I guess the company is indeed gone.