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Screen grab from Gigaom.com
Creditors have taken control of the assets of Gigaom, and the nine-year-old tech news and analysis site announced tonight that it would cease operations immediately. This note was posted just before 6 p.m.:
A brief note on our company.
Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.— Gigaom management
Gigaom, founded as a blog in 2006, billed itself as the "leading global voice on emerging technologies." Managing editor Laura Hazard Owen has been tweeting her appreciation of the editorial staff and also got in an amusing quip:
On the bright side, I won't miss moderating comments pic.twitter.com/NXFH432cff
— Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) March 10, 2015Founder Om Malik, the longtime tech journalist who left about a year ago, posted a statement about the demise of his former site.
Gigaom is winding down and its assets are now controlled by the company’s lenders. It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end.
Every founder starts on a path — hopeful and optimistic, full of desire to build something that helps change the world for the better, reshape an industry and hopefully become independent, both metaphorically and financially. Business, much like life, is not a movie and not everyone gets to have a story book ending.There will be time for postmortems, but not today. Today, I want to thank all the people who make (and have helped make) Gigaom. Their role in this journey was what really made it all worth it. They are great people and they will all do great work wherever they go. I want to thank our investors who believed in the business long before it became fashionable. And most importantly, I want to thank you dear readers for coming along on this trip of a lifetime.
I might have left Gigaom, the company, over a year ago, but Gigaom, the idea still lives in my heart.
Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you!
