It was a fantasy left over from the last boom: Hire a movie star to pitch your startup, and the dusting of tinsel will turbocharge sales. Those William Shatner ads sold plane tickets for Priceline, right? But the career of hard-partying entrepreneur Andrew Frame did not follow that script. We hear he was just fired as…
Ooma, the voice-over-IP phone company, has received a hot cash injection of $16 million from existing investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson. This is on top of $26 million already sunk into the company and, of late, convertible bridge loans which have kept the lattes flowing at the office. Sales at Best Buy…
Startup SaysMe, which will produce generic, re-brandable commercial video spots for local businesses and small-town politicians, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from a group of venture firms, including Katalyst Films, home of male model-turned-VC Ashton Kutcher, as well as Intel and Prime Capital's…
Hold the phone: Voice-over-Internet startup Ooma is flailing, despite — or perhaps because of — a viral-video marketing campaign directed by Hollywood star Ashton Kutcher. Ooma launched its product, a $400 device which offers unlimited phone calls, last year, with a splash of press. Starstruck tech bloggers like…
Yelp, the local-reviews site, is as infamous in San Francisco as it is nonfamous anywhere else in the country. Its parties, always hedonistic rampages of drunken conversations, burlesque troops, and makeout sessions in the photobooth, helped establish its local reputation and cement the loyalty of hardcore users. (…
Jangl CEO Michael Cerda faced down a crowd of entrepreneurs at a Stirr event in Potrero Hill, and, in an unusual moment for Silicon Valley, spoke the truth. "How many of you guys are founders?" he asked. Cerda waited a beat, looked at the raised hands, and said, "You're all fucked." Until that moment, no one had…
Ashton Kutcher's greatest contribution to geek culture — and no, we aren't referring to Internet telephone startup Ooma — is coming to Boston. Fulfilling every nerd's wildest fantasies, the guilty-pleasure reality show Beauty and the Geek is coming to Beantown on Saturday . Producers are searching for dweebs and…
This is the latest clip released from the voice-over-IP gadget maker and its creative genius, teen idol Ashton Kutcher. The creepy kid actor is back, and he nicely fills his role as a low-budget Damien from The Omen. Notice the video never mentions the product or company itself — probably a good thing. Better to keep…
To entice potential customers, Ooma created the commercial above to get viral attention about its product. Ooma "creative director" Ashton Kutcher — Mr. Demi Moore himself — produced the clip, which features an unfortunately dressed creepy kid actor and more quick cuts than an anime cartoon. We already had our doubts…
Still on deathwatch, Red Herring, the once-storied tech publication, is displaying its straitened circumstances even in its copy. The few articles on its website that aren't Reuters wire stories seem to be written by a skeleton crew, with equally skeletal thought behind them. Take, for example, Cassimir Medford's …
"TechCrunch giving away Oomas? I'm seriously over tech. I'm moving into pork bellies or something less sad."
Valleywag has already noted the curious resemblance of Andrew Frame, the founder of VOIP startup Ooma, to "Arrested Development" character George Oscar Bluth II, a failed magician. But that's not the only curious resemblance we've spotted, now that Ooma's launched its long-delayed product. It turns out that Ooma's…
When was Ooma, the VOIP startup founded by entrepreneur Andrew Frame and supported by actor Ashton Kutcher, actually founded? Seems like such a simple question. The company says it was founded by Frame in 2005. But former CEO Michael Cerda, in a detailed account, says it actually got started in the fall of 2003. And…
Why does eBay subsidiary Skype have a Swedish military transport in its Estonian development center? Could it be preparing to take the fight for VOIP customers against new competitors like Ooma to a new battlefield? Read more.
At first I was loath to even join in what Uncov calls the "A-list rub and tug" on Ooma, the telecom startup launched by Andrew Frame, the entrepreneur who looks like a model, and Ashton Kutcher, the Hollywood star who actually was a model. Like its founders, Ooma is all looks, no substance. Launched late, Ooma's…
