Minneapolis-based Swarmcast has been in the business video streaming since 2002, but according to Dan Rayburn at BusinessofVideo.com, they’re laying off half the company:
Last week, rumors started circulating that Swarmcast was going out of business and had laid off all of their employees. While the company is not out of business yet, they did make some major layoffs and have changed their focus. I had a call with Christian Wilhelm over the weekend who is the chairman of the company and now runs their day-to-day operations. Christian said that at the end of December, more than 50% of the employees were let go and that about ten people still remain with the company, mostly engineers who work remotely. In addition, all of the executives are now gone, including the founder Justin Chapweske who left over a year ago, although some of the execs are still consulting to the company on a limited basis.
Sad to see a promising company and technology go by the wayside just as video online is becoming so mission-critical for virtually every company and individual.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:42 am
Wow! This is very surprising. After meeting Justin a couple of years ago, I thought Swarmcast was very well positioned to grow. Hopefully the existing team will figure out a way to rebound from after the recent decline.
January 25th, 2010 at 7:57 am
I’d like to hear from a couple of my colleagues who were consultants to Swarmcast going back a few years: Kim Garretson and Marti Nyman….