Shawn Fanning leaves his Snocap baby an orphan
Snocap may have started as Napster creator Shawn Fanning and bad boy Jordan Mendelson's baby, but we've heard both Valley hipsters have washed their hands of their failing creation. A tipster reports that Fanning is long gone and focused on his latest startup, Rupture, a social network for videogamers. Mendelson, too, is working on a new project and is likely to leave Snocap in a few months. As for the cause of the layoffs, a tipster says the CD Baby deal's failure isn't the proximate cause. Instead?
Word is that the CEO Rusty Rueff is responsible for getting snocap into this ****ed up situation. It didn't help that the former CTO Dave Rowley made a mess of engineering before he was fired a few months ago (and given time to find a new position so that he could make it look like he "left for better opportunities" but he was fired).
Whether or not it's the company's creators or current management, there's no need for finger-pointing. Snocap's vision has failed, and the digital-music industry — like Snocap's founders — has moved on.