Hello everyone! This post is about Denis Yu, the disgraced owner of Blitzlocal.
While reading this post at Shoemoney, what caught my attention really is, there is more to it than what has been written over here. As a neutral spectator if I see the events now, to me it seem like a business deal gone bad and now it is all nothing but mud sliding. Obviously Jeremy and Dennis shared very warm and cordial relationship for quite some time. They even went on to the extent of Dennis’s team spending quite a bit of time in redesigning Jeremy’s most famous ringtone site. After putting efforts of quite a few months, Jeremy even though liked the new design, but was not convinced that he really wanted to deal with Dennis, so he broke off with Dennis. Obviously it is a big loss to Dennis in terms of time and money spent on Jeremy.
One other thing that I noticed is when Dennis complaint abt Shoemoney FB promotion techniques on FB (using redirection). Obviously as per the Terms And Conditions of FB / most PPC u cant do redirect, but I personally know that most of the big names and smaller included have done redirection at one point or other. I won’t really be surprised / shocked if there is a little truth in that. I mean heck it is not stealing and obviously doing no redirect is the phenomenon created by G and FB so that they can suck up more Dollars from advertisers.
We had been in a similar situation with one of the very famous forum owner. Our relationship lasted exactly 24 hours. Within 24 hours, we were told very candidly that our two firms cannot work in partnership. It was painful, but that was a good professional approach. We didn’t lose much other than a few days of legal documentation and a few hours worth of programming. However in this deal, it seems like Dennis suffered big time. He lost some good money, time and obviously when deal went sour, even his old friends quit him. Obviously given a choice between Jeremy and Dennis Scott Ricther will chose Jeremy any day. Similarly all the big names who are saying that they had never been involved with Dennis, to me it seem highly unlikely. When I see http://www.blitzlocal.com/stephan-spencer-joins-blitzlocals-board-of-advisors/, I see all big people mentioned over there as advisors. Now almost all are jumping from the sinking ship claiming they had never really been in the ship at the first place.
I don’t know but I find it very ironic that I see Gillian mentioned in Board Of Advisors at BlitzLocal, even Jeremy saying he was told that Gillian is a CFO in the venture, even her son worked in Blitzlocal (obviously now it is claimed that he was recruited on the basis of merit – How convenient) – Now I see her claiming that she never really had been the part of the venture at all.
Similarly Scott Ritcher (I am a great fan of Scott), obviously he had been involved with Dennis – May be it was to get the account of Jeremy or may be the smooth talk of Dennis. Whatever it is, but the matter of fact is Dennis has got the X factor. In such a little time he was able to make deals with all the biggies in the industry. May be he lacked the vision or he lacked in the focus of making money, but truth remains that he indeed got something into him that at one point of time almost all biggies of IM were wining and dining with him.
I don’t care much about personal bashing. In past I had seen Jeremy bashing quite a few persons / companies and later licking his wounds and going back on his words. Most of these companies / people are way bigger than they were when they were bashed at the shoemoney blog. So if Dennis plays his cards right, he may emerge out as a winner.
Disclaimer #1: The views expressed in this post are exclusively my views. My partner Barry is a big time fan of Shoemoney and agrees 100% with whatever he says.
Disclaimer #2: I do not have any personal or business relationship with Dennis. As a matter of fact couple of months back our company talked to Dennis regarding a partnership but that never materialized. I guess it was because at that time Blitzlocal was more busy with Jeremy.
Disclaimer #3: I read at various posts, that Dennis screwed his employees as well. I do not condone this activity of Dennis. I hope that in future he takes a lesson and treats his employees with more dignity.
Yours Truly
Nitin Tripathi
