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The SunRocket Blame Game
Did AOL executive influx sink already rocky boat?
Tech talk stalwart Rich Levin has an audio interview up with Jan Walter, who was Senior Director of Systems Architecture at Sunrocket -- at least until he was fired "for speaking out and standing up for best practices that might have saved the company." Jan has been blogging about the company's demise for some time, placing the lion's share of the blame on poor management, particularly by ex-AOL Broadband division head turned SunRocket CEO Lisa Hook:
quote:
"The arrival of the AOL management made a salvageable situation completely untenable. Millions were wasted on acquired solutions that had already been solved in-house, without having to pay consultants to shoehorn scalability into something that only scales vertically anyway."
A number of employees say that Hook's decision to bring in numerous high-salaried former AOL executives was the nail in the troubled provider's coffin, but AOL's former CTO John McKinley apparently disagrees. Obviously, SunRocket had problems -- but could the provider have been saved with different leadership?
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matrix3D
join:2006-09-27
Middletown, CT

1 edit

matrix3D

Member

Lisa Hook is an idiot

Sounds to me like Lisa Hook should be avoided like the plague by any company looking to hire or replace their CEO... let alone any of their upper management. Anybody who thought that dial-up was the best market to focus on instead of broadband is a complete bonehead.
Techie714
join:2005-08-02
Anaheim, CA

Techie714

Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot

said by matrix3D:

Sounds to me like Lisa Hook should be avoided like the plague by any company looking to hire or replace their CEO... let alone any of their upper management. Anybody who thought that dial-up was the best market to focus on instead of broadband is a complete bonehead.
Well said I have nothing to add here! =)
nutcr0cker
join:2003-04-02
Chandler, AZ

nutcr0cker

Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot



Photo of Lisa Hook


batterup
I Can Not Tell A Lie.
Premium Member
join:2003-02-06
Netcong, NJ

batterup

Premium Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot


TScheisskopf
World News Trust
join:2005-02-13
Belvidere, NJ

TScheisskopf to matrix3D

Member

to matrix3D
Well, it could have been worse: They could have hired people from Pepsico. Both Apple and Gateway learned their lessons from hiring Pepsico executives.

Hiring an executive from AOL, a company that had been augering in for years? What were they thinking? Or were they?
bmn
? ? ?

join:2001-03-15
hiatus

bmn to matrix3D

to matrix3D
said by matrix3D:

Sounds to me like Lisa Hook should be avoided like the plague by any company looking to hire or replace their CEO... let alone any of their upper management. Anybody who thought that dial-up was the best market to focus on instead of broadband is a complete bonehead.
Sounds like she might have a future and be hired by ATT as an exec to push the UVerse dogma...

Sorry, couldn't resist.
Cairninator
join:2007-02-14
Sedona, AZ

Cairninator to matrix3D

Member

to matrix3D
As usual the masses still don't get it no matter how many times they are smashed in the face. Executive gets hired. Brings in their friends. Suck the company dry. Company goes under. Executives live the high life and wait for the next sucker. At least now a few that manage to step on a corrupt politicians toes ends up in jail. I guess that's progress
MichaelH2005
join:2005-05-21
Redmond, WA

MichaelH2005

Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot

said by Cairninator:

As usual the masses still don't get it no matter how many times they are smashed in the face. Executive gets hired. Brings in their friends. Suck the company dry. Company goes under. Executives live the high life and wait for the next sucker. At least now a few that manage to step on a corrupt politicians toes ends up in jail. I guess that's progress
I've seen this way too many times in person. Despite the incompetence and embezzling pattern of a couple execs I know personally, they follow the same exact pattern. One of the other gets hired on as an exec, then brings on the other, runs the company into the ground while stealing/embezzling as much as possible, then moving on to the next sucker that hires them all while living it up in luxury. It makes one wonder if anybody ever does background checks anymore.
matrix3D
join:2006-09-27
Middletown, CT

matrix3D

Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot

Maybe CEO's should be forced to highlight on their resume which companies they previously ran that are now bankrupt? I think Lisa Hook could save some time and just print hers on red paper.
JerseyDevil4
Premium Member
join:2006-11-06
New York, NY

JerseyDevil4

Premium Member

Leadership an Issue?

This question can be asked of any company that has ever gone out of buisness and the answer in my opinion is it really depends on the leadership.

When SunRocket made the choice to hire Lisa Hook it was a decision made the management at the time and a different management group might of made a different choice.

The bottom line is one can find a million ways to justify this and blame leadership and say different people might have saved it but we will never know.

The bottom line is the CEO and the management team screwed up and SunRocket is just going to be the first to fall of the smaller providers. Larger providers like Vonage who are having just as much trouble will probably get bought due to the value of the customer base.

koam
Pink Pecker
Premium Member
join:2000-08-16
East Puddle
·Shoreham Telephone

1 edit

koam

Premium Member

Death was inevitable

SunRocket's demise was predictable a long, long time ago.

»Re: SunRocket Growth Analysis

»Re: The Start of the Demise of SunRocket?
said by koam:
SR is already dead. Besides not charging enough to be profitable, it's small and has been growing more slowly than the industry and its rate of growth is rapidly slowing - that's the triple kiss of death.
September 28, 2006

skullz5
join:2002-06-17
Clayton, NJ

skullz5

Member

Re: Death was inevitable

Not that I love AOL or anything, but why does AOL or the people that work there get blamed for anything. Sunrocket already sucked, I tried them in 2005 and cancelled after the 1st month, after 33 days I still had no incoming calls. Let me blame AOL for that too.
matrix3D
join:2006-09-27
Middletown, CT

2 edits

matrix3D

Member

Re: Death was inevitable

Welcome to BBR, Lisa Hook!

supergirl
join:2007-03-20
Pensacola, FL

supergirl to koam

Member

to koam
Sunrocket nuts are going to blame anyone. In the SunRocket forum, I saw all kinds of hate being spewed. Then supposed employees came in a bashed management. Karl thought he was so important they should call him. He could have called the VC hired to liquidate the company. Did he?

Prepaid screwed Sunrocket, plain and simple. I really don't see Vonage lasting more than a year or two. I wonder who they are going to blame for that disaster? Citron? The stock is what, $2.75, down from $18 at the IPO.

kwrongasusual to koam

Anon

to koam
You were fairly-well refuted in those threads. Sunrocket's homorrhage didn't occur until AFTER the management shake-ups.

hayabusa3303
Over 200 mph
Premium Member
join:2005-06-29
Florence, SC

hayabusa3303

Premium Member

When will company learn

IMO: consultants should all goto hell when it comes to business. CEO love to use them and they are a waste or better yet you get axed because of a consultant think your job its needed anymore.

One more job well done by CEO and consultants

meh123
join:2005-09-22
U.S.

3 edits

meh123

Member

Re: When will company learn

said by hayabusa3303:

IMO: consultants should all goto hell when it comes to business. CEO love to use them and they are a waste or better yet you get axed because of a consultant think your job its needed anymore.

One more job well done by CEO and consultants
Speaking as an IT Cisco Infrastructure consultant (never worked for SunRocket, however did use their service) we (consultants) are NOT out to get your job.

Typically, we're hired for several reasons:

1. To ramp up staff on a big project, so once the project has ended they don't have to hire/fire salaried employees which brings down morale, costs in benefits, costs in unemployment insurance, etc.

2. Depending on the cost center for a project 'real-metrics' may be needed as their billing other business units and for that reason it may be in their best interest to hire a paid contractor/vendor/consultant to implement said project.

3. If the skills that are needed for deployment are above the skills that you have currently in-house and the time constraints don't allow for sending a salaried employee out for training, then you'd use a consultant for that specific skill set.

4. Some consultants are hired for are very tedious tasks (like documentation, automation scripts, etc.) that not many FTE's inside the company want to be in-charge of, or have time to work on. Hence they hire a consultant for a few months to get a hold on some work that has been put on the back burner, so to speak.

I don't understand the sheer distrust towards contracted consultants. A lot of us have been in the industry a long time and are paid for specific knowledge that companies may not need in-house always.

Personally, I like the fact that I don't have to deal with the office politics as much. I tend to stick up for "best-practices" and don't make a very good cog/sheep.

If management brings in consultants for the wrong projects, wrong framework, wrong consultants (not everyone is good)... this again, is a MANAGEMENT issue. They didn't manage their vendor.

P.S. Sorry for taking the thread off-topic, but I just had to rant.

swintec
Premium Member
join:2003-12-19
Alfred, ME

swintec

Premium Member

Lisa Hook..Good God

Lisa Hook is really a piece of work. "Numourous high salaried former AOL execs", I see that as doing nothing but favors for her former buddies. I wonder if this tool is even qualified to run a register at Wal-Mart, without fricking it up.

phoneboy3
@shawcable.net

phoneboy3

Anon

Every step you take, every move you make

hmmmmmm,

Everything these AOHell execs touch turns to sheit. Nope, I don't see a pattern here. Couldn't be their fault!
bhorow
join:2004-05-17
Forest Hills, NY

bhorow

Member

Sun Rocket's death is innevidable.

Lets face it the one thing i have learned is you have to bring value. SunRocket didn't bring Value. It was a very small player.

maybe different leadership would have kept it afloat for another year, but the end result is inevitable.

Its generally the philosophy that you can grow out of your problems that is a mistake. The residential market is not big enough for 20 or 30 of these small VOIP carriers. Employees blame management for everything. The fact is that a VOIP provider needs to be more diversified in order to survive..either it needs a buisness side or an extende

sitrix
join:2002-04-15
Tacoma, WA

sitrix

Member

Re: Sun Rocket's death is innevidable.

In that interview Jan Walter tells how Sunrocket had all kinds of great ideas in their labs (peering with GoogleTalk, etc). All of those ideas never made it past their labs due to execs trying to run business as a rich telco, rather then a small startup company.

phoneboy3
@shawcable.net

phoneboy3 to bhorow

Anon

to bhorow
Your probably right, the market isn't big enough for wacks of VoIP players so only the more "well run" ones will survive. So yea, doesn't have much to do with management.........LOL!
moschops
Premium Member
join:2003-12-20
Oakland, CA

moschops

Premium Member

The new CEO executive invasion effect

I can easily believe SunRocket was the victim of a CEO lead executive explosion. I've seen it in so many other companies where the board insists they go find a big name CEO to give them some street creed. Next thing you know not only do they have a high priced golden helloed, golden handcuffed, golden parachuted CEO, he's hiring all his get-rich quick friends as executives too. Pretty soon you've got millions of extra dollars in salary on your books and options flying out of the door like butterflies.

My girlfriend saw this happen to the company she was at when they hired a former Amazon.com executive as CEO and he replaced her role in the finance department with ten guys who still couldn't do the job. The number of Porsches in the parking lot skyrocketed, as revenue plummeted and expenses soared. So a company that was just finally breaking even went to losing millions... Part of that was some bone headed deal to pay AOL over $20m for advertising on their home page - just when AOL was about to start tanking.

I'm not at all surprised to hear similar stuff about AOL executives at SunRocket! Companies need to be really careful about CEOs that they hire, and examine their track record at previous companies really carefully.

koitsu
MVM
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
Humax BGW320-500

koitsu

MVM

Re: The new CEO executive invasion effect

said by moschops:

Pretty soon you've got millions of extra dollars in salary on your books and options flying out of the door like butterflies.
... The number of Porsches in the parking lot skyrocketed, as revenue plummeted and expenses soared.
The DOT-COM mentality continues to lives on. Some people learned from the bubble bursting, others considered it a temporary setback. Until we Americans stop worshipping money, history will continue to repeat itself.

F**kedCompany _still_ continues to have lots of updates -- some good, some bad.
Ashtonford
join:2004-05-17
Victoria, BC

Ashtonford to moschops

Member

to moschops
Iam a former Sunrocket user I switched over to packet8 and the sevice is good so far. The only problem is when they shipped my box they made a mistake and shipped two boxes and charged me for two accounts! now they have cancelled the second accound and I have to pay the shipping to return the send box even though it was not my fault a mistake was made! also they tryed to say my account wass set up by a resaler but it wasent, I had written the ladys number that set up my account and her dirrect line at packet8. This is very bad customer service! So foor now anyone thinking about packet8 I would look elsewhere for service.
moschops
Premium Member
join:2003-12-20
Oakland, CA

moschops

Premium Member

Re: The new CEO executive invasion effect

I've had good experiences with Sipphone so far, its supported by the softphone Gizmoproject but compatible with all standard ATAs you can by for $50 or less).

I like it because you only pay for what you need, there's no monthly commitment to a calling plan like Packet8 or Vonage. And to my mind all these all-you-can-eat plans just lead to overuse by some people and low end users end up paying for that.

With Sipphone if you only need to make calls that's all you pay for, rates start at $0.019 a minute to all of North America and most of Europe. If you need an incoming phone number to receive calls then pay for just 3 months or 12 months of incoming number ($12 or $35 respectively) - buy as many numbers as you need. So your minimum commitment to try it out can be just $10 for 500 minutes worth of calling and you can go from there if you like it.

And I like that I can go buy my own unlocked hardware and do with it whatever I want - my Grandstream HT-503 lets me do all kinds of cool stuff like being a gateway from SIP to landline or the reverse, and automatic failover to landline service for 911 and local calls (I still have a landline for DSL access).

To be honest I've no idea if Sipphone will be the next SunRocket but they seem to be keeping it low key and not blowing a ton of cash on advertising or trying to hook people into big pre-pay deals that they will probably lose money on.

FormerSREmployee
@verizon.net

FormerSREmployee

Anon

What Jan doesn't tell you

I am a former SR employee, and yes, former AOLer to boot. Granted, there were some bad hires brought in - both ex AOL and others, and the mistake was in trying to make the company behave like something other than a startup.

But what Jan fails to disclose is that the tech organization that he was part of was entirely dysfunctional. Jan behaved like a giant baby, refusing to even speak to people in other parts of the company that he felt were below him (like some in Network Operations). Instead of working to make it better, he hid in his office and whined and refused to play nice. The CTO was clueless - and delivered nothing of value in the time I was there, and did nothing to control the ridiculous destructive behavior (see above) that made his org so dysfunctional.

Unfortunately, there was some valuable technology talent (Jan for all his failings is pretty sharp after all), but the company got stuck between the cowboys, the big company execs and the spineless leaders like the CTO. And thus, nothing got done, no improvements were made, the money kept bleeding and everyone knows the result.

Lisa needs to shoulder some of the blame clearly - but there is planty to go around.
sruser
join:2005-04-21
Arlington, VA

sruser

Member

Re: What FormerSREmployee doesn't tell you!

Wow of course someone from operations would post that one sided kind of comment. I see you guys finally learned how to use a computer. Well I wouldn't point the finger directly at Jan for being a baby, I mean if you guys knew what you were doing maybe it would have been easier to work with you. As far as communication goes, you guys lacked it just as much as our side did. Not to mention the fact that you yelled at our NOC when they called alerting you of possible network issues, so belittlement was on your team as well. The only difference is we didn't belittle our own team members. As far as improvements and such all were put on hold by, you guessed it, Lisa Hook. Speaking of Cowboys lets not fail to mention that "operations" decided to change the OS literally over night without even first testing it in Development, straight to production, wow yeah can't see why anyone would not talk to you guys. Not to mention the fact that everyone you hired always wanted to change the network instead of learning it first. The idea of the network was to keep it simple yet for some people they just couldn't grasp that concept unless they had something else more complicated in there. I always loved the comment after giving a network overview, "Nah it can't be that simple, is it?"

Oh and lets not forget that you also were the ones that spec'd the billing system, ordered the hardware for only the lab, and then a week before deployment of the billing system forgot that you didn't order staging and production hardware. Then the best part was setting up the machines out at equinix and not plugging it into a live socket. So the machine was not up for 4 days because no one checked the power. Oh, and I believe it was "Network Operations" that was supposed to maintain the data center information. The list goes on and on for you guys so I think you got mixed up when you were describing our department as dysfunctional because I would love to see your list of mishaps compared to ours. Logically before we released or updated packages we tested it in the lab so if it screwed up, no harm. Now I'm not pointing directly at you per say but just letting everyone know there is two sides to every story. I mean would you want to work with a group or individuals in a supposedly "operations" group whose eyes glazed over whenever you presented anything new?

I personally blame the management infrastructure for prohibiting the creativity and pioneering that most individuals had at SunRocket. I view my time there as a learning experience and I worked with a great group of people. While I was as SR I worked for both the Operations group and the Systems Architecture group. Total I was with the company 2 1/2 years.
B04
Premium Member
join:2000-10-28

B04 to FormerSREmployee

Premium Member

to FormerSREmployee

Re: What Jan doesn't tell you

said by FormerSREmployee :

Lisa needs to shoulder some of the blame clearly - but there is planty to go around.
Wrong. She shoulders all the blame. Jan didn't "play nice"? It was Lisa Hook's personal responsibility to know about it and address it. CTO clueless? Guess who's fault that is. Dysfunctional organization? Lisa Hook's fault, and Lisa Hook's job to repair.

Nope. If nothing else, you've further proved that the upcoming injuries or deaths of Sunrocket subscribers (due to missing E911) are on Lisa Hook's hands and hers alone. Shame on that evil greedy little woman.

--B

WasNewUser
@mchsi.com

WasNewUser to FormerSREmployee

Anon

to FormerSREmployee
many problems with SR was due to the lack of communication and unwillingness to fix anything. everything was a non-issue.
nutcr0cker
join:2003-04-02
Chandler, AZ

nutcr0cker

Member

Re: Lisa Hook is an idiot

NAW..... Lisa CROOK should probably join the 419 scammers and continue her greatdestruction for Mariam Abacha.....or being the ultimate slimy biatch she could very well work for Haliburton. The Sunrocket sittuation was salvagable but the pidgen CROOK from AOhelL ruined it for all. I was a Sunrocket customer for the last three years. I was totally satisfied with the company. I definately would not agree with the 2 year dor 199 deal but the 1 year deal was decent and would have helped the company. I recommend LISA HOOK for the senate or Haliburton
photoguy1157
join:2007-07-17

photoguy1157

Member

AOL sucks, Lisa Hook sank SunRocket, Lingo is better example

Why would anyone hire someone from AOL? Talk about a bloated company with insane salaries and too much red tape. Friends of mine tell me they have to meeting for 2 hours with all of the directors and the VP just to decide on a paragraph of text for their web site. No wonder they can never get anything done.

Lisa Hook sank SunRocket. I heard her speak at a convention and her slick, smooth talking ways much have won over the founders of SunRocket (two marketing retards). She put marketing in charge of the company with venture capitalists in the background yanking marketing's chains. You must have a numbers guy running a company for it to work financially.

Look at Lingo for example. I know people there as well and its no nonsense. They watch every penny they spend like a hawk. No wonder they're profitable, stable and growing. Lingo should put a picture of Lisa Hook on their sunrocket promo page (»www.lingo.com/sunrocket) with a big red X thru it - Lisa Hook FREE! lol

Cheese
Premium Member
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL

Cheese

Premium Member

Re: AOL sucks, Lisa Hook sank SunRocket, Lingo is better example

said by photoguy1157:

Why would anyone hire someone from AOL? Talk about a bloated company with insane salaries and too much red tape. Friends of mine tell me they have to meeting for 2 hours with all of the directors and the VP just to decide on a paragraph of text for their web site. No wonder they can never get anything done.

Lisa Hook sank SunRocket. I heard her speak at a convention and her slick, smooth talking ways much have won over the founders of SunRocket (two marketing retards). She put marketing in charge of the company with venture capitalists in the background yanking marketing's chains. You must have a numbers guy running a company for it to work financially.

Look at Lingo for example. I know people there as well and its no nonsense. They watch every penny they spend like a hawk. No wonder they're profitable, stable and growing. Lingo should put a picture of Lisa Hook on their sunrocket promo page (»www.lingo.com/sunrocket) with a big red X thru it - Lisa Hook FREE! lol
Hmmm, signed up right about time of the demise of SR and you are promoting another company..... Go figure

MSJ777
@comcast.net

MSJ777

Anon

So - What could you do about it?

I should have had my eyes open, but then what could I have done after I had already signed up. No one on earth could have predicted that they would close the door overnight!

Some of the signs I saw were they replaced the member web pages - (that were working perfectly) - with a system that was a piece of junk and totally untested. On several occasions I would send them notices of broken links.

Second, their billing system was broken - in May-June they started double billing me for international "incoming" calls even though I had blocked outgoing international calls.

Obviously, these were signs of management problems -- rushing to make changes for change sake and not considering the deadly consequences.

Maybe next time I will know when it is time to jump ship - but I doubt it - I am a slow learner.