I appreciate Paul McNamara, CEO of Coghead, reaching out to provide clarification regarding the events that ultimately led to Coghead seeking a buyer for its intellectual property assets.
In the Coghead Post Mortem entry, I wrote that while addressing a group of Coghead partners Paul stated that the company had commitments from existing investors to at least get through 2009. This was a true statement at the time. In early December, Coghead investor American Capital shut down their venture arm, which was a critical blow to Coghead. When I questioned Paul about this because of the short period of time between his statements to partners and the announcement by American Capital, he told me that he had no foreknowledge of the closure when he made the statements about Coghead’s funding situation.
To be fair, the partner meeting was held several weeks prior to the rapid deterioration of the capital markets, and while the communication from Coghead regarding their situation was poor, it would be irresponsible for me to imply that they could have foreseen the rapid fallout in the venture and equity environments and predicted such a Black Swan event. I will amend the Post Mortem analysis to reflect this, and once again I thank Paul for taking the time to reach out and provide clarification.
Michael Topalovich
Founder and CTO
Delivered Innovation
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