The Bitter Sweet Sale Of Oponia

It's been a bitter sweet couple weeks for me. As some of you may or may not know, I had a start up called oponia networks. After trying to get funding for over a year, we ended up like many start ups having to shut it down. However, I always knew that what we set out to do (and technologically succeeded at) was something important.

Vanessa (our CTO) posted our original vision for oponia on her blog:

"In a nutshell, it just bugged me that every computer and every device was not actually a node on the Web. Despite the fact that personal computers in particular are more than powerful enough to act as web servers, the physical and logical topology of the Internet as deployed relegates most devices to being web clients only.

The Web 2.0 phenomenon has improved the capabilities of lowly web-clients, allowing them to contribute content as well as consume it. This is a great thing, and I don’t mean any insult by saying that by itself it just isn’t enough.

I wanted a Web that was end-to-end. Where every device could provide as well as consume web services and content. Where every shared resource had a resolvable URL.

Just because your laptop or your phone don’t have the full power and connectivity of the “great server cloud in the sky” there’s still plenty you can do with them if they’re able to join the network in an active capacity.

So that’s what we set out to do."

Today Opera came out with its own version of our oponia techology called Unite that they are calling their reinvention of the Web. Techcrunch thinks "this is a really good idea at its core."

Well, VC's in Canada didn't agree. So sadly, we were unable to ever see our vision come to life in the way we knew it could.

And ironically, it was just last week we finalized the sale of our core technology to another start-up. Hopefully they will succeed in the machine to machine device market where we were unable to in the consumer market...not only because I would like to see our supportive and loyal investors get their investment back but because I've always believed in the kick ass platform that we created.

So thanks to everyone who participated in our journey. And thanks to all the supportive messages I've gotten today about Opera. Don't know what else to say really - times like these the only thing left to do is quote The Grateful Dead.

Man, "what a long strange trip its been"