Friday, June 13, 2008
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Todd Cochrane: Making Dumb Moves. Even For Him. It's late, and I'm tired.

I was going to do this whole long thing with veiled references to yet another Web 2.0 business that's decided to pick a fight with me, and make it a sequel to this one I posted last Thursday.

As I said, though, I'm late, and it's tired. Or something like that. So I'm just going to post the email thread and a quick summary at the end.

I briefly mentioned on Wednesday a tiff I had with RawVoice CEO Todd Cochrane.

He emailed me late tonight (emphasis added):

It is nice how you bend the story on your blog to make yourself look completely innocent. You have never acknowledged that you were as much to blame over the payment issue. You were the one that changed stats keywords mid campaign, you make it sound like it was all our fault. I have never had someone continue to spread mis-information like you have.

I have had it with you and will turn this over to our attorney he will decide what the next course of action will be. Todd..

I replied:

Todd, it was all your fault. You were the one who made the error of looking at the wrong stinkin' podcast network. I don't understand how that could at all be considered my fault. I tried to get your attention several times over it, and it wasn't until it was plastered all over the front pages of Mashable till you did something.

Do what you will. The best defense against claims of libel or slander is the truth. That's what's on my side. Get with the program.

He replied:

Truth is fine when you tell it. Not when it is convenient to make yourself look better. Your a class act.

I replied:

Class act or not, if you could do your job right, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It was your mistake, and you aren't big enough to admit that without casting blame on me. Sue if you like, but it'll be you with egg on your face. Who between us has the bigger reach? Who between us is right? Are you sure you're completely in the right here? Given the fact that you never responded to the emails I sent, I'm gathering a lot of stuff falls between the cracks for you. I, on the other hand, have the entire exchange archived and saved from start to finish, not to mention documented in thorough detail in daily episodic format on my podcast.

You don't want to go to war with me, Todd. It's a dumb move, even for you.

He didn't respond.

If you ever listened to my old podcast, you're probably well aware of the the trevails we experienced when Todd sort of re-defined on the fly what a download was. I've gone into great detail on Mashable in posts and comments over the story, so I won't rehash it here.

The bottom line is that he promises that checks or PayPal payments will be sent out for payment in a Net 30 situation. His accounting system is so screwed up that my most recent payment was about a month ago on ads that I did almost a year ago (money that he claimed up until recently I wasn't owed because I somehow cheated the system).

At some point along the way (my email records indicate it was right around Christmas last year), I had enough waiting for money that was evidently not coming, so I removed all my links and profiles from the RawVoice system. This is what he's referring to as "changed keywords."

Todd is a perfect case study on how not to behave as a CEO. The man literally wrote the book on podcasting, and ever since then seems to have the attitude that he could never possibly be wrong about anything. This leads to personality conflicts, his heels being dug in, and very public displays of anger and superiority at anyone with even the slightest philosophical differences on technology, let alone legitimate business disputes. When you react so violently to the slightest provocations, how can you expect to generate anything but bad PR?

But I love a good fight, and Todd has frankly been nothing but a jerk to me since I left the Tech Podcast Network, insisting on blaming me for his accounting error. If he wants to waste a bunch of money on lawyers and filing lawsuits, I'll gladly oblige him.

I'm sure there's some way for me to come out on top for being wrongly harassed (if not monetarily, maybe with a ValleyWag headline or two?).

Labels: jerkwad, rawvoice, todd cochrane

posted by Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins at 2:14 AM blog comments powered by Disqus