Cambrian House, the poster-boys of Crowdsourcing are essentially dead – assets being sold in a garage sale for a fraction of what investors put in. TechCrunch and Mark Evans speculate the House collapsed due to poor execution.

Of course.. in fact they were doomed to fail, and it was obvious ever since the 1000 pizzas episode. This is what I wrote back then:

They are not afraid of unusual publicity stunts, although frankly Feeding Google was more about noise than being smart: followed by cameras, completely unannounced, they descended on the Google campus with 1000 pizzas at 3pm.
Did you get that? Google, as in Google the company famous for it’s free gourmet food, at 3pm, as in just after lunch, before dinner – no wonder they were soon escorted off campus.
Cambrian guys, I have a free idea for you: next time set up camp with your 1000 pizzaz at Stanford, you’ll be heroes and won’t leave without 100’s of new ideas…and I don’t even want 75 points, just invite me for the pizza-fest.

OK, I admit I am being sarcastic. And I liked the concept, too bad it did not work.

Tags: business model, cambrian house, canadian startups, crowdsourcing, digg, Google, Outsourcing, royalty points, Startups