SurfRay: More Change
January 27, 2009
According to a reader in Scandinavia, the president of SurfRay has resigned. I don’t have any details. I received the information on January 26, 2008. Stay tuned. The last information I received was that the company had been declared something in Swedish that seemed to mean insolvent. If you see any information, send it along.
Stephen Arnold, January 27, 2009
Comments
13 Responses to “SurfRay: More Change”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
Stephen,
I will not tell anyone what to do, but in my book it seems like a good idea to keep away from the company.
The structure is simple, but in no way solid or stabile.
MGV Holding is 100% privately owned by Martin Veise. The Danish authorities are moving forward with insolvency proceedings and have demanded foreclosure of Martin’s private estates. My guess he has privately no money to fund Surfray business.
MGV Holding owns 100% of the shares in 5 companies, Castrum, Medbo, Sambo, Domus and SurfRay A/S. Except for SurfRay, all of the companies in the MGV portfolio is either in bankruptcy proceedings or foreclosure proceedings. There has however been a lot of transaction between the different companies, which in the annual report of the companies the audit pointed of as extremely critical, might even result in jail time for the CEO of MGV Holding surprisingly that is Martin Veise! My guess is that there are no cash-flow and no money left in MGV that could lead to a sound SurfRay business.
SurfRay A/S owns 100% four companies SurfRay AB (Sweden), Surfray Ltd (UK) (an empty company), SurfRay (Inc) and Ontolica ApS (another empty company!? –is it going to be used in yet another reconstruction of SurfRay?).
SurfRay AB was officially declared bankruptcy on January 13th 2009. According to the surfray website it is part of a bigger plan, but the fact nevertheless that the Swedish Authorities now request 1,7M SEK from Mother company Surfray A/S.
Surfray Inc. is a Delaware company, and it actually seemed like Bill Cobbs, was able for make the US operation profitable, but with a bleeding SurfRay A/S requesting cash weekly basic. Bill also recruited all employees in the US, so as he got fired, my guess again, is that the loyalty of the remaining people forwards Surfray are close to zero.
So with a 17.254M DKK in RED NUMBERS in the last annual report and with no one but Martin to do everything, Chairman, CEO, Sales, Marketing and lying – Corporate Governance? And with no employees believe in US and with no turn over in Europe, and With no Intellectual Property Rights guess it seems critical.
By the way all Sales Reps. in the Surfray Corporation is fired or has resigned, and there hasn’t been a CFO since October 08 (has been handled by Natanya Veise – surprice his wife! Doing a very good job – all the phones was once again closed because of late payment last week).
With Bill fired there has been four (4) different CEO’s, two different CFO and three different 3 SVP/VP of Sales in one year – does that tell you anything – doesn’t seems like a equal opportunity employer to me.
I would be very careful doing business with this company and it is a shame for all employees involved and a shame for the products.
/LS
Lars Sønderberg,
Thank you for your comments. Search vendors are getting whacked by the economic downturn. I plan on keeping my newsreader fired up, my head down, and my attention attuned to the information or lack of it about certain companies. I do know one thing. The Vatican has embraced Google. The search is Googley now (not Mondosofty), and the Vatican has a Google Channel.
Stephen Arnold, January 28, 2009
Stephen,
LOL, You can blame a lot on the “continuous global recession”, but Surfray is not a victim of the downturn. They will be casualties of their owners lack of realizing the gravity of the situation and his lacking skills and insight.
I’m rooting for the Vatican’s favorite search engine as well…google?!
/LS
please also see comments in
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/01/17/financial-waves-swamp-surfray
and in
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/08/29/surfray-has-the-company-missed-the-search-wave
that should give you an idea about the company…
Lars got it right. Martin Viese is a person in need of emotional help
Lars Petersen,
You SurfRay watchers are harsh. He’s no Bernie Madoff, is he?
Stephen Arnold, January 30, 2009
Stephen
I believe there is an American saying “That where there is smoke there is Fire” this guy is a true crook. The trail that he leaves behind him a blind man could see. Ilooked at his profile on Linkedin. There is nothing there. He has no significant work experience outside of SurfRay. He is the Danish version of Bernie.
Stephen
It looks like you are finally convinced about Surfray and the owner, Martin Veise….
BTW..We have never heard how your coffee break with Martin and Natanya went – back in november…
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/01/31/surfray-management/
“Martin is the Bernie Madoff of Denmark”
“Lars got it right. Martin Viese is a person in need of emotional help”
“Martin stole my puppy, and he doesn’t pet it right!”
I am sure I can understand the need of people who are really angry with Martin Veise to accuse him of every evil deed under the sun, but this really does look like people with a very personal axe to grind.
Perhaps you might consider an “I hate Martin Veise” facebook group” instead?
Anonymous,
I’m convinced FB already has that group 😉
I have tried to make my points and comments as non personal as possible, but again I do have a personal dislike against Martin and his behavior towards employees (current and former), business partners and off course pets… 🙂
But since October where the first blog was written, and until now, we have seen the evidence on all the different harsh comments.
A couple of the former employees stated that Surfray wasn’t supporting the customer – Not a single customer has returned with positive review of the service delivered.
SurfRay employees has continually spoken about how well the company is and that the company was making progress – but not a single release on their product (we are launching the next wave of Search technology) and with no salespeople left in the company anymore, it doesn’t seems like they are doing progress in sales either!
Bill stated that 2008 would be the first year with black numbers in Surfray’s history, but it wasn’t and Bill put this reputation (which speaks for itself) on the line for a “2009 with a stronger balance sheet than either of the two companys ever had before”. Bill resigned because of his own personal convictions and only the future will tell if 2009 will be a success year for Surfray… guess not.
A lot of former employees and insiders were telling how Martin and his companies were throwing lawsuits at employees and contractors, when Surfray was unable to live up to their payment. A couple of those have come forward and even with a won case against SurfRay, Martin personally or the Estate companies, none of them have ever got their payment.
Natanya – who handles everything these days, said Surfray are a solid company, come have coffee here and I’ll take the time to show you how well we are doing, didn’t even bother meeting Stephen, and week after the Swedish Company went in to bankruptcy proceedings, which a couple of the former employees stated it would 3-4 weeks prior.
So as harsh as the comments may be, they have more or less all been to the point.
And if these comments just saved one for doing business, or getting involved with Surfray, Martin or Natanya this blog and all the comments has been a success.
And he doesn’t pet the puppy right… neither literally or figurative.
Just to clarify, Natanya is not the CFO of SurfRay, as the company has a consultant who is managing this position in the short term.
It is also clear that most of the people making these comments, although most are doing so under false names, are previous employees of SurfRay or Mondosoft, who have been fired for failure to perform, or were part of a company that openned itself up to a legitimate takeover.
Some further information to clarify Lars Sønderberg’s inaccuracies.
SurfRay is providing support to all of its customers, on all of its platforms, which includes Mondosearch, Ontolica and the various SurfRay products. We have an effective support ticketing system that allows us and our customers to track and maintain support in a way that does not rely on a single overworked guru-supporter. We are better able to support our customers than we have been at any time in the past.
We have released upgrades for the Ontolica product line, including language updates and bug fixes of various severities, and have functionality upgrades in the pipeline for 2009.
SurfRay has a number of sales people both in EMEA and its US operations who continue to generate turnover for the various operations.
Surfray
Nice to know that there is someone left in Surfray – a lot of the normal phone numbers is closed – another unfortunate minor phone glitch?
Well IF Natanya isn’t the CFO, I can’t understand that this person is still related to Surfray, he/she forgot a tiny task – fill and pay the Salary!!!
He/she has also forgot – that if your main product – Ontolica – is an add on to Sharepoint (Microsoft), It’s vital to pay Microsoft’s Partner fee to maintain the gold partner status, which Surfray didn’t and as a result per 1st of February 2009 Surfray is no longer MS Partner the contract was terminated.
If the statement from Surfray was valid, he/she should have been long gone due to failure in performing.
I’m not a prophesier, I’m just looking at the facts, in official records homepages, blogs etc and state normal proceeding which is; if the company don’t pay the salary normally the business is close to bankruptcy.
I just wonder where the media’s in this are, don’t they think it’s worth mention?
A month after this was written, the assets of SurfRay A/S were picked up by a new organization under the name SurfRay 2009 A/S. Although operations in Denmark were down for a short period, SurfRay Inc. handled support, sales and hosting for the worldwide operations to enable a smooth transition. The new leadership in Denmark has a strong drive towards the development of both the MondoSearch and Ontolica product lines and has moved the hosted solutions to new quad core blade servers. In addition, the company did renew it’s partner status. For more up to date information on the company and products please feel free to visit the website at http://surfray.com/.