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SurfRay Round Up: Herd Them Doggies, Pardner

I am not contributing any information that I have personally verified. What I want to do in this article is quote from the comments that have flowed into the mine run off pond here in Harrod’s Creek in the last week or so. If you have a beef with one of the quotes, please, navigate to the comments section of the Web log and object or you can use the Blossom search system to locate the person who posted the comment, and you can trade barbs there.

Background

More than five years ago, I did a job for Mondosoft. Even longer ago, I did a job for Speed of Mind. Both of these companies were rolled up into an outfit called SurfRay. SurfRay also got the Ontolica SharePoint fixer upper which came with the Mondosoft purchase. I sort of paid attention to SurfRay, but I was out of the loop when the financial and management pressures made the roll up possible.

What’s Happened?

To make a long and convoluted story short, SurfRay couldn’t generate enough cash to grow. When financial pressures mount, folks get angry. SurfRay followed this well known trajectory, which appeared to have ended with the most recent set of company filings in Sweden. At this point, I am going to excerpt the SurfRay information from the comments to my various SurfRay articles. These were to date:

• August 29, 2008: SurfRay: Has the Company Missed the Search Wave. Nope : Beyond Search here
• October 24, 2008: SurfRay Round Up : Beyond Search here
• December 4, 2008: SurfRay Update : Beyond Search here
• November 23, 2008: SurfRay Update: Beyond Search here
• January 17, 2009: Financial Woes Swamp SurfRay here
• July 6, 2008: SurfRay AB Update here
• December 3, 2008: SurfRay Rumblings and Questions here
• December 9, 2008: Danish Software Excitement here
• January 27, 2009: SurfRay More Change here

Selected Comments Posted to the Beyond Search Articles

Below I am quoting from some of the submitted comments. You will need to verify the information and make your own decision. I am presenting what I received from readers who posted via the comments function on this Web log. If in doubt about how this Web log works, read the About section and its disclaimer and editorial policy. If uncomfortable with this goose pond, flap away now.

My story SurfRay: Has the Company Missed the Search Wave. Nope, August 29, 2008:

Bill Cobbs, then SurfRay CEO, wrote on August 29, 2008

I can assure both our clients and our partners that SurfRay is alive and well. It’s unfortunate that a minor phone glitch would lead to speculation regarding the viability of the company.

SurfRay is continuing our mission of providing cutting edge search technology to help our clients drive business results. Moving forward we are focusing on working with our clients to specifically identify business opportunities where they can create competitive advantage. We intend to provide search based solutions that have a very focused impact on driving bottom line results in both revenue generation and cost containment.

SurfRay is alive and well and launching the next wave of Search technology.

My story SurfRay Round Up on October 24, 2009

From Lars Petersen, wrote on October 30, 2008:

Related to the speed index I fully understand that this is an indexing engine, but the question was WHY haven’t SurfRay used this overfull hyperoptimising index instead of just relying on the slow index engine in SharePoint. And by not integrating and improve a little on the SharePoint search why do any organization need to buy it and why buy it from SurfRay (small company who may or may not provide service) when it can be bought from a must bigger company like BA-insight???

The attached roadmap for 2009 also gives me a bad feeling as I can see that Reporting now is postponed another 6-9 month!!! And at the same time SurfRay state that Ontolica has first priority on R&D resources??!! Can someone explain this for me….

Torben explained that second priority is Mondosoft Site Search, which I personally liked and it was also what my company used until bad service from the new owner got us to change search engine, but again later he state no plans yet to upgrade or replace the Enterprise Search offering. Could anyone at SurfRay please tell me again WHY we should go back to your Site Search when we have Omniture Site Search from a NASDAQ company providing more key functionality – Better relevancy etc, than Mondosoft’s 2 year old site search and the cost is a 1/10 of what SurfRay offers?

I have been a loyal fan of Mondosoft’s search and the support and maintenance back in 2006-7 unfortunately nothing on this site has proven to me that SurfRay is on the right track and it doesn’t make me “want to come home”.

Anyway Bill stated “Let me say unequivocally that I am now the CEO of SurfRay”, and you properly are Bill, but on surfray’s Web site under executive team, Martin Veise is mentioned first in a very long line of Member of the GROUP MANAGEMENT?! Is it normal that Chairman of the board is heading Group Management or ?

From Torben November 6, 2009

I am the CEO of Ciklum, we started the development of Ontolica in early 2007 for a company called Mondosoft, who went bankrupt and sold the software to SurfRay in October 2007. We still dispute in court this sale, since we have the legal rights for this software until paid.

This meant however that we since October 2007 started working for SurfRay to improve Ontolica, but after paying a bit in December 2007 we received no further payment from SurfRay and finally in April 2008 terminated the work for them and handed over the matter to our lawyers.

This means that the entire development team behind Ontolica stopped working and you should not expect much further to happen here.

We have in late October 2008 won the case against SurfRay and are now moving to “collection”, hope it will happen soon but I expect that we will see a company with no money and we will see the company going directly to bankruptcy as soon as one of the collection cases hits the collection court.

Anybody in the same situation as us are welcome to contact me, maybe we can work together to bring this further than just collection, I am here talking about the obvious fraud made by Martin Veise.

November 23, 2008: SurfRay Update: Beyond Search here

From Josh Noble on December 2, 2008:

I am a SurfRay employee in Texas. I spent my time over the long weekend digging through blogs to see what people had to say. I appreciate your stance on avoiding unsubstantiated rumors. It seems that for every competitor that finds a way to take a crack at us, there are 3 customers ready to step into the blogs on our defense.

There is a very large market out there for MondoSearch and Ontolica Search for MOSS. In the current financial climate it is more important than ever to be efficient with time. That means not wasting time finding the information you want to work with.

Expect to see tremendous growth in our staff and products especially in the US market throughout 2009. An entire new support team and support process has been put into place to promptly tend to our customer’s needs. Regarding product updates, you should begin to see them throughout the early part of the year. Additionally, keep your eyes out for a few new offerings which are currently in the beta. If you have any questions I would be more than willing to answer them.

December 3, 2008: SurfRay Rumblings and Questions here

From Torben Ellert on December 4, 2008:

The SurfRay Copenhagen office at Kronprincessegade 20 is open for business. The development department located at that office is the only development team currently working on SurfRay products. The focus for our development team is to bring updates and patches, as well as functionality upgrades, out to our customers following a failed outsourcing venture and a strategic refocus on the Ontolica and MondoSearch platforms.

While SurfRay continues to enjoy good relations with its banking connections, we do have outstanding issues dealing with incorrectly filed VAT and income tax (which we are currently dealing with) as well as a number of un-reconciled legal cases (some of which related to the takeover of Mondosoft).

We are committed to dealing with the outstanding issues we have in as equitable a manner as possible, and ensuring the viability of the company and providing an improved support and update experience to our customers.

December 4, 2008: SurfRay, Dec 4 Update : Beyond Search here

From Bill T. Hansson, Jr, December 6, 2008

I’m a long time follower of the Ontolica Search offerings from Mondosoft – Navigo Systems and SurfRay and I have another advantage related to the recent writings and rumors about the financials of SurfRay – I have a Danish friend named Mogens who is actually a examined auditor in Denmark.
I asked Mogens to help me understand as much as possible about the financials of SurfRay.
We all need to understand as much as possible so that we can make our own judgements.

With the help from Mogens I can now give you a more in depth explanation and my opinion about the financials of SurfRay following the investigation.

My conclusions (and the conclusion that Mogens made) is quite clear : The financial situation of SurfRay is extremely poor and only a miracle can save the company from going bankrupt!!

All the information is derived from the official Danish Web sites available for these kinds of investigations.

First of all: your link up there from the Danish Registrar of companies shows that SurfRay has been through a bankruptcy before and that the assets from the first bankruptcy estate apparently were transferred from the old SurfRay to the new SurfRay in 2004 or 2005. The first company was founded in 2000 and was dissolved following a bankruptcy (Konkurs in Danish is Bankruptcy in English). The original company# (CVRnr) was 25670027. The existing company# is 27988695. The latest company is still in business.

Mogens was able to dig a bit deeper into the matters around the existing SurfRay company. Apparently the company changed auditors twice – from the well known Deloitte to the other well known auditor KPMG to the existing and rather unknown auditor being used today. Mogens called this a bad sign for the quality of the company – these changes has been done in the period from 2004 to 2007!!!

Digging even deeper into the matters shows that the existing SurfRay company by December, 31st 2007 reported a financial loss of more than 15 mill Danish kroner – just below 3 mill USD and a total negative equity of 17 mill Danish Kroner – just above 3 mill USD.
The total debt in the company owed to Short Term Creditors (payable within a year) was around 38 mill Danish kroner – just below 7 mill USD while the Accounts receivables and other receivables were just 9.9 mill Danish kroner – around 1.8 mill USD. An extremely vulnerable situation to any company.

The auditor in the annual report explained that the company was vulnerable to close business if the management were not able to stop the losses and if the investors in the company were not willing to invest more money.

So we continued digging.
The SurfRay company is owned by a company called MGV holding ApS. This company is owned by Martin Veise – The chairman, former CEO and founder of SurfRay. MGV holding apparently owns two other companies – one called Sambo ApS and another one called Castrum ApS. These companies owns some real estate. The Castrum company owns another company named Medbo ApS.

Further digging revealed that the Medbo ApS company went bankrupt November, 5th 2008. Following the bankruptcy of Medbo the equity in the Castrum company is negative with more than 23 mill Danish kroner – more than 4 mill USD. Secondly some of the real estate owned by Castrum went on foreclosure in November 2008.

There is no news about the Sambo Company and there is no news about the MGV holding company.

Some more digging revealed that Martin Veise personally owned at the least 2 houses or properties – both went into foreclosure – one in September and one in November. It has not been possible to see if he owns more real estate.

The conclusion is quite clear – it is very unlikely that Martin Veise can find more money to fill the rather large financial holes in Surfray. Mogens made this comment: “It’s a collapsing house made of playing cards!!”

All in all – the conclusion is simply this – Surfray will run out of cash sooner or later. With the given financial crisis it is highly unlikely that anybody will bail Martin Veise or his companies out of the financial crisis unfolding in and around Surfray.

Stephen – I will be happy to send you the information as it is readily available in a set of PDF files. Mostly in Danish but the numbers are there.

January 17, 2009: Financial Woes Swamp SurfRay here

From Sven on January 26, 2009:

Hot news!!! Any chance SurfRay had just walked out the door. According to my sources inside the company Martin Viese today announced that Bill Cobbs is leaving the company. The information was distributed as confidential to employees only. What could this guy be thinking?

January 27, 2009: SurfRay More Change here

From Lars Sonderberg on January 28, 2009:

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.

From Lars Petersen on January 30, 2009:

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.

From Lars Sonerberg on February 4, 2009:

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.

From unknown on February 4, 2009:

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.

Wrap Up

As far as I can tell, the information about SurfRay on my Web log and in these comments is one of the more in depth looks at the SurfRay outfit. If you have other information, please, use the comments function on this Web log. I don’t want to talk about SurfRay in email or on the phone unless you are a client. I am an addled goose and stunned by the suction my SurfRay items have generated.

Stephen Arnold, February 6, 2009

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