Gigaom to shut down after running out of cash

“Goodnight Sweetheart.”

Gigaom, the pioneering tech site founded in 2006 by the affable Om Malik, has told its staff it will shut down, effective immediately.

Management just posted this to its website.

“A brief note on our company

Gigaom recently became unable to pay its creditors in full at this time. As a result, the company is working with its creditors that have rights to all of the company’s assets as their collateral. All operations have ceased. We do not know at this time what the lenders intend to do with the assets or if there will be any future operations using those assets. The company does not currently intend to file bankruptcy. We would like to take a moment and thank our readers and our community for supporting us all along.

— Gigaom management”

The news originally broke on Twitter when long time staffer Matthew Ingram posted this:

Malik, who was born in was born in New Delhi, worked for Forbes.com, Red Herring and Business 2.0 before founding Gigaom, which began as a consolidation of his personal blogs. He is the author of the book, “Broadbandits: Inside the $750 Billion Telecom Heist”.

Malik posted this explanation on his personal site:

“Gigaom is winding down and its assets are now controlled by the company’s lenders. It is not how you want the story of a company you founded to end.

Every founder starts on a path — hopeful and optimistic, full of desire to build something that helps change the world for the better, reshape an industry and hopefully become independent, both metaphorically and financially. Business, much like life, is not a movie and not everyone gets to have a story book ending.

There will be time for postmortems, but not today. Today, I want to thank all the people who make (and have helped make) Gigaom. Their role in this journey was what really made it all worth it. They are great people and they will all do great work wherever they go. I want to thank our investors who believed in the business long before it became fashionable. And most importantly, I want to thank you dear readers for coming along on this trip of a lifetime.

I might have left Gigaom, the company, over a year ago, but Gigaom, the idea still lives in my heart.

“Goodnight sweetheart, I still love you.”