• by Ray Schultz , January 6, 2023

Sqoop, a service that provided research tools and email news alerts for journalists, is closing after almost a decade in business.   

Bill Hankes, founder and CEO, shared what he called the disappointing news in an email on Friday. 

“As most of you know, we’ve had a series of outages and technical setbacks over the course of the last six months,” Hankes wrote. “At times, it seemed like my development team was taking one step forward and two backwards. I brought on a trusted expert to help me assess our code base and determine what it would take to relaunch the service."

But the answer was “too far out of reach, and I can no longer afford to solely fund the company’s operations as I have been,” Hankes continued.  

He added, “This is devastating for me, and not just because it’s an effort I’ve worked so hard on for the better part of a decade. I know from the hundreds of kind notes over the years how much Sqoop has meant to the journalism community, a profession that I truly love."

Sqoop provided updates for journalists based on SEC filings, patents, court dockets, releases and business stories. 

"We launched Sqoop with a simple idea: Create a journalist-first news discovery experience. Sadly, I've been unable to turn that vision into a sustainable business," said Hankes, a former public relations executive and journalist.