What a crazy week it has been! On the fundraising front everyone around us seems to be able to raise money but us...we've been shopped by the CEO of Reunion.com only to find out that he only wanted to get insight to our product and while discouraging us to go for $10MM in Series A round of funding he turns around and gets himself $25MM from Oak Venture Partners. Granted, his site has been around longer and supposedly profitable with some great business advisors including the CEO of MySpace.
We're not experiencing quite as much luck the last few months but our team pushes on with the launch of online Video. We were also recently shopped by a company out of San Francisco by a seemingly nice entrepreneur but I'm learning fast that shoppers are pleasantly nice...investors are indifferent and will invest in you if they like you or if you went to Stanford or live in San Francisco which is near Stanford. Valuation of your company is way off they say...so why don't you tell me why and let's make something happen!? I truly wish it could be this easy...
On the Aggregation front: lots of things are brewing in the online social networking space and in search. Recently launched "Human-Generated" search engine called Mahalo.com is claiming to be the first of its kind although anyone who has been around the web block knows its just a fancy way to commercialize existing projects like DMOZ.org which was and is the true first "Human-Generated" search engine curated by volunteers. One might also argue that Wikipedia, Digg, and other web2.0 functions have been doing the same thing like "Tagging".
Google aggregates DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion and MSN aggregates aQuantive...ad networks have become great targets for acquisitions lately, especially those that have collected "Clickprint" from web surfers on the net will show tremendous value all to find out your behavior.
Can you see our SocialURL brains ticking??? Can you imagine the upset if we could do what took years for companies like DoubleClick and aQuantive to achieve and build our valuation off of their recent purchase? What if it was as simple as asking users what social networks and what social media sites they belonged to and aggregate it? What if it was as simple as aggregating your emails so you can manage them in one simple interface at SocialURL? What if it was as simple as allowing you to create your own social networks and go mobile?
On everything else in between:
1. I'm no longer consulting on the premier sports social network MVPspot.com - business is truly a double edged sword.
2. I'm no longer working on Urecho.com- three's company doesn't work when there is lack of trust and communication.
3. My 15 month old daughter received 4 stitches on her perfect forhead from having her big brother shove her into a corner of a side table while they were climbing furniture.
4. My wife is getting the runt of my venture frustrations
5. My 4 year old son is grounded for a year
6. GenBB is moving fast and looks really great.
7. Bootstrapping a business is not an easy thing to do.
8. When potential investors don't respond to your emails...it means they are not interested.
9. Be in LA for 2 weeks meeting with the team and some potential partners
10. Can't wait to go surfing with my friends...
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