The problem with having an inconsistent posting cycle is that writing a new post tends to be pushed off when the most is going on. It's difficult to stop working on that next critical thing in order to sit down and update the blog.
It's also when the most interesting things happen. The trip to Seattle went very well. It's very satisfying to have someone you take seriously sit down with you over lunch and say, "Listen, we get the bullet points. We think the concepts are great. Let's get down to some data." When you're working on a project that you believe in, it's extremely satisfying to know that the next step is to really roll up the sleeves and wade in. I came away from the meeting with Amazon feeling very satisfied. We've just finished producing a number of documents that have occupied the entire office since my return, sort of white paper examinations of validity. A lot of statistical analysis is now under the belt, as well as the beginnings of data analysis looking for correlations and the such, and we'll see where that takes us. There's more to be done, of course.
We're now under NDA with Amazon, which - unlike NDA's I've signed in the past - doesn't forbid me from talking about the fact that there's an NDA. I've known NDAs that forbid you from even acknowledging that you've ever communicated with a company, let alone sat down in a room with them. This is not so draconian.
Our communications with publishers have provided us access with a substantial number of books, which in turn get to be converted into usable formats. The process of taking thousands of books and poking at them until there's useful information is a process that has occupied the majority of our time this summer; we're finding we simply don't have enough hands to cover the work that needs to be done.
Which leaves the non-book related issues that get to be dealt with. Business Plans have been nearly completed now for some time, but keep getting pushed back as things come up. Stanford University, for example, and Amazon. As we come into the Christmas season, these things will be of greater importance: Strategic partnerships, business plan development, and implementation of data - meaning pushing the data from books forward onto the site in anticipation of a non-tech demo relaunch.
And when I say business plan development, what I really mean is that we want to focus on funding. It may be surprising to you that - to date - we've never had a formal financing pitch of substantial scale. This has been our own decision; we focused on expanding our professional and business position and delayed financing as long as possible. The longer you can go without taking outside money, the better the company will be in the long run. While we've had very friendly responses from investors, people we've turned to for advise on a regular basis, we've kept them mostly at arms length in a professional sense. I think that will change following Christmas.
As I've said before, with the recent turn in the economy, it's possible that wasn't the wisest move.
The question we're weighing is about speed. What will make the company not only the most successful, but ideally, in the fastest possible way? The idea has been floated that we should bring in one or two hundred thousand dollars for the purpose of delaying major funding even more - at least one of our potential angel investors has expressed this view as a "no brainer". The idea being that a little bit of money would allow us to expand enough that later investment comes at a smaller cost; does having a little bit of money now increase our chances of greater success later?
I tend to think it does, but we'll see.
There are a long series of updates, and every time I sit down to write one of these posts I kick myself for not doing it more often. We have another person joining us, for one, this time someone that Paul worked with several years back. Her name is Eileen. Her background is in project management and human resources in the technical fields, and is probably the first person to join our team that's more experienced than either Paul or myself in what she does. I'll introduce her more properly here at the end of the week.
In the mean time, I'm making a personal resolution to post more regularly. Maybe twice a week? That's a tall order considering my track record lately, but there's an awful lot to say.
