The Funding Took Longer Than I Thought, Sorry Team

Reading the blogopshere you are probably aware that blognation has sadly had more of its internal private communications published.

Setting up a new company is at the best of times hard for any entrepreneur let alone in the public glare of the blogosphere. Many people talk the talk but very few actually take the risk and walk the walk. If you have ever done it, you will know that taking your eureka moment and translating that into a profitable business is very difficult, with many hurdles along the way.

I am not going to get into a pantomime he said, she said slanging match or start to play the violin looking for sympathy but for the sake of clarity I would like to clear up one point.

I approached a number of bloggers from around the world to come and join blognation. Some were offered a contract and a salary to be part of blognation, others either did not fit or did not want to join.

I explained we were in the process of raising funding and that we were already in discussions with several Angel and VC’s as far back as July. Each editor was aware they would be paid in full, back dated from when they joined upon closure of the funding. I also said I expected to have closed it at the end September if not sooner.

Given those early conversations and the amount of money we sought to raise, I honestly expected that the funding phase would take far less time than it actually has.

So the first problem here is the funding has taken longer causing a lot of pain and in hindsight I wish I hadn’t been so blind in my dogmatic belief that we would close the funding “any day now”. The second problem was I certainly should have been more forthright with the team when we did hit a delay. For that I have apologised to the team internally and now publically here. This is a fantastic team of bloggers and I should have trusted them to remain and sought their advise much earlier.

So where are we today; 10 of the original 13 editors have remained committed and blogging despite our short term funding problems. Why, because they have been privvy to correspondents from the VC and some have even spoken to them directly.

Some editors have responded publically in various places to reports about blognation with their own personal thoughts.

Finally, I found this on Techcrunch today, a comment was left regarding the demise of edgeio. A company I actually liked very much given its early adoption of microformats.

I think the sentiment is equally applicable here in regard to blognation although in the coming days I hope to write a more fortuitous blog post describing the closure of our funding, the payment of our editors and a few thoughts about the future of blognation.

Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”