Someone once told me that my blog is best when I am fearlessly trying to figure something out, well, right now, I don’t know what else to do. I know what I want to happen; I just haven’t quite figured out how to get there.
For the past two years I have been working on statzen. For those that aren’t familiar with it, statzen provides “attention metrics for bloggers”, which is a fancy way of saying blog stats. The cool/unique thing about statzen is that I am tracking both web and feed stats. You can think of it as FeedBurner + Sitemeter. Of course, in this instance the whole is greater than the sum of the parts because I am adding some special sauce.
Well, the time has come to shit or get off the pot. I need to release this app. I am pretty much ready to release it at a moment’s notice (in at least a beta form), but I don’t have the resources to do it. Basically, I need to be able to feed my family and pay for servers. Right now my dad and I are paying for a server that is running statzen for our personal blogs, but we are going to have to have more if we are going to launch even a limited beta with any level of confidence.
I hear that now is a good time to get Venture Capital and that many VC firms are having a hard time finding enough companies to invest in. Well, I have a good company, but don’t know how to pitch it to the VCs. Honestly, I probably don’t need enough money for VCs to even consider statzen, but I am thinking maybe VC firms are the way to find Angel Investors.
I do have a hair-brained plan. I am going to be in San Francisco this week for business. Coincidentally, this Friday is my 30th birthday. I am thinking I am going to spend my birthday walking up and down Sand Hill Road trying to talk to Venture Capital firms. I have no idea if this plan is the least bit feasible, and I know it is scarring the shit out of me. The thing is, I don’t know what else to do.
I am not really thinking that any one reading this is going to solve my problems. I guess I am writing this just to chronicle the process. Either it will go well and things will get real interesting here, or I will spend my 30th birthday getting rejected by doormen and secretaries and I will have to find a way to pick up the pieces keep going.
The thing is, I am going to launch statzen. It is a great market (I can’t believe no one has challenged FeedBurner in the two years I have been sitting on this idea/code). The question is how. There is more development work to do. I need at least a week of my dedicated time to get it ready for a limited beta. I need to be able to purchase more dedicated servers if they are demanded. I need to be able to operate for 6 months to a year after launch. I need to be able to feed my family.
I don’t know how it is all going to come together yet, but the time is now. I am extremely luckily that I haven’t already missed this opportunity. It would be a damn shame if the only reason that statzen didn’t launch was because I didn’t make it happen. Truth be told I think most bloggers will really like the service. I think that some bloggers will be willing to pay for it, and I think even more bloggers will be able to make it pay for itself. I just have to figure out how to get from point A to point B.
Anyone want to take bets on whether or not I get the balls to walk into VC firms on August 10th? How about whether or not I actually get to give a pitch to someone? The “30 second elevator pitch” may be a reality this week.
All I know is that the time is right. I have this idea in my head that I am launching statzen in February. Now I just have to figure out how.
