Mar
3
The end of an era
Filed Under Quotes, management styles
Theodore Roosevelt (a man much more eloquent than I) described his thoughts on those individuals that risk everything:
“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.”
It is with frustration and disappointment that I let everyone know that we suspended regular operations for Event Seek and Digital Lodestone Group at the end January and have been examining possible exit strategies. Prior to this shift, we spent the last few weeks meeting with a number of potential investors, customers, and advisors to examine potential opportunities to keep our business afloat. While there were some potentially promising opportunities, we could no longer afford to pay our employees, our bills, or ourselves. We had and continue to have significant successes with the product (500+ launched and functioning websites) and with sales (selected as one of two final solutions to be employed by the AJC), but we struggle trying to raise the necessary funding to support operations.
As all of you know, our business requires significant capital investment to grow to necessary scale. We have pursued a number of different options to secure this investment, but frankly it has taken us too long to achieve the necessary milestones to become a viable early-stage angel or VC investment. This is not to say that we weren’t able to accomplish these milestones - on the contrary we’ve done exactly what is necessary. Simply put, we ran out of time and money. For this, I take full responsibility. Tristan has been an excellent partner and managed production beautifully throughout this process. While he was responsible for product development, I was in charge of sales and fundraising and was not able to achieve the appropriate milestones in the amount of time we had to do it. I don’t blame the economy, customers, or the investment community. In time, I’m sure I’ll appreciate that much more was out of my control than in, but for the time being, I shoulder this burden alone.
Since suspending operations, Tristan and I have been examining future possibilities for Event Seek and our software. We are in several conversations with companies who are interested in buying the software, are considering the idea of shifting to a custom development shop, and are even toying with the idea of opening up the code to other developers and creating a non-profit foundation. I’ll be sure to keep you all in the loop as we examine these potential opportunities. In addition we will take a very hard look at our successes and failures and spend some time reviewing these and preparing a debrief and business case outlying the factors that were responsible for our eventual end.
As always, I thank you for your support throughout this process. Our friends and supporters have been critical to holding us together as we’ve worked through this process. You haven’t seen the last of Event Seek, and you certainly haven’t seen the last of Tristan and I.
Posted by: Connor Fee
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