Boy am I glad I have separated the corporate blog from my personal blog. I have written now a very sensible and official post on the corporate blog about our funding round, which took me a very long time to write, as I kept wanting to burst into admissions of honesty.

However, I restrained myself, but now am ready to pop. Here is where I can say what I really feel.

YIIIIHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After 13 months of easily the hardest, most stressful, challenging, exhausting, demoralising, desperate time of my life, I am finally out of the tunnel and the light is strong. I don’t want to jinx myself, and I am not unrealistic about the challenges ahead, so I don’t want to wax too lyrical about how easy life is now. But, I would be lying if I said a mammoth gargantuan weight hadn’t been lifted from me. I feel lighter, younger, bouncier, and so much happier.

I used to describe my life as a mash-up between Groundhog Day and The Dragon’s Den : one never-ending series of pitches where I was politely rejected. There are a lot of similarities between pitching and dating: you don’t get it if you are looking for it, and they can sense the desperation. And I can attest to the truth in that.

Anyway, here are some of the learnings I have gleaned from this process:

1. It takes a lot longer than you plan - months and months and months. And apparently this was a quick funding deal. !!!
2. Read your term sheet very well, and get a lawyer involved early. I didn’t, and suffered a bit for it.
3. Stand up for things that are critical - in my negotiations, there were a few points that I was adamant about. I learned how to negotiate and be firm on the areas that were key for me, my team, and my current investors.
4. Find balance - I was lucky to have incredible non-tech non-startup friends and a boyfriend who soothed the woes from me on the weekends, allowing me to do 15 hour days mid-week. I needed that balance. My family too, although in Australia, were incredibly supportive and full of love.
5. There is always a way that will work - this has actually been a motto in my life… I remember once I bought a large two piece sofa before I saw the flat I was moving into. When it arrived, my boyfriend and I worked for hours trying to find a layout that would work, and we just couldn’t. But I inately felt a solution would appear, and after a few more heavings and pushes, we found it, and it was perfect. This lesson applies to so much of my life: you gotta shove and push and think and take breaks and take advice and shove a bit more, but there is a combination out there that works if you push hard enough.

My favourite quote is from my lead investor’s blog about this deal - he sums it up really well (perhaps better than he realises):

Skimbit is led by tenacious Australian entrepreneur Alicia Navarro who kept her company and vision alive by sheer force of will through a long search for the right business model and then for financing.

Yep, it sure was a sheer force of will. But I’m here now, relieved, thankful, energised and thrilled. My dream continues… to be honest, it kinda has already happened. Yes, I want riches and wealth, but really what drives me isn’t money, its proving I can do it. And in this climate, as an Aussie female with a Spanish name in London in the midst of a financial crisis, to get enough really smart and amazing VCs and Angels to fund my tech startup because they believe in me… and to have my father say he is proud of me… well, what more do I need to do, really? Oh yes, become a millionaire, but its that sense of inner glee and pride that I yearned for, and now, have.

The road still stretches out before me, but I tread it now confidently, and with a brave heart.

Part of my strategy was to keep my burgeoning company name a secret, to build anticipation and a community around my soon-to-be-launched website. This strategy partly worked: a small following tracked my progress, and I could be delightfully honest about my experiences. I was no-one, and my company didn’t exist yet, so I was frank and vulnerable in all my posts. Look back and read if you are interested.

Then, I launched my website, moved to London, and threw myself into the entrepreneurial scene. I became relatively known, and my website started to be known. I started seeking VC funding, and needed to demonstrate how capable I was, and how great things were going. I found my blogging compromised, as I could no longer share my vulnerabilities, mishaps and hopes, on what had become my company’s blog.

A great deal has occurred in the last few months, which I have covered in what is now to be my company’s blog. I want to reclaim Birth of a Startup now, to return to being my personal blog, where I write honestly, with both vulnerability and hopeful pride, about what it is to be a female Australian tech entrepreneur, living in London.

So please, if you want to read about my businesses, delete this blog from your RSS feed. If you are new to this blog, add it to your RSS, but make no effort to find out about my businesses. It is best if we keep the two separate. Of course, I may have achieved nothing but stirring your curiosity, but I hope that you respect the spirit in which this blog reinvention is made. Welcome to Birth of a Startup!

So, give it a try, and please take a moment to tell your friends about Skimbit. Sites like Skimbit really make it when their community of users take pride in telling other people about it, so please help us become known and loved. We built Skimbit to really help and be useful for any sort of internet research or decision-making task, so keep us in mind whenever you are doing any research online, or are trying to decide on something with a group!

This has of course meant lots of late nights in the office. Sometimes we don’t eat at all (not good), and sometimes we get pizza delivered to the office for dinner (even worse). I’ve had pizza two nights in a row and feel like a bloated heifer.

So this morning, in the interests of team health and vitality, I bought a heap of fruit for the team to feast on when they get peckish.

And isn’t is wonderfully symbolic that completely unintentionally, the bowl of fruit is placed obstinately on top of the pamphlet for our local pizza place. I think there is something meaningful there for all of us

Inamo is a new type of restaurant, where instead of a waiter with a notepad, you have a table with a nifty laser control panel you navigate yourself. You fiddle a bit on the table with your finger, and you can do everything, from ordering all your food and wine, seeing what it all looks like before you eat it, watch the chefs cook it via chef cam, and most excitingly, change the illuminated virtual tablecloth with a myriad of colours, patterns and photos. Plus you can play games, view local maps, call cabs, and have full control of your bill. For those who hate trying to catch a waiter’s attention, and who find the process of ordering food almost as much fun as eating it, it very much appeals.

Anyway, Bernie has been involved in designing this interface, so for the past few months I have been hearing about all the challenges he faces… things like, is it obvious enough how to scroll down (as he says “I don’t know what else to do other than a large red pulsing arrow!”), is it obvious that ‘Service’ includes your bill, and many more fascinating user experience issues. Inamo has been in ‘beta’ for the past fortnight, offering half price meals while they iron out their glitches. Eager to both support my friend and to take advantage of a bargain, I decided to take the Skimbit team there for a much deserved team dinner.

And boy was it fun! Matthieu would not stop changing the table-cloth on me, it was pink with flowers one second, then blue stripes another, then a ravishing set of umbrella images… quite the whirlwind. Ciaran successfully played a picture puzzle game, and I salivated over every gorgeous image of food that was projected on my plate.

Apparently you get £10 off for each bug you find, but it was a pretty solid system. The only bugs in the system were the staff who perhaps need to seem a little more excited to be part of such a cool new restaurant, but I guess if you design a whole restaurant based around the premise of the superfluousness of waiters, then perhaps they might feel a bit miffed. They still get a 10% service charge though, and it kinda was a bit funny the 7th time they brought us the wrong thing we ordered, but being part of a young overworked company ourselves, we accepted the glitches as growing pains, and have faith it will improve with time.

The food was fabulous though… the chef is ex-Nobu and Hakkassan, Asian-fusion, rich and delicious. I’d recommend it thoroughly, if for nothing else but to enjoy Bernie’s great system design!

So, due to this crazy busy bee-ness, I’ve missed the last couple of Drink Tank events, the fabulous networking parties hosted by Huddle. But, my sense of duty overwhelmed me (I mean, one owes it to the community to put in a good partying effort every now and then!) and I extricated myself from my computer at the earliest in months in order to head to Bermondsey and attend Drink Tank.

Ciaran, my fabulous Senior Developer, came along, luckily as I always seemed to get a bit disoriented in the caverns of London Bridge station, and he steered me gently to the venue: first the Huddle offices, followed by Village East (a charming bar in Bermondsey).

And as always, I realised the second I arrived that I was doing myself a disservice by skipping previous events, as besides the opportunity to catch up with my ol’ Web Mission pals Andy from Huddle, Andrew from Rummble, Soks from Trusted Places, David from GroupSpaces, Alex from Latitude, Olli… from everywhere I think, I got to catch up with old friends: Nick from Fav.or.it, Nigel from ZygoHubs, Richard from ZebTab, John and Andy from Wigadoo, the generous and amazing Zuzanna from Huddle, and the glowing Yuri from City Amigos… and I got to meet new fabulous people like Emily from Hatch PR, Bindi from Microsoft, and Ian from Psycuity. It was a busy night.

It must be said, the Huddle guys know how to put on a party. At one stage it felt like trying to get into the most exclusive party in town (which I guess, it was) - with queues, door bitches, guestlists, drink tickets, and delicious nibblies. It was heaving and loud and intense, but that’s what you want in a party, so there were few complaints (although Emily and I did sneak into a calm alcove for a proper non-screaming-above-the-noise chat).

It’s funny: I’m currently helping a friend of mine who is about to start his own web start-up, and he is asking about how I built the entrepreneurial social graph I seem to have achieved in under a year of moving back to London to live. It is in describing in detail - after being questioned thoroughly - the steps I have taken to get here… wherever ‘here’ is, that I realise how actively I have pursued it and yet how organically it has happened, this immersion into such a supportive, incestuous, dashing, entertaining, fascinating crowd of entrepreneurs, or as Alex Hoye put it, “The highest density of Twitter users in the UK in one room”. You realise why they say being an ‘entrepreneur’ is more about personality than ability, because it all comes down to who you know, and people like to ‘know’ people they like, if you catch my drift. And I can honestly say that even if my endeavours don’t turn out the way I plan, at the very least I have had (and still am having) the most gloriously entertaining time, being a part of London’s entrepreneurial scene. And its events like Drink Tank that make this happen, so thank you Huddle and the many sponsors of the event for helping build this fabulous ecosystem.

We are continuing our trend towards being a hugely multicultural company: we have an Aussie (me), English (Joe - well, he is kinda Aussie though), Ciaran (Irish), and Matthieu (French). What will our next recruit be?

We are all busily working towards our soon to be launched new design… bet you are all waiting with baited breath to see what we come out with?! We think you will like it - be patient with us, we want to do a good job.

So, when I read that Visit London (a tourism board for London) was putting on an outdoor office, I thought my team utterly deserved a day in the park.

Four of us managed to extricate ourselves from our office, hopped on the tube, and travelled to the other (greener) side of London, to St James’s Park.

And there, to our joy and bemusement, was a fully designed and functional office - complete with paperclips, folders, desk lamps (not plugged into anything, of course!) and desk trinkets! We sat on office chairs, pulled out our laptops, and worked with glorious views of Buckingham Palace, the duck pond, and lush green trees all around us. It was a trifle difficult to read our screens in the bright sunlight, but we didn’t utter a complaint - if only every day could be so inspiring and liberating.

Unfortunately, nothing good lasts forever, or in our case, lasts more than an hour. Typically London clouds swept over our sunny sky, we started to shiver a little, but we obstinately stayed at our desks.

We started to feel a trickle of rain, and undeterred, we opened the Visit London umbrellas and huddled underneath as we continued working.

The rain started to get harder…. we persisted stubbornly for as long as we could, but it soon became a mute point. We had to pack our laptops away. But we really believed the rain would pass, so we stayed under our umbrellas for a while, and sure enough, the rain cleared, and the sun re-emerged!

With a quick wipe-down of the tables, we could continue our work in the now sparklingly beautiful afternoon.

It was again a shortlived pleasure. The rain clouds came back, and this time we were conquered. We returned to our indoors office, but with a smile on our faces. What a glorious experience to be out in such inventive playful surroundings!

We have a team of developers offshore, but we would like someone to really champion Skimbit from a technical perspective, with experience in scaling web applications, and in building innovative services. As we are a small team, the CTO would also have to be a lead developer (so experience with Javascript, AJAX libraries and PHP essential), and probably be involved in some front end development work too. But aaah, isn’t that the joy of working for a start-up, you can be a jack-of-all-trades, and be truly an integral part of building something special.

Let me know if you or anyone you know would be appropriate. The candidate doesn’t need to have been a CTO before, but is ready (and experienced enough) to be one now, at least.

I have been back a few days from my Web Mission expedition to San Francisco. It’s taken me this long to recuperate and take stock of everything that went on.

I’m still in a state of shock and awe. It was a beyond successful week, exceeding even my overly ambitious expectations. Pretty much everything I’d hoped would happen, did happen.

What, you ask? Well, firstly, and most importantly, forming strategic partnerships with bookmark aggregators like Gigya and Add to Any. They were both San Francisco/Valley based, so I managed to set meetings up with them while I was there, and I can joyfully report that both companies completely understood my business, Skimbit, and agreed to include our ‘Skim this!’ badge in their bookmarking buttons.

I then managed to meet the team from AddThis.com at the Web 2.0 conference I attended in San Francisco, and managed to get them on board too. This is a huge win for us, and puts us on the same playing field as Digg and Delicious, though with a different enough focus and target market to compete effectively.

Then, potential customers for our white-label service, Skim-in-a-box… I had hoped to get leads for new clients, but as I didn’t have any meetings booked, my expectations were low. However, I was introduced to several incredibly exciting and high profile web entities, who you will all know, and they expressed not only interest, but a serious intent to partner.

I won’t spill the beans yet on who these companies are, but they will totally make my business when they come through. Understandably, I’m pretty chuffed.

From a funding perspective, my expectations were also very low, as I’d been repeatedly told US based investors won’t consider UK based companies. However, I had a meeting with a high profile seed investor, who said the distance issue – although challenging – is not insurmountable, and they are currently considering investing in Skimbit.

I had hoped WebMission would attract a lot of very much welcomed media exposure, and to my glee, this also turned out beyond expectation. In the last week I have been TechCrunched, on the BBC, the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and soon to be in The Telegraph and Spectator. Not bad for a tiny little start-up!

But I would have to say, without a doubt, the best outcome of WebMission was the networking, interaction, and bonding that went on with the rest of the WebMission team. What really stood out to me is how innovative, supportive, and ambitious us Brits (well, I’m an Aussie, but you know what I mean) are, and that although going to the US was helpful and educational, we should be darn proud of what we have back home.

So now, as I deal with the avalanche of work, leads to follow, deals to execute on, and investments to finalise, I am buzzing with joy and elation that I’m on the right path, and the light at the end of the tunnel is bright and beckoning.

It’s Day 2 of Web Mission 08, and I have not stopped yet. From the minute we landed in sunny San Francisco, we’ve been schmoozing, networking, visiting, exploring, learning, and, inevitably, drinking. The only thing I haven’t done enough of is sleeping… But what with unavoidable jetlag and a frantically buzzing mind unable to rest as I constantly think of what I should do next, I suppose sleeping can wait.

Our first night saw us welcomed to San Francisco with a cocktail party thrown in our honour by TechCrunch. It was a great opportunity to meet the other 19 start-ups on Web Mission, plus our fabulous sponsors like HSBC, Oracle and UKTI. However, a long and unglamorous flight that day meant we weren’t in top partying condition, so I went to bed early in anticipation of the next day’s revelry.

And revelrous it was indeed, with us all being invited for brunch and a barbecue at the house of Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster. And I literally mean his home: for the first 10 minutes I stood in wonder in his living room perched on a hill in a trendy area of San Francisco, observing his family photos on the mantlepiece, his taste in twentieth century American poets, and his pet poodle.

Jim and his wife had hired caterers and invited the glitterati of the US entrepreneurial scene for a leisurely afternoon sipping Bloody Marys and nibbling prawn salad in his living room. Utterly surreal, and undeniably interesting.

I met YouNoodle’s founder Bob Goodson and heard about his interesting hypotheses; BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens, who interviewed a few of us using his cool interview-via-mobile-phone-to-voicemail technique, at one stage from the boot of a car in German (you had to be there I guess); and Michael Birch, the delightfully unassuming CEO of recently acquired Bebo.

We then scooted off to a party in the Valley at the home of Brian Solis where in the late afternoon dappled sunlight we ate corn on the cob and talked to the founders of Google-acquired Jaiku and Techmeme.com. I kept having moments of delighted shock as I realised I was in the company of so many people I admire.

By the end of that day, we are all exhausted. And it was only Sunday! The week hadn’t even begun yet!

Today started early, with a visit out to Oracle where representatives from Facebook, Amazon and LinkedIn talked about how to internationalise and scale, and Oracle talked about their incredible company history and interesting product strategies.

I feel so privileged to be part of a group that so many inspirational companies think is worthwhile meeting. After a gorgeous lunch in the Oracle executive dining room, I left the group, and went on my own to meet a company I hoped to partner with. The meeting went really well, so you will hear more about this partnership very soon!

Now I am on the way back to San Francisco to attend an evening with Jim Buckmaster and Michael Birch, followed by one of many parties during this week’s Web 2.0 conference.

You see what I mean then? I’ve been here for only 48 hours, and we’ve done all this already! I’m hoping my stamina stays strong as the week continues to unfold its thrilling and lucrative possibilities.

As you may have read, Skimbit was selected for Web Mission 08, a networking, partnering and promotion journey to Silicon Valley with other UK based startups like Huddle, WAYN, Mydeo, Rummble, Trusted Places, and The Filter.

Startups.co.uk asked me to be a guest blogger for the Web Mission journey, so here are my blog posts covering before, during and after the event.

Before the event:

You would think considering I am going to meet the founders of Craigslist, Bebo, Friendster and the Guidewire Group in a few days, I would be panicking about what I was going to say… But no, it seems the only way one’s mind can deal with the enormity of what one is about to embark upon, is to focus on really insignificant things. Like: how am I going to get from Palo Alto to San Francisco on Monday… and, I wish I had prettier business clothes… and, I have no idea how to tip US-style!

Yes, that is right, I am off to Silicon Valley, which strangely makes me think more of breast implants than semi-conductors, but then, I’m a girl. Yes, I’m a girl, who runs a web start-up (which makes me a minority) , based in London (even further in the minority), and off to Silicon Valley for the first time. What’s more, I’m of Spanish heritage, and Australian nationality. So with this mix of cultures, demographics and experiential history, I wonder what adventures shall unfold over the next week!

I am the founder and CEO of Skimbit, a social decision-making tool that helps you research and make decisions online, with the help of others. I was chosen along with 19 other of “UK’s most promising” start-ups, to head over to the US as part of Web Mission 08. There we will network, pitch, schmooze, research, promote, and partner with as many people as possible in what I am increasingly nervous will be an exhausting, exhilarating non-stop week.

I shall document my daily trials, tribulations, triumphs and tirades via this blog, so come and join me on this journey of discovery!

But, in the last month, Skimbit’s traffic has tripled, so suddenly, bugs are a bigger deal, as they can potentially affect more of our users. And I LOVE my users, truly! I can’t describe it… but to have complete strangers want to use, and benefit from, something that I have worked on so crazily hard for so long, is the deepest compliment coupled with the deepest responsibility.

And so, when something goes a little wrong, I can’t abide that people who have put their faith in me and my product are experiencing any type of inconvenience. I am so prepared for them to rush off and never come back, or to be angry, or even worse, to just leave and never come back or think of Skimbit again.

Imagine, then, my joy this week to meet a user who not only has come to my site because he has a genuine need to use it (as opposed as a mild curiousity to see what my site is vaguely about!); but he also notified me of a bug, and helped me solve it. What a blessing!

Yes, there was a slight bug in the way we sent invitations to friends from the Address Book, and it took a while to find out the root cause of the bug. I kept expecting the user to get fed up and throw his hands up in disgust and frustration, which terrified me because he was a true advocate of the solution. But to my immense joy, he not only persisted, helped find the problem, tested it, and kept sending me updates, but he also - bless - apologised for hassling me! What an angel!

Thankfully, we have now corrected the bug, fixed a misunderstanding on the site, and somehow still have the attention of a user who invited 20 of his friends to use the site - what an amazing man. I can’t stop with the superlatives, it just completely blew me away how kind and helpful strangers can be.

It takes me back to those web 2.0 seminars, where all the speakers raved about “Your users will tell you when you are doing something wrong, they will be passionate advocates of your site!” and I kinda doubted it could happen. But, I just experienced the charity of users, and feel even more passionate about doing a good job for them!

“I can either work myself to the bone, and not get everything done that I need to; or I can NOT work myself to the bone, and STILL not get everything done that I need to…. so there is little point in killing myself in the process.”

I say this, yet here I am, its half past midnight, my eyes are so blurry I can’t focus on the font before me, my back is screaming in agony, and my tummy is not at its prettiest after too much toast… and STILL I haven’t got everything done that I need to.

And when I found out I was accepted, although I was pleased, I do have to admit I had a fleeting moment of thinking “Well, I bet not many people applied, its not such a big deal…”

So imagine my surprise when I found out that over 100 start-ups had competed, and only 20 were selected! And that the judging panel included Doug Richard and Mike Butcher! And that there is huge press coverage of the event: Skimbit even managed to appear on TechCrunch US!

And looking at the agenda, I now totally realise what a fabulous opportunity this is! I’m busily trying to organise meetings with potential partners in the Valley and San Fran (if you are one, or know of one, let me know!), and am meeting with some US-based PR firms to help my ‘launch’ in the US. Very exciting stuff!!

I hated HAVING to be at work at 9am, and feeling guilty and stressed if I was running late. I hated having people silently judge me if I was writing a personal email or reading a blog during work hours, and the challenge of having to always book things like dentists and home deliveries in my pre- or post- work hours. Its not that I have an aversion to work, far from it, but I hated that the times I was not performing in a ‘normal’ business way would be judged negatively. And perhaps this is more an indication of my inherent guilt, as possibly I was imagining these silent frowns of disapproval, but nevertheless, I hated feeling that way, and knew that being my own boss would be the only solution.

And I feel very lucky to have achieved my goal: I am my own boss, and I am more or less master of my own destiny.

Of course the irony is that far from working less, I am now working MORE than I ever did, when I was a normal employee. The beauty of my arrangement though, is its on my terms, and every day that passes I savour that feeling. I love that because I work best in the evenings, if I choose to start work at 10:30am, and work til 9pm, that is fine. If I need to go to the doctors, I can book at whatever time I like, and work from home til that time comes. What freedom! And if the way I work best is to stop every hour for a game of Spider Solitaire, no one is going to ever judge me. Brilliant!

The one big challenge though, is that this freedom requires a great deal of self-discipline. I love working and I am inspired by my work, but sometimes, my inherent laziness gets the better of me. Never is this more apparent than when I ‘work from home’. Now, don’t get me wrong, my working from home is vastly productive, and I enjoy the solitude to focus on something complicated. But… the lure of tempting procrastination is strong, and I find it hard to resist even though I really really want to, without the power of the guilt I feel when I am working in an office.

So, although I work for myself, being in an office with lots of other super dynamic people not only motivates me, but dispels my desire to procrastinate. I actually find the rigours of my training as a 9-5 employee actually helps and gives me discipline to go to work early, work hard, etc. I know some people are brilliant at working hard at home, and are great with self-discipline, but I have come to terms with the fact that for me, I need to almost trick myself that I am going to a normal job, in order to get the most out of my time. Of course, I do give myself some of the flexibility I have aspired to, and in all, this proves a healthy workable balance.

However, one quite hilarious outcome was the screen lost the ability to render black, and rendered it as red instead… so everything was in shades of pink. You could work on it fine, and I did get used to it, but every now and then someone would pass my desk and laugh at me for being so girlie… I then had to explain that the pink was absolutely not a deliberate choice… After a while, this became more of an issue than I like to admit!

Of course, there were other more sensible reasons to change laptops - my computer had ground to a halt speed-wise, and considering I like to work with about 20 open applications, my little ol’ PC just wasn’t coping. And the final problem was Norton’s anti-virus which managed to render my computer unusable for 30 minutes a few times a day. So, for all these reasons, I decided to buy a new laptop.

I steadfastly refused to buy a Mac for ages, despite my office-mates all using them and singing Apple’s praises constantly. And my reasons, I admit, were a little strange. Firstly, I like the IBM trackpoint (that little red thing you use instead of a trackpad), and only IBM has them. I like how I don’t have to move my hand to do everything I need to do on my computer, and again, due to the manic pace at which I use my laptop, this is a critical factor for me. Secondly, I have little hands, and I liked having a US/Aus keyboard as I could reach the Enter key easily (UK keyboards have a small enter key that is too far away for my little finger to reach while touch-typing). Finally, there was this resistance to going with the crowd - everyone kept praising Macs, it was almost not cool enough to do what everyone else did. Yes, I know, silly reasons.

In the end, I went for it though. And I mitigated my first two complaints by buying an IBM USB keyboard in Australia - so I can still use the IBM trackpoint on an Aussie keyboard, on my new MacBook Pro!! And in the end, I see what the fuss is all about - it really is an utterly superb machine and operating system. I bow gracefully to all those I rebuked for so long, it is a delight and pleasure to use, and considering the amount of time I spend at my computer, a little bit of extra pleasure never goes astray!

The Apple purists around me still moan and laugh when they see me - there with an IBM USB keyboard attached to my Mac, and perhaps this little idiosyncracy helps mitigate my third concern - I certainly am not going with the crowd with THIS ol’ system!

So please check it out and let us know your thoughts. Better yet - become a featured skimmer by telling us about the clever ways you use Skimbit.

One interesting piece of feedback I received from the ex-Dragon’s Den judge - Doug Richard - was that I should not market Skimbit as an all-purpose research and decision-making tool (because people don’t realise they need this), and instead market it as a solution to very specific problems, and to pick a few of them. For example, its a service for organising group holidays, planning weddings, and making important purchases. And then, he says, to make this the primary message of the homepage, and indeed the whole application.

Interestingly, quite a few other people have come back with similar feedback, so its definitely something I will factor into the next version of the homepage, and definitely something I will do with my forthcoming PR and advertising campaigns.

It is fascinating operating in this web environment having come from a software development background where development lifecycles were 6 months long, and if you changed your mind about a requirement, you had to wait 6 months to request it. These days, with web applications, it is not only easy, but necessary to make rapid iterative changes to design and functionality, to see what works best. It is indescribably difficult to take a step back sometimes from something I am so intimate with, and see what will work and what won’t, so chatting to new people who hear about Skimbit and visit the site is a highly educational and useful thing to do.

So I hope you like the new homepage, and find it communicates better what Skimbit is all about, especially to those not-so-technical people out there. Bit by bit we will work our way through the whole site, so it eventually will glow with brilliance (we hope!).

There has been lots of interest, great feedback, and thankfully the business is running along steadily so I can dedicate a bit of time to the hunt for funding.

I’m pleased to report I have one large offer already, so hopefully the round can close soon, and I can get on with running my business. Then one hard part ends, and another hard part begins… hiring, expanding, designing, rolling out, selling… the real meat of it all. If anyone knows of a brilliant web applicationi product/project manager or a bright full-of-initiative operations manager who wants to work in an exciting start-up based in central London, please let me know!

What a whirlwind it all is though! I’ve met some extraordinary people, gotten incredible advice, and am full of ambition and plans. I’ve never been happier!

So, just need to push on and close this round, and hopefully 2008 will be the year of Skimbit!

They were both really interesting and different experiences.

I found it fascinating how different views and priorities could be amongst parties that all make their money in similar ways. One party thought I should keep the Skim-in-a-box white-label solution and the other thought it best to divest of it and focus purely on Skimbit.com. One party thought I should focus on profitability and a strong business model and the other thought I should forget a business model until I have a large enough userbase.

Interestingly, I totally agree with both ends of the spectrum. The biggest web start-up sales have been of companies that had no business model and that had only a web site to worry about… certainly focusing on Skim-in-a-box distracts from building a large userbase and the gearing on businesses with white-label sales is much less than on businesses with a large loyal and active userbase.

However, I am convinced that I structure my company so that the Skim-in-a-box sales are managed wholly by a quality Sales & Account Manager, and that product development is not dramatically altered to support this business model at the expense of the free Skimbit.com, that I can make it work. That I can have a solid underlying business that I can build a free web service on top of, which surely will insure me against any major swing in user affinity towards social applications.

The other key reason to retain both sides of the business is the wealth of business intelligence it will produce. By retaining the anonymised aggregated analytical information of a diverse group of individuals and businesses, I surely build a lucrative database of information about what products people like, and what factors drive that decision-making. I dare anyone to say that is not a valuable resource.

Anyway… the journey has only just begun. I am courting investors as we speak. If anyone knows of an Angel or VC that might be interested in investing in Skimbit, please contact me!