blognation Updates

Here’s to You Mr(s) Arrington, Goodbye and Good Luck Startups

2007-12-13T14:19:33-06:00

It’s ironic that 1 year ago today I resigned from Techcrunch following my Le Web 3 review on TCUK. Mike Arrington, the publisher of Techcrunch, has never forgiven me for that post and the aftermath that followed.

Ever since blognation was launched in July, Arrington has wanted to write the post - “blognation enters the deadpool”. Last week he nearly got his wish?

For the last 6 months Arrington has threatened to publish, private and confidential emails that were sent to him, knowing it would create fear uncertainty and doubt (FUD) around blognation within the angel/VC community, whether the content was factual or not! The merest whif of litigation whether true or not caused our the potential investors to run for the hills back in July.

Arrington had made it very clear that he would withhold this information from the public domain but like the Sword of Damocles he would use this information at the right time. From that point on (yet with hindsight I deeply regret) I decided to keep up the pretense that blognation had closed funding to put Arrington off the scent and to prevent him publishing, in order to buy just enough time to raise new funding.

Sadly someone in blognation sent Arrington an internal email which he decided to publish along with the previously damaging part of the now four month old email thread between Lee Wilkins and I. This spooked the new VC and further delayed the funding process. Knowing that Arrington would love nothing better than to hear news of editors leaving blognation, I chose not to tell the editors the funding was once again delayed. That was wrong and I should have been honest with the team.

Due to some of the vitriolic internal emails and skype chats around the time of the delayed funding, which have now been publically air’d by others, I decided to exclude 3 editors from the team chatroom because of their ill feeling. The 10 remaining editors were then informed about the state of funding and chose to stay actively blogging knowing that the VC in question was working through the process if somewhat delayed but certainly before Christmas.

Finally last week we had got the funding termsheet on the table, some 3-4 months later than planned but we were ready to sign on 10th December yet Arrington chose to publish a stolen confidential term sheet which scuppered the deal for blognation and ALL of the remaining editors at the 23rd hour.

Arrington knew very well what effect publishing the termsheet would have on any potential deal and thus the future of blognation.

Right now Arrington is the only person who knows who stole and gave him the confidential termsheet. Arrington is the only person who knows why he chose to publish it knowing that it would cause maximum embarrassment to the VC and potentially force them to withdraw the offer.

Well the matter has now been reported to Scotland Yard’s Internet Crime Unit : Case Number: LC986409807 and the IC3. What happens next I am not sure but the IP address of the person accessing my account will be located and that person will face both criminal charges and eventually substantial damages. As for Techcrunch other parties may still choose to start legal proceedings for damages, I cannot say anymore.

More importantly, where does that leave blognation? Following a number of discussions, yesterday and today, a revised termsheet proved to be unworkable. I have announced internally that I am stepping down from blognation and that the company will be put up for auction, like edgeio, to ensure that the idea and vision can go forward and that ALL the (cr)editors are rewarded for their loyalty and hardwork. (note: unlike edgeio none of the editors were employees)

I am pleased to say that there are already a number of potential buyers who have come forward. I am now seeking advise on how best to manage this auction process.

Do I blame Mike Arrington, not really, it’s just business. As a silicon valley shark, Arrington took an opportunity to remove a small potential competitor. The confidential information was voluntarily sent to him, he warned me he would use it and he did. Whether publishing it is ethical or legal that is another matter; ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, GigaOm and other blognetworks didn’t feel the need to publish hearsay and confidential news.

Do I blame Lee, Oliver or Debi, not really. They were angry with me and as bloggers they chose to use the blogosphere to publish confidential information and vent their spleen.

Personally I blame myself for not finding a VC quicker to close the deal and for not trusting the team when things were hard. My focus is now on closing blognation ltd, selling the platform and brand asset in auction and using the proceeds to pay the creditors much like edgeio and supporting the transition to a new owner before I say a final goodbye to the blogosphere.

P.S further updates will appear here.

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The Funding Took Longer Than I Thought, Sorry Team

2007-12-07T12:27:02-06:00

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.”

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Sorry RSS And URL Changes To blognation

2007-09-10T14:02:25-05:00

Last week we decided to change the URL structure for blognation in order to make it simpler and easier for people to find the right information quickly.

Originally the URL structure for each country was split into three separate blogs. For example blognation UK looked like this:

http://uktech.blognation.com
http://ukmobile.blognation.com
http://ukenterprise.blognation.com

This URL structure was neither visually pleasing, memorable or RESTful. We therefore took the painful decision to restructure the country blogs.

The new URL for blognation UK is now: http://uk.blognation.com and we have done the same for all of the other country blogs.

So within each country blog we have now combined the categories - tech, mobile and enterprise. This means a reader can now view either a single country or click a category to filter out the other blog posts. This new structure also enables us to easily extend the topic categories in the future e.g Gadgets

Of course one downside to this restructure is the fact that we have had to also change the RSS feed’s URL. Although we have not changed the global feed or the company index feed. So the new RSS feed looks like this:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/uktech and http://feeds.feedburner.com/ukmobile etc. have been redirected (301) to the new single feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/blognationuk

We hope this redirect has happened automagically but we would ask that you check to see if you are still receiving the right country RSS feed and if not we kindly ask that you resubscribe to the particular country RSS feed(s) you require.

Once again apologies for any inconvenience this change may have created. Normal service has been resumed.

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New Countries, New Homepage, New Job Board and a New Party.

2007-09-10T07:51:18-05:00

It’s only been 8 weeks ago since we launched blognation UK. In that time we have also launched several other countries including Belgium, Canada,Germany, Japan, India, Ireland, Italy and USA.

New Countries:
In the coming weeks we hope to launch several more countries including France, Spain, Russia, Australia and China to name but a few. Along with the launch of these new countries we are also launching a host of new features.

New Homepage:
The first new feature will be the launch of our new homepage enabling readers to further sort the “river of news” by subject as well as the current date, category and county. This new feature will enable readers to quickly group posts together to see if several people have written about the same subject.

In order to see how this might work I have included a picture taken a few weeks ago. In the coming days, I will be able to reveal more about this exciting new feature and how your blog posts might also be listed on this new homepage.

New Job Board
For sometime now I have wanted to create a job board for blognation to help startups find good people but unlike so many of the other job boards out there I wanted to make it both global in reach and free for startups to list.

Well I am pleased to announce that in the coming weeks we will be launching our new job board in partnership with our friends at Zubka . So if you are an entrepreneur in a startup, you will be able to list all of your jobs for free for ever.

Again below is a very early mockup taken a few weeks back to show you how this might look. Right now we are finishing the design and integration work with Zubka.

The other exciting part is that blognation readers will also be able to sign up as referrers and get paid a significant reward for simply helping startups find good people.

New Party
To celebrate all of this hard work, I have decided to host a series of launch parties, the first one to coincide with the FOWA expo

The UK party will take place on 2nd Oct in the top room of Tower Bridge and will be free to attend thanks to our sponsors Adify, Howard & Baines and Sun Microsystems.

In the coming days and weeks I will be announcing more details about this UK party and those around the rest of the world. If you are interested in being a sponsor at any of our events please email me to learn more about the dates and location and marketing opportunities.

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Here’s What’s Coming From blognation

2007-09-07T11:35:45-05:00

Welcome to blognation updates. This is our newest blog, our place on the web where we can let you know, in advance, more about what is happening with blognation and the team.

You will be able to hear about which new countries we plan to launch and what new features we plan for the site, such as our new home page, the free to list job board and the blognation launch parties.

It’s also the place we will ask for your thoughts and feedback on what you think of blognation, what we can do better and what else you might like to see.

So thank you to everyone for your support and comments, its just the start with lots more to come.

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