Friday, June 17, 2011

EthOS launches very soon indeed

If only you could see me right now.

I'm sitting at the dining table in my house and trying to figure out:

Terms & conditions and privacy drafts from lawyer
a conditions of sale draft - again from lawyer
how the 'Free' version of our service will work
scalability of the site and running costs which will have a direct impact on
our fair use policy
PR for the site - I need a journalist to write a review...
where I am going get some great quotes from people who have used the site - such as "this platform is a game changer!" B Obama, White House

And so on and so forth.

Come what may, we launch on the 7th of July. We go from Beta to Alpha. We forfeit the right to say, "Oh but we are still in beta!" to people when something messes up. Fortunately this hasn't happened in a long time but never say never.

The most stressful thing about the launch? Money. I need money for the lawyer, the PR people, ramping up the various services which make the site what it is (e.g. encoding and cloud servers) and I need money to pay salaries of people we are employing. Here is who:

Managing director - we have one but will introduce him in time.
Finance director - my brother in law who is a full time family GP but wants to help for free. Bless him.
App developers - we will buy shares in their business very soon
Digital director - we have one already

We intentionally haven't gone down the funding route, so we are entirely self funded. Unless you include my father in law who, despite not 'getting' what we do, has pumped cash into various bits of what makes the business turn.

So no funding, launch costs that we are scraping together, employees we can't yet pay and a site that will start running on all pistons in three weeks. And I, sat at the dining table in my underwear wasting time writing this post.

If only you could see me right now.

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3 comments:

  1. We can only imagine (this is the "Royal We," biensur)you at the dining table in underwear. For some reason, the photos of you in the same, standing poolside in LA come to mind. But WE do happen to have confidence that all will work out for the good. Keep moving toward your goals, Sia; let us hear back on August 7th to see what you have to report about the first 30 days! Godspeed!

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  2. Thank you Nancy! Truthfully, I am expecting a very slow start. Don't know why. But I am controlling any sense of excitement I might be harbouring.

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  3. Siamck what a wonderful post
    So honest, revealing and endearing
    I know exactly where you are cooming from.
    Have you ever considered Kickstarter.com.
    I reckon you could raise $100k there although they are biased to products services.
    Best regards
    Graham Bishop

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