I’ve been neglecting the blog lately, definitely not a good thing.

The last few weeks I have been consumed by planning for the near future, while trying to catch up on the bureaucracy of doing business.

I don’t have a person to help our with clerical or finances at the moment, which means maybe a third of my time gets spent on these things.  Sometimes it takes up all my time. The issue gets compounded for me since there are three companies here, and a fourth one was already registered for the upcoming startup.

I have been especially busy considering my choices of how to launch and fund the next startup – I’ll give it a code word of P2A. At the same time I am also considering choices for how to best grow Digitally Imported.

Had an informal meeting with one angel/VC company and personally came away with mixed reactions:

On one hand, I can do better in presenting the ideas in a more formal and concise manner. On the other hand, it will take really a long time to do this properly and do all the required rounds and jumping through hoops. 

I just don’t have that kind of time, it can be a full time job seeking investors and I already have a few full time jobs And that’s also a minus, investors want you focused 100% on only the venture they back. Plus it’s quite daunting when you have ideas or convictions about things that other people don’t quite see as strongly as you do. But hey, it’s their money, I don’t blame them for being very cautious – I just don’t have time to go and talk to 10 other people to confirm that my ideas make sense and give it out in the process only to be back to almost square one.

So in the mean time I came away thinking this:

If I am so sure of the possibility of the P2A project taking off, and of Digitally Imported’s ability to grow through hard work and needed focus, I should just put the money where my mouth is - and loan it.

So that’s what I am going to be doing for the first time in the years I’ve been bootstrapping. I am taking out a line of credit loan. One just got approved for 125G today for one company, and expect to double that by applying with another company.

And with that – we’re hiring. We’ve got one developer position open immediately, and one for a biz dev and online marketer. There’s more left for clerical/accounting too and I desperately need to stop doing that stuff myself. I barely have time to think these days, and it’s one of my favorite hobbies too

The loans should last me about a year for the new hires, and I hope that as in every case in the past the business expands or grows enough to cover these costs after a year.  That’s a year assuming I want to max it all out, which I don’t if I can help it.

If P2A takes off really big, I may have to look for VCs anyway, but at least by then maybe some will be lining up at the door with all the attention. But if not, well, it’s just paying interest only loans at 8% for a really long time.

On the really bright side, I am extremely psyched to come away with that experience after just one meeting. For the first time I am also confident enough to “risk” loaning large amounts and putting resources towards growth.  But with this definitely comes a need to have extreme focus on money returning tasks first, and cost cutting across the board for a number of things.

There’s a lot to do! If you’re in my business of streaming (and I am told a few tend to watch this blog) - if you heard all the plans for what we’re building to take shape over the next 1-3 years you’d piss your pants. Stay long enough on the blog they will unravel. As for the P2A project – it should be hitting some kind of Beta by April, and then you’ll know all about that.

And finally, I am extremely grateful for our kick-ass team of employees and volunteers. You guys really have a lot of patience, and trust, and I am humbled to work with you. I look forward to see the fruits of your labor finally start to bloom this year.