Startup
After reading the news that OKcupid was acquired today for $50 million, I couldn’t help but think back to my experience at Downtoearth. I suspect that commentors that have a long memory will remember Match’s experiment there and say that it is evidence that it failed. I’d know better than anyone that it’s far from [...]
When I look back at my time at Stir, there are quite a few lessons that are worth relating. This post is the first in a series of lessons from a great experience. We had an assumption when we started stir about how we’d make money. Stir was focused on connecting people with places they [...]
Continue reading about Stir Lessons – Business model beats execution
It’s taken a few days for me to process this, but my startup, Stir.com, is no more. On Friday, May 14, we shut down the servers, turned our traffic over to Singlesnet, and began to prepare for the next phase in our careers. That day might have been one of the hardest I’ve yet experienced. [...]
It feels strangely good to get back to writing again. I’ve been oddly silent for a few months, for a reason that I’m about to explain. During this time I learned a lesson about what really drives me to do this, and how hard it is not to write. The reason I’ve had to be [...]
Continue reading about Long time no blog, breaking my silence
It probably goes without saying that Valentine’s makes for a busy time at a dating site. It’s just sort of amazing to me that it is. It’s the middle of winter, everyone’s just gotten over the Christmas season, and yet we find time to dedicate a holiday to love. Isn’t love sort of a bit [...]
The last several weeks have been rather crazy as we had our official launch. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, but work out great anyhow. I’ve had a number of interviews, and it amazes me how many people seem to quickly “get” what we’re trying to do. We’re more than free at downtoearth.com. We’re [...]
Continue reading about A sigh of relief after our official launch
The last few weeks have had the typical Christmas and New Year’s activity, combined with that of trying to doing our startup. It’s made for basically no time off, as I was doing customer care over the “break” as much as building out our launch plan and testing our marketing. Customer care itself is an [...]
It’s been a long strange trip, but our website has finally arrived at its final destination. After months of negotiation, we were able to buy the domain name downtoearth.com. For us, it’s a wonderful expression of the brand we’re trying to build in free dating. Our mission is to be a totally free dating site [...]
Continue reading about Finally – we’ve moved to our real name
Before joining our startup I worked for a media company. Just like any jobs you had good days and bad ones. During the bad ones I always had the option to shut the door to my office and calm down. There were plenty of ways that you could feel better, from calling a friend and [...]
