Project Complete: FireAnt
FireAnt, a video aggregator that I helped create back in 2005, was sold this week for $400,000.
Read about here and here.
It's kind of a bittersweet ending.
Glad that our work found a home and all bills paid off, but wish we could have done it all differently.
In 2004, the small Videoblogging group began intentionally using video to document our lives and then distribute them through blogs. A question quickly arose: "How could we more easily follow lots of different videoblogs?"
Peter decided to make Mefeedia. Josh and I decided to make AntNotTv (later renamed FireAnt).
We hooked up with Daniel Salber and Eric Radmall who singlehandedly developed the mac and PC versions.
(First version of FireAnt, Dec 2004)
It's the old story.
Four guys working full-time jobs, making software in their bedrooms at night.
The Videoblogging group was our main testing peeps, giving such great feedback and urging us on.
Remember, this was a time when 99% of humans couldn't conceive of RSS...let alone a video aggregator.
When iTunes enabled RSS subscription and video playback, we felt totally validated.
When Apple launched the video iPod, we thought we had arrived.
We worked ourselves to the bone for 18 months for no money.
The old story continues.
Now we felt we needed to become "serious".
We needed "money".
So we got a couple "business guys" to solve all our problems.
I remember how naive we were.
"You're excited about what we're doing? You know about business? Cool, we'll share this with you!"
Suddenly we became a "corporation" and voted on "board members" and issued "stock".
We went to VC meetings looking for "investment".
After a while, the Bizness guys said they couldn't get money because the technology wasn't good enough.
We said they needed to be businessmen and get business...and then realized they had no contacts, the currency of dealmaking.
Reality set in. Lots of phone fighting.
I was forced out of daily decisions in the summer of 2006.
Josh was the only founder who stayed on with the biz dudes.
FireAnt racked up tens of thousands of dollars in expenses, development costs, and legal fees.
Infighting seemed to bring any momentum to a halt.
To Josh's credit, he was able to get things organized enough to sell the good technology that FireAnt developed. The $400,000 basically pays off all loans and debt the company had. The story ends.
So I guess I become one of many software entrepreneurs who pass on this advice:
Do it for as long as you can on your own.
Success is definitely about good ideas, team, and execution...but it's also all about contacts and luck.
Don't believe the hype of quick riches.
haha and trust yourself.
UDPATE: Josh was worried that I made him look bad. He and I definitely had core disagreements over the past couple years, but he deserves the credit for sticking with FireAnt and saving it from the dead startup graveyard. Hopefully he will take time to share his experiences on his blog. FireAnt started as a community project and I know people would really benefit from hearing what he learned.
UPDATE: In my rush to write a port-mortem, I forgot to mention all the work that Clint Sharp did. He was with the project for a relatively short time, but created the entire website directory that had a huge impact on the public seeing what FireAnt could do. Clint always was able to bring reality to all our conversations. He has a great blog post here about how it all went down.
