I’ve mentioned in a couple of conversations with friends that I feel like I have just thrown a rock in a pond and I’m waiting to see what kind of splash it’s going to make when hitting the water.
You see the rock there? That rock symbolizes something exciting and scary for me. That rock symbolizes what I think/hope/pray is the beginning of something great. That rock is Banktastic, the social knowledge web platform, and we are betting on a big splash as it begins to hit the financial service industry.
Veering in a new direction from our original business is a scary thing because who knows what the outcome may be. Our original reason to do Banktastic was the obvious need to better share information among people in financial services (and that seems to be improving). So that, with a touch of fun/style/community, it allowed us to play in the space that I enjoy so much with the hope that over time traffic would increase to have a place where ‘focused eyes’ would come and we could start offering advertisers a place to sell to a niche audience to offset the cost. But I knew I didn’t want to stop there…
Note: I had a long post here on what my reason was for not stopping at a ‘free’ service but realized that another blog post would probably be more appropriate.
Our company has been fortunate enough, thanks to the tireless efforts of our staff, to be able to bootstrap this new venture in hopes to reap the rewards down the road. We’ve invested around $200K thus far in the development of this product and have yet to accept any VC money (though we’ve been approached). Our rock is about to hit the water and I just hope its splash gets everyone I know drenched.
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Tim McAlpine
August 12th, 2008
Change is scary, but you can’t stand still. I think I know how you are feeling!
Way to go.
Brad
August 31st, 2008
I would say, Tim, you definitely know how I’m feeling and the fraction of success you’ve garnered is something I’m hoping for on what we’re doing.