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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by zavulon on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:07PM (#4013714)
Nowhere in the post the actual earning of money is mentioned. Yes, I know, all startups these days care about users/eyeballs, but it would be refreshing to read about businesses that actually, you know, have a business model based on earning real money once in a blue moon
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by mweil on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:10PM (#4013724)
It's funny that you mention that, as that is my personal beef with many startups as well. Funding is not a measure of success; revenue is. However, this article is not about revenue. It's about the funding process. Talking about our revenue (which we didn't have at the time, but we do have now) would have been off topic.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by mintplant on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:13PM (#4013740)
It would seem they do, indeed, have a business model going: https://cloudmine.me/pricing
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by sliverstorm on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @02:36PM (#4014584)
Yes, I know, all startups these days care about users/eyeballs

The joke is that, as I understand it, this kind of business model was a large part of what drove the crash in the 90's.

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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by simonw on Thursday May 24, 2012 @06:55AM (#4017753)
I'm rather fond of Steve Blank's definition that a startup is "a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model". If you already have the business model figured out and are executing on it, you're running a business.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by debacle on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @01:08PM (#4014024)
Good story, good moral. The understanding that you have to ask them is a tough one to swallow. I still don't know if I'm there yet - I sort of go on autopilot.

> As founders, we have a disproportionate share of the upside of a business, but we also have a disproportionate share of the downside.

Disproportionate to what? You're the founder.

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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by jacoblyles on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @01:28PM (#4014153)
I don't know why everybody doesn't start doing a rolling close. If you close incrementally, you don't have to worry about one difficult investor holding up the whole round.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by jonathanjaeger on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:24PM (#4013784)
How are they different from Kinvey (Techstars company at http://www.kinvey.com)? I'm not a developer, so I'm judging solely on the tagline and design I saw in the first 30 seconds of being on both sites.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by debacle on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @01:11PM (#4014040)
There are a lot of companies coming into the PaaS arena in recent years.

Like anything, some will succeed and some will fail.

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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by mikeevans on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @01:28PM (#4014152)
First thing I thought when I saw their site was that they reminded me of Parse.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by sbisker on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @12:57PM (#4013956)
Wait, you "closed an oversubscribed round shortly after the events of this story"? How on earth was that pulled off? Was the $15,000 the signal other investors needed to get on board? I feel like I'm only being told half of the story here.
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Re:3 Founders, 1 Round & $.72 in the Bank by mweil on Wednesday May 23, 2012 @01:07PM (#4014019)
This all happened during the final negotiations of our round. That last bit takes obnoxiously long as lawyers have to talk to one another. That was the awkward chasm we fell into: running out of cash as the final documents for the round were being finalized.
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