oh btw, we SOLD VCEL, :) :)

We did it. its finally done. VCEL is Sold !





its a great feeling to see something completed that you have worked on for a long long time. I am now just a month short of being 23, i started my first mobile social networking company at the age of 19. The 15% of my life that i spent working on VCEL have finally got to the end game. VCEL was a wild crash course in entrepreneurship. It took me out of a Cancer Research lab internship at the Material Research Lab in UCSB to living in Marina Del Rey, Ca. In the process we had start up offices in several places:

1. in our proverbial college dorm room, at 6669 del playa isla vista ca. No easy place to concentrate and no nurturing climate for web start ups. But kept us grounded to the users.
2. in an office building in Goleta, CA
3. in an office building in Sunnyvale (a huge dinosaur of a building that was empty from the dot com collapse)
4. to having a proverbial garage office in a house Cupertino :)
5. to Venice Beach, Ca where we joined forces with fotochatter.com to become the #1 mobile social networking service.

There was so many lessons along the way that it would be impossible to describe all of them in a Post short of writing a book. And maybe i will one day, make the MoSoSo2.0 equivalent of "the Art of the Start". A great entrepreneurial handbook that was inspirational to me making the jump from college into the start up world. It was definitely fun and an honor to meet and do business with Guy Kawsaki, who wrote it, and incidentally was the first graduation speaker for the inaugral graduation class at my high school... along the way. Maybe we will be able to put something else together down the road, alltop breaking onto the mobile scene ?

Main Lessons learned from being a founder:

1. Learn how to make the product you are selling, or at least learn about all the tools processes and everything involved in making your start up's product.

2. Never give up. No matter what just stick to it. If things dont work out re write your business plan and simply keep going. Change the business model, change the product portfolio, change the team. If you are willing to be completely adaptable and versatile you will achieve success.

3. Fund Raising is the art of controlling perceived reality. But funny enough the silicon valley model seems to work. All you need is to gauge the character of people you are involved with.

Maybe i will write a more thoughtfully layed out reflection on my first venture experience later on, just got excited from seeing the first portion of the check clear . Thank god for online banking ;)

Now to move on to the next chapter: 2.0 , bigger faster stronger. . . fotochatter.com