Sunday, February 22, 2009

Alpha release

The time has finally come, our alpha version is finally out and may be downloaded directly from wordpress plugin directory.

A lot of work was done on the background, like preparing packaging and the various websites that are needed, like the product website, blog, forum and developer site (not all is complete yet).

The product is still alpha quality, but it works rather nicely and gives any wordpress site owner the option to translate his site to any language quickly - while getting help from his users. The idea behind such a release is to receive feedback and improve accordingly.

You are welcomed to try it out yourself, any ideas are welcomed.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Admiting failure, moving on

It is not easy to fail, but I have. In the recent months I tried to raise funds from Israeli VCs.
Many told me not to do it, for multiple reasons, with the top one being "the market is low, and so are chances". And indeed - they were right.

I got many rejections at the preliminary stage and did succeed to move onwards with some VCs, only to get the rejections later.

In themselves rejections are divided to various groups. One being - we don't care or not really into investing these days - please go away. Another is the rejection that comes from finding the flaws in the plan (there are no flawless plans) and pointing the simplest one out. This is probably the reason for tip #1 of the day - never start dealing with any VC on the associate level, it leads nowhere.

The third type of rejection is the one that comes from smart people, that have really sunk their teeth in your plan and could not get themselves to invest, this is the type that tells you - please prove me wrong and we'll meet in the next round, which although is quite annoying is still better than the first two types.

However - there are some good news, the process was lengthy and I learned a few things from it. It helped me think of what we'll do next and what goals I should reach.

We'll bootstrap transposh, and with a little luck be able to announce our alpha product in the coming weeks. Funding will wait till we mature a bit.

If anyone wants tips and tricks regarding Israeli VCs, contact number of various partners and just a bit of knowhow - feel free to contact me - its a free service for fellow entrepreneurs :)