Today is the day! I've been planning to write this blog almost every day for the past year, but I've been totally snowed under with the day-to-day reality of a tiny operation trying to do a million things simultaneously. One moment you're discussing vision or pitching to VCs about how big this is going to get, and the next moment you're pretending to be your (non-existent) secretary. Anyone who's ever run a startup will know the feeling. But at some point you stop expecting free time to fall into your lap, and decide to Just Do It.
So here it is, my first post. First of all, who am I? I'm the co-founder and CEO of eSnips; an internet startup that's right at the center of all that's exciting about Web 2.0 and which (just like my two small daughters) is the best and most promising thing out there.
We're a VERY small operation. I've worked in Internet startups for my entire professional life. I'm now a first time entrepreneur and CEO. So… it's all very exciting and challenging, and being based out of Israel is certainly part of the challenge, but since many Israeli internet start ups (most notably Shopping.com and ICQ) we a huge success despite the location….that's not an excuse we'll be able to use, so eSnips will just have to make it!. Proper disclosure though: Nahum Sharfman the founder of Shopping.com is the angel investor in the company and is a very active chairman, so that's a great help!
Anyhow, last September we beta'd the initial version of eSnips, in order to get user feedback on the product, use statistics, service scalability, and cost metrics, and to test the underlying assumptions of our business model. At first we hesitated about releasing a version that didn't have some of the key elements we had planned. But it turned out to be the best thing we could have done, and the feedback we got (thank you, everyone!) taught us a lot and impacted the product's roadmap and assumptions. This is (another) thing I plan to share in this blog in the future.
By the way, huge debate going on here about the name eSnips. I'll be happy to get some input before our first 'official' beta release, scheduled for early March.
esnips do bit funny name, wat is it mean? but i like tat design/cartoon character very much :)
Posted by: David | February 19, 2006 at 10:02 AM
I get a Script Error when I upload a file. Any ideas?
Posted by: Sam | April 11, 2006 at 08:04 AM