Ghost of Midnight

To take on or not to take on investors…

Ahmed Farooq writes an interesting piece today about not taking investment money for his local review site called iBegin Source.  He says, in part,…

When we had originally launched iBegin, I think about a dozen VCs came to us in the first 3 months or so. They all liked the idea of local social search, and wanted to expand on it. Quickly. Yelp was gaining steam, and with Judy’s Book and InsiderPages all growing too, they were convinced that untold amounts of money was to be made.

Thankfully, I had a philosophy, and I stuck with it.

And it became clear relatively quickly that the sales channel and the review channel did not mesh very well. A vice-versa catch-22 – if a business had good reviews, why bother advertising? If a business had bad reviews, why bother advertising?

By not funding and deciding to take my time, I was able to re-assess without having fire being breathed down my neck. Heck I even went on a one week vacation to clear my head.