Your article is very timely. In fact I have a start-up that I have been building with a small team paid by sweat-equity. I also have an excellent and motivated business partner & co-founder who I trust and I keep on admiring his dedication and motivation despite having the most difficult time in raising seed money (apparently a requirement/excuse for VCs to event get involved). We are building a Web utility that facilitates information consumption. We are testing it with friends and family and the results are very encouraging. Given the state of the economy and the lack of financial resources, we have decided to continue to boot-strap our business and we will be releasing our Web tool for people to use. By the way, I found your article this morning using our product. The idea is to introduce it and demonstrate its usefulness through actual usage and viral distribution. We are also reducing our initial set of features to reduce the risk and wait for a measurable adoption rate to make a stronger case for funding. We are not serial entrepreneurs and deeply believe in what we have. We are convinced that with our passion, on-going re-enforcement from our users, the academic community and peers, we have what we need to fuel our passion and success. We are confident that we will succeed regardless of the investor community’s current mood. Thanks for a great article!
Thierry Hubert