The 1st Year is the Hardest

Just in case you missed it: On July 5, GigaOM celebrated its 1st Birthday. In “Om’s humble tribute”:http://gigaom.com/2007/07/06/the-longest-year-the-shortest-365-days/ to his first 365 days as an entrepreneur, Found|READ’s indefatigable leader, and muse, reflected on his biggest lesson of all: that the work of a founder is non-stop; “no pauses, no breaks, no time to stop and smell the roses.” As Om now knows, a founder’s life is filled, mainly, with attempting new things, recognizing one’s mistakes, and making adjustments. “Each day was different, each situation unique… we all learned how to deal with whatever came our way.” Which is why he is always drawn to baseball analogies. Pitch. Analyze. Adjust. Like a pitcher on the mound. Which, ultimately, is just what a founder is—the person who puts the game in play. Not that all of you don’t already know this, but on the occasion of my friend’s anniversary, here’s to all of you who put the game in motion. You give the rest of us a reason to take the field.

The full text of Om’s piece begins here:

The longest year, the shortest 365 days
After eighteen hours stuck in the middle seat on what seemed to be an unending journey back home, I arrived yesterday in San Francisco, whip lashed by a monster jetlag, and an email box full of messages. And all I wanted to do was meet up with the GigaTeam, and have a quiet drink to celebrate an important milestone in our brief start-up life: our first anniversary.

On July 5th, we turned one year old as a company, capping what has been the longest year in my life, and the shortest 365 days. Each day was different, each situation unique, and every crisis a flashpoint. Together, we all learned how to deal with whatever came our way. It has been a year, in baseball parlance, when we struck out a lot, adjusted, hopeful that we could hit one out of the park.

The biggest lesson for me personally—the start-up life is non-stop: no pauses, no breaks, no time to stop and smell the roses. We went from being me, and one blog, to four sites, and seven people. The journey has been made enjoyable thanks to team members, Katie, Liz, Joey, and Carleen. (Don’t worry – I will get to the other two in a minute.)

And that doesn’t include folks who have worked tirelessly through the year, either as contributors, tech gurus and our well wishers. Or the always-supportive True Ventures, who as backers have let me stumble my way through this start-up thing.

Looking back, this has been a satisfying year: we successfully launched WebWorkerDaily, NewTeeVee and FoundREAD. Of course we weren’t always this lucky – IPNetworked and GigaGamez didn’t work out so well for us.

I just wanted to say thanks to all you readers, for giving us your time, and sharing your insights with us, and helping us mature as a company.

Now back to those two missing names: Mike Sly, an old friend from Red Herring joins as a Vice President of Sales, helping us explore new opportunities as we ramp up our events business and grow the publishing operation. He is going to be working in tandem with Federated Media.

And of course, last but not the least, we have Adena DeMonte joining us from the Red Herring as a general assignment reporter, and helping us on something new we have cooking up. So folks, here is to next 12 months… now back to work!

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