Once upon a time, a little boy decided he wanted to solve problems. That boy quickly learned that he functioned better in a multi-disciplinary environment and, as he grew, started several companies and sold most of them. Then one day, as he neared manhood (he was a late bloomer), he joined a few other folk and started b5media. It got big. Raised lots of money. He worked hard. So hard that he burnt out.

For the last couple of years, he’s toyed with starting a real new startup. But it wasn’t until today that he was ready to show it to the world.

Announcing: 23press, a startup focused on “making blogging easier for regular humans”!

23press - making blogging easier for regular humans

What Is 23press?

Quite simply, being a blogger is too hard. Even the simple things like finding the right SEO plugin, making a theme “really work”, moving a blog between hosts and backing up your blog… these things are just too hard! 23press will make all the stupid stuff that’s way too hard about blogging a whole lot easier.

Who We Are

The founding team is made up of myself and two other fantastic gents, as well as support from a LOT of friends and family. Terry Smith, who I hired at b5 and then became solid friends with, is our awesome Head Humanizer (ie: he builds the shit that makes your blogging life easier). Terry is easily one of the top WordPress guys in the world, and is super smart to boot, so working together on our own startup was a no brainer.

Second is Jason Hall. Jason’s a bit new to the social media world, but has started startups before, does serious marketing work and is one of the smartest and hardest working guys I’ve ever met. Jason not only makes sure the trains run on time, but in his role as Head Head, ensures marketing, planning and product are all well and truly handled.

And me? Well, I’m the Head Human. It’s my job to grow this puppy and hopefully learn from my lessons last time around!

What We Are Doing

Well, Move That Blog has been out for a few months now. When we released it, we knew we were solving a problem, but the response has been great! We will be releasing a few more tidbits on the rest of the MTB family later this week, including a dedicated version for web hosts (so customers can be moved, or move themselves, in seconds with no hassle).

Beyond that, look for our set of product announcements in the next few days!

The Basics

Wrapping this all up a little bit, here is a bit more info!

  1. Funding:  Unlike my last startup, b5media (which raised, well, a lot of money), this project is currently funded by our own little group. We’ve been asked to allow outside investors in, though, as the vision is fun, so we’ll likely be doing that in January ish. Not that we’ll need it, but money to grow faster is rarely a bad thing.
  2. Founding Team: With both me and Terry having deep roots in the social and blogging spaces, we’re both looking forward to tackling a fresh problem that we can brainstorm with our friends about all over again. And Jason? Well, he’s just happy he gets to come to Canada once in awhile ;-)
  3. Launch Date:  September 1, 2011. Hence announcements coming “soon”!
  4. Products: Well, you have Move That Blog already. After that will be stuff that all bloggers should have readily accessible and without any real work: security, speed, backups, etc. Boring, but important. And after that? Well, that’s when the magic happens. Just wait!
  5. Branding:  We’re a startup. So we did our logo at 99designs. Cause we’d rather work than be super pretty. Besides, when we need pretty we have Jason!
  6. Management:  Luckily, we have many people interested in helping with this project.  Some will be helping grow the effort on a volunteer basis.
  7. Partners: Oh, yeah, we have some. We’ll announce those in the next couple of weeks too. Might be a bit surprising.
  8. Affiliate programs: Yep, coming, any day now.
  9. The name: Oh, yeah. We make stuff easier for “regular humans”. Humans have 23 chromosomes. Also, I have a minor thing for numbers in names!

Next Steps

In the next few days, we’ll be sharing our initial product roadmap for the Move That Blog suite, deeper details on our backup product, and top line info on our line of optimization and security tools. We are aiming to have our backup product in market in the next 4 weeks (let us know if you want to beta test!), and our optimization tools in market 4 weeks later (love startup timelines!).

We’ll also be at BlogWorld LA, making several rather significant announcements, planning and attending WordCamps and ensuring that the next time Jason hops in a cab, he doesn’t wake up in an entirely different city 7 hours later.

Wanna Chat?

Oh, fine, email me: jeremy@23press.com. Or skype: jeremy_wright.