Well, it looks like my post last week on the mesh forum contained a tidbit of gossip. According to it, b5media will soon announce that we’re going after funding, or so says Blog Network Watch.
Several folk have weighed in on this, including Blog Herald, Paul Montgomery and alarm:clock.
Just to repeat, we haven’t announced anything. So I’m not going to talk about this to any degree in the public space. First, if you do a search of the Ensight archives you’ll find a wealth of info on my thoughts on the VC world. Those stand true today. In short, I look at VC as a partnership between the business and the funding partners (be they VC, angel, corporate or mentor capital - or a mixture of all 4). You share the risk. You share the reward. You look to build something important.
So, yes, in the last few weeks 2 key opportunities have come our way. Opportunities that we’ve decided to open the door to, to see what’ll happen. We’re not going to put the business on hold. We are not going to chat the way we do business day to day. Yes, we’re looking at the funding options available to us (including early stage, obviously) in order to see what makes sense for our bloggers, readers, partners and the future of the industry.
But, that’s all we’ll say. And, even when we do close a round, all we’ll say is who our partners in the endeavour are. We won’t talk about what we’ll use the money for, new tech we’ll be devel0ping or new hires we’re hoping to make.
All of those discussion are internal to b5media and will stay that way. I appreciate that everyone wants to know all the details and that everyone has an opinion. If I was on the outside of this I’m sure I’d have more than a few myself. Opinions are great, feel free to express them. We’ll take every opinion we hear into account because, let’s face it, 20 million heads are better than 4.
But we still won’t play this out in the public arena. In fact, this is likely the last post you’ll see on the matter until we do close a round of funding, if we do. We’d be happy just to keep on keeping on, building a great business with an inspiring team. Have a great week everyone 
Jeremy I’m elated for you if this happens. You guys are sharp and I’m looking forward to meeting up with you at the Mesh confernce next month.
Yeah like a little buzz and rumouring is a bad thing
We would like to announce the forthcoming release of the b5 Operating System in conjunction with Altavista web search. Details to follow shortly.
Aaron,
Don’t forget the weekly blogger-dancer, training cruises, so the folks at 9 rules can sign up.