It’s over!…sort of

Posted by Jon on Aug 22, 2007

Well, after some of the most intense weeks of my life TechStars is finally over. I have to admit that pretty much everything since our TechCrunch post has been a blur. Trying to keep up with everything has been a real challenge and brought out time management skills I haven’t had to use since finals week my senior year of undergrad (ok it wasn’t that long ago, but it sure feels like it’s been forever). And yet somehow I managed to survive…and thrive.

We made it through our investor’s day and wrapped up TechStars. It’s been quite an amazing experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world. The mentoring and connections have been priceless. Although stressful, this past week or so has only furthered my excitement for TechStars from all the random connections that have been sprouting up either directly or indirectly from this program. And although we’re wrapping up and TechStars is over it’s by no means an end. It’s a new phase of the company that I am really looking forward to.

I’ve spent a few days trying to settle in (and furnish) my new apartment, but for better or worse it’s time to get back to the crazy hours of work I kept up during TechStars. I’m way behind on emails, bugs, and pushing stuff out as a result of TechStars wrapping up, Investor Day, and moving, but it’s time to finally get caught up and move forward again. So to any of you reading this that are getting upset that I haven’t responded to your email, fixed the bug you found, or pushed out a feature you’ve requested I want to appologize and let you know that I am finally going to be able to get caught up on all of this.

In short, although I’m sad to see TechStars end it is really just the beginning of a new phase for us here at Intense Debate. A new phase that I’m am very excited about. We’ve got a lot of cool stuff in the works and hopefully you’ll be seeing some of it very soon.


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Crazy Day…

Posted by Jon on Aug 8, 2007

What a crazy day it’s been. Today was our launch into beta-ish (basically beta, but still a few kinks to work out…and since everyone now associates beta with something new and exciting rather than something not fully tested, thanks largely to Google, we are sticking with the “-ish” for a little longer). We’ve been running on little or no sleep for the last few days trying to get everything done in time. It’s finally starting to pay off though as today was a big day for us at Intense Debate.

First, David Cohen was nice enough to write up a great review of us on his blog on Colorado Startups which is also cross-posted to the TechStars Blog. Then, shortly after, Brad Feld wrote up a small post about us as well. And as if this wasn’t enough this same evening were were featured on TechCrunch too (and even on TechCrunch Japan). To add a little more stress, we also presented at the Boulder New Tech Meetup tonight.

These great write ups have introduced us to a lot of potential beta testers and given us tons of feedback on our product. There is definitely no better way to improve your offering than to just put it out there and let people play with it. The feedback of a real user is far more valuable than hours of playing with it yourself. Trust me, I can not emphasize this enough.

All in all we’ve made it through another day, ending much better than we started. All we need to do now is make every day as helpful as this one was…


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