At this point, the reason we're in the red, month-to-month, is because we've been using the money we had in reserve to finance growth and expansion (Mark going fulltime on DW, hiring Afuna, traveling to tech conferences to learn about new technology that we can implement -- did you know that site search came out of last year's trip to OSCON? -- that kind of thing). We are absolutely 100% not worried about our long-term sustainability and profitability. What we're worried about (well, worry is a strong word, but still), and why we want to run this April fundraising drive, is having the necessary money in the bank to fund that growth and development, because there are some improvements you can only make if you have the capital to back it up.
I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and small-business owners, so I have a really solid background in nurturing a small business through the critical years until you reach profitability. It isn't something you get to overnight, or even within the first year. That's precisely why we did the seed account sale at startup -- so we would be guaranteed to have the capital necessary to cover rough spots over the first year or two, and give us the room to spend on growth and development when we thought it made rational business sense -- and it's what's let us weather the fact of credit card payments being, essentially, down since mid-January.
The desire to restock that fund shouldn't be taken as "DW is having financial problems", it's more that we've used enough of the safety net we had established that we think it's important to restock. Our operating agreement specifies that we keep six months of operating expenses on hand at all times, and the events of the last few months have eaten into that. We want to get back up there.
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At this point, the reason we're in the red, month-to-month, is because we've been using the money we had in reserve to finance growth and expansion (Mark going fulltime on DW, hiring Afuna, traveling to tech conferences to learn about new technology that we can implement -- did you know that site search came out of last year's trip to OSCON? -- that kind of thing). We are absolutely 100% not worried about our long-term sustainability and profitability. What we're worried about (well, worry is a strong word, but still), and why we want to run this April fundraising drive, is having the necessary money in the bank to fund that growth and development, because there are some improvements you can only make if you have the capital to back it up.
I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and small-business owners, so I have a really solid background in nurturing a small business through the critical years until you reach profitability. It isn't something you get to overnight, or even within the first year. That's precisely why we did the seed account sale at startup -- so we would be guaranteed to have the capital necessary to cover rough spots over the first year or two, and give us the room to spend on growth and development when we thought it made rational business sense -- and it's what's let us weather the fact of credit card payments being, essentially, down since mid-January.
The desire to restock that fund shouldn't be taken as "DW is having financial problems", it's more that we've used enough of the safety net we had established that we think it's important to restock. Our operating agreement specifies that we keep six months of operating expenses on hand at all times, and the events of the last few months have eaten into that. We want to get back up there.