The Push Is On... Vote For 12seconds!

12seconds has been nominated for a Crunchie Award. "Best Bootstrapped Startup". This is very exciting for me and my friends working on 12seconds. Let me get this out of the way now... Please vote for 12seconds. You can vote once per day, so keep coming back and cast a vote until the polls close. 

"Bootstrapped", in this sense, means a company that hasn't raised more than $100,000. In our case, we haven't raised a penny.  There have been many articles written about us and our approach lately, but check out what Robert Scoble has to say in his post from 12/27, "30 Minutes at 12seconds.tv Shows Future of 'Reality Based' Startups". Scoble came by the day after Christmas to hang out and to see what we're up to... I'll embed the video below. It's pretty cool. Scoble has been very gracious. 

"The video I shot with 12seconds.tv is a good example of "real" entrepreneurialism that will lead to good things for all of us."

It's been quite a year. Sol and I realized today that we first met up and talked about the idea of 12seconds (then 10seconds) last December 19th. This was the third time I had ever seen him. We went to a pub and just started chatting. I had an idea and Sol liked it. We ended the evening deciding that we're going to do this thing. We weren't sure how, but we were going to do it no matter what. The thing that's important to understand is that how we ended up making this happen is all Sol. We could have built out several ideas, but they all would have been built the same. Sol's vision was to bring the community of Santa Cruz geeks together, and use our friends and networks to accomplish what normally costs several hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions, for burritos, barter, and a share of the success. Sol is an amazing dude. The result of all of this has been incredible. A rad co-working space has been created, I have more friends in Santa Cruz than I could have imagined, and more startups are coming to Santa Cruz to take advantage of the talent and atmosphere. 

Yahoo has been pretty cool about all of this too. They've allowed me to work on 12seconds in my spare time without any interference.

What most people don't know is that beyond work, this has been one of the most difficult years of my life. Physically and otherwise. So I'm not quite sure how all of this has happened. The help, hard work, and support of Jacob, Ben, Tracy, William, Margaret, Mindi, Rob, Speiser, Jeremy, Ryan, Pat, Eric, Santosh, Justin, Kelvin, Kevin, and all the other geeks is sooo appreciated (and of course my lover Sol).  Not to mention the awesome 12seconds community that has been so supportive and inspiring...

12seconds is not trying to change the world. We're trying to bring personal updates and web video creation to a wider audience. In doing so we want to create an open and sustainable service and community. If our model for doing it is inspiring or does indeed change things, then that's a bonus. Ultimately this is about community and family. Sol, Jacob, and I are doing everything possible to make this work so we can be closer to our family and friends. In Santa Cruz and on the site.

There's more to this story, because we're writing it every day. Stay tuned. Oh and VOTE! :)