The rise and fall of ArsDigita

Joel Spolsky links to this interesting article - Diary of a Start-Up: the rise and fall of ArsDigita. Another tale of the fun, exciting, different start-up killed in the .com boom by VCs.

However, the comments at the end are good, and provide some balance to the anti-VC content. I like this quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Just shows that we didn’t do so badly at STNC, with limiting our VC funding, and selling out to Microsoft, although how much of that was luck and how much judgement is a matter for individual speculation ;-)