My first company was started back in 1996 and was acquired in 1998. It seems commonplace now, but we were the first company to create a service for web-based cl

My first company was started back in 1996 and was acquired in 1998. It seems commonplace now, but we were the first company to create a service for web-based closed membership communities. The service we were developing had photo albums, calendaring, really advanced messaging boards, an app store, etc. The company (founded in Seattle) was called "Throw," but, most likely, you wouldn't have heard of it because it was acquired before we launched our service. We were one of the five on-stage companies at the Demo conference back in '98 and within days of being on-stage, after years of not being able to get anyone's attention, we (there were six of us) were suddenly being courted by both top-tier VCs and the top three search engines/portals at the time. We chose to be acquired by Excite.com (which is no longer the company that it was). Even though it was only two years from start to finish, it was a long psychological slog and the reason we made it through was because the team was 100% dedicated to our success no matter what the cost. One member of the team had over ten maxxed-out credit cards on the day we were acquired (I didn't find that out until afterwards -- no one ever complained about not getting paid). Before the Demo conference, I had to ask one of my very best friends for a substantial loan to keep the company afloat until the conference. He lent me the money without question. When we were acquired a couple of months later, I gave him double what I borrowed because, without that money, we would have shut down. There are dozens of war stories, but I won't bore you with the details. The second company, NeoMeo, was also acquired before it launched. I co-founded that company back in 2000 (in New York City). It was doing Xobni-type things, but revolved more around making sense of message content. Our service could do things like recognize dates in emails (expressed in various ways), recognize phone numbers, create photo albums from your inbox, etc. We eventually sold the company to Postini which was eventually acquired by Google (for cash), so my friends who made investments in that company also did okay from a return-on-investment perspective. What am I doing now? To be honest, I'm having issues locking onto a single idea. The fluid nature of the economy has given me pause and caused me to second-guess myself more often than I normally would. I have a few solid ideas but haven't committed to one of them yet. So, for now, I've become an architecture astronaut of sorts ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html ) and I'm just enjoying the thing I love to do the most: designing and implementing an architecture to keep my skills sharp. For some reason, I'm reminded of the old joke which I will no-doubt butcher: Did you hear about the programmer who was found dead in the shower? He was holding a shampoo bottle that read "Wash. Rinse. Repeat."