When I first started this blog, I had a grand vision. I would write about the trials and tribulations of starting a web startup, imparting the wisdom I picked up along the way, and the mishaps that would no doubt trip me up as I trudged on.

Part of my strategy was to keep my burgeoning company name a secret, to build anticipation and a community around my soon-to-be-launched website. This strategy partly worked: a small following tracked my progress, and I could be delightfully honest about my experiences. I was no-one, and my company didn’t exist yet, so I was frank and vulnerable in all my posts. Look back and read if you are interested.

Then, I launched my website, moved to London, and threw myself into the entrepreneurial scene. I became relatively known, and my website started to be known. I started seeking VC funding, and needed to demonstrate how capable I was, and how great things were going. I found my blogging compromised, as I could no longer share my vulnerabilities, mishaps and hopes, on what had become my company’s blog.

A great deal has occurred in the last few months, which I have covered in what is now to be my company’s blog. I want to reclaim Birth of a Startup now, to return to being my personal blog, where I write honestly, with both vulnerability and hopeful pride, about what it is to be a female Australian tech entrepreneur, living in London.

So please, if you want to read about my businesses, delete this blog from your RSS feed. If you are new to this blog, add it to your RSS, but make no effort to find out about my businesses. It is best if we keep the two separate. Of course, I may have achieved nothing but stirring your curiosity, but I hope that you respect the spirit in which this blog reinvention is made. Welcome to Birth of a Startup!

If you haven’t already noticed - and shame on you if you haven’t - we have had a rather dramatic relaunch of our site. It isn’t just the great new visual interface we have built, which is simple, elegant and clean… but we have done lots of little things that overall will make your experience of Skimbit so much more pleasurable, fast, intuitive… we have learnt so much over the past year as to what works and what doesn’t and we have taken all those learnings and implemented them in our new site.

So, give it a try, and please take a moment to tell your friends about Skimbit. Sites like Skimbit really make it when their community of users take pride in telling other people about it, so please help us become known and loved. We built Skimbit to really help and be useful for any sort of internet research or decision-making task, so keep us in mind whenever you are doing any research online, or are trying to decide on something with a group!

And finally, my final post on Startups.co.uk reflecting on Web Mission 08 and what it has meant to Skimbit:

I have been back a few days from my Web Mission expedition to San Francisco. It’s taken me this long to recuperate and take stock of everything that went on.

I’m still in a state of shock and awe. It was a beyond successful week, exceeding even my overly ambitious expectations. Pretty much everything I’d hoped would happen, did happen.

What, you ask? Well, firstly, and most importantly, forming strategic partnerships with bookmark aggregators like Gigya and Add to Any. They were both San Francisco/Valley based, so I managed to set meetings up with them while I was there, and I can joyfully report that both companies completely understood my business, Skimbit, and agreed to include our ‘Skim this!’ badge in their bookmarking buttons.

I then managed to meet the team from AddThis.com at the Web 2.0 conference I attended in San Francisco, and managed to get them on board too. This is a huge win for us, and puts us on the same playing field as Digg and Delicious, though with a different enough focus and target market to compete effectively.

Then, potential customers for our white-label service, Skim-in-a-box… I had hoped to get leads for new clients, but as I didn’t have any meetings booked, my expectations were low. However, I was introduced to several incredibly exciting and high profile web entities, who you will all know, and they expressed not only interest, but a serious intent to partner.

I won’t spill the beans yet on who these companies are, but they will totally make my business when they come through. Understandably, I’m pretty chuffed.

From a funding perspective, my expectations were also very low, as I’d been repeatedly told US based investors won’t consider UK based companies. However, I had a meeting with a high profile seed investor, who said the distance issue – although challenging – is not insurmountable, and they are currently considering investing in Skimbit.

I had hoped WebMission would attract a lot of very much welcomed media exposure, and to my glee, this also turned out beyond expectation. In the last week I have been TechCrunched, on the BBC, the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, and soon to be in The Telegraph and Spectator. Not bad for a tiny little start-up!

But I would have to say, without a doubt, the best outcome of WebMission was the networking, interaction, and bonding that went on with the rest of the WebMission team. What really stood out to me is how innovative, supportive, and ambitious us Brits (well, I’m an Aussie, but you know what I mean) are, and that although going to the US was helpful and educational, we should be darn proud of what we have back home.

So now, as I deal with the avalanche of work, leads to follow, deals to execute on, and investments to finalise, I am buzzing with joy and elation that I’m on the right path, and the light at the end of the tunnel is bright and beckoning.

Some more exciting news for Skimbit… Web Mission 08 is a competition for the top UK based start-ups to head over to Silicon Valley to promote our businesses and form strategic partnerships. Initially I didn’t think it was for Skimbit - to enter you had to indicate how ’socially sustainable’ your business was, and if selected, had to contribute a sizeable sum of cash, certainly more than flights and hotels in San Francisco would have been if I bought them directly. But - I reckoned - it was a great opportunity and worth the effort, so I entered.

And when I found out I was accepted, although I was pleased, I do have to admit I had a fleeting moment of thinking “Well, I bet not many people applied, its not such a big deal…”

So imagine my surprise when I found out that over 100 start-ups had competed, and only 20 were selected! And that the judging panel included Doug Richard and Mike Butcher! And that there is huge press coverage of the event: Skimbit even managed to appear on TechCrunch US!

And looking at the agenda, I now totally realise what a fabulous opportunity this is! I’m busily trying to organise meetings with potential partners in the Valley and San Fran (if you are one, or know of one, let me know!), and am meeting with some US-based PR firms to help my ‘launch’ in the US. Very exciting stuff!!