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!!

If you haven’t already noticed (and shame on you if you haven’t!), we have finally updated our homepage to a new and funkier style. Our original homepage design was a legacy of our ultra-bootstrapping days, when I had to ply my designer friends with wine and meals so they would create a homepage design for me on a nonexistent budget. And now that things are getting better, and I can afford to pay a designer, it was time to freshen up.

So please check it out and let us know your thoughts. Better yet – become a featured skimmer by telling us about the clever ways you use Skimbit.

One interesting piece of feedback I received from the ex-Dragon’s Den judge – Doug Richard – was that I should not market Skimbit as an all-purpose research and decision-making tool (because people don’t realise they need this), and instead market it as a solution to very specific problems, and to pick a few of them. For example, its a service for organising group holidays, planning weddings, and making important purchases. And then, he says, to make this the primary message of the homepage, and indeed the whole application.

Interestingly, quite a few other people have come back with similar feedback, so its definitely something I will factor into the next version of the homepage, and definitely something I will do with my forthcoming PR and advertising campaigns.

It is fascinating operating in this web environment having come from a software development background where development lifecycles were 6 months long, and if you changed your mind about a requirement, you had to wait 6 months to request it. These days, with web applications, it is not only easy, but necessary to make rapid iterative changes to design and functionality, to see what works best. It is indescribably difficult to take a step back sometimes from something I am so intimate with, and see what will work and what won’t, so chatting to new people who hear about Skimbit and visit the site is a highly educational and useful thing to do.

So I hope you like the new homepage, and find it communicates better what Skimbit is all about, especially to those not-so-technical people out there. Bit by bit we will work our way through the whole site, so it eventually will glow with brilliance (we hope!).

I am very thrilled to launch the new and improved Skimbit blog!

Up until now, Birth of a Startup was about my experiences creating Skimbit over the last year and a half. But things are different now… our operations have moved from Sydney to London, I have funding from the bank, I have a fantastic customer for my Skim-in-a-box product, and there is starting to be a bit of buzz about what Skimbit is all about. So it made sense to revamp the blog into something vaguely appealing.

Let me know what you think of the new design… created by the brilliant team of Jason and Stéphane of Research & Development.

Its a happy day today… to be discussed on someone else’s blog is one thing… but to be discussed on TechCrunch is pretty exciting stuff! And even more special is that I am three blog posts away from my good friend Nigel’s company Zygo Communications. Not a bad day for Skimbit.

So, now I just need this post to inspire other influential bloggers, and this buzz to drive customers to the site and potential clients knocking on my door… So if anyone is reading this and owns a blog… be a mate and start the buzz!

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