Boy am I glad I have separated the corporate blog from my personal blog. I have written now a very sensible and official post on the corporate blog about our funding round, which took me a very long time to write, as I kept wanting to burst into admissions of honesty.

However, I restrained myself, but now am ready to pop. Here is where I can say what I really feel.

YIIIIHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After 13 months of easily the hardest, most stressful, challenging, exhausting, demoralising, desperate time of my life, I am finally out of the tunnel and the light is strong. I don’t want to jinx myself, and I am not unrealistic about the challenges ahead, so I don’t want to wax too lyrical about how easy life is now. But, I would be lying if I said a mammoth gargantuan weight hadn’t been lifted from me. I feel lighter, younger, bouncier, and so much happier.

I used to describe my life as a mash-up between Groundhog Day and The Dragon’s Den : one never-ending series of pitches where I was politely rejected. There are a lot of similarities between pitching and dating: you don’t get it if you are looking for it, and they can sense the desperation. And I can attest to the truth in that.

Anyway, here are some of the learnings I have gleaned from this process:

1. It takes a lot longer than you plan – months and months and months. And apparently this was a quick funding deal. !!!
2. Read your term sheet very well, and get a lawyer involved early. I didn’t, and suffered a bit for it.
3. Stand up for things that are critical – in my negotiations, there were a few points that I was adamant about. I learned how to negotiate and be firm on the areas that were key for me, my team, and my current investors.
4. Find balance – I was lucky to have incredible non-tech non-startup friends and a boyfriend who soothed the woes from me on the weekends, allowing me to do 15 hour days mid-week. I needed that balance. My family too, although in Australia, were incredibly supportive and full of love.
5. There is always a way that will work – this has actually been a motto in my life… I remember once I bought a large two piece sofa before I saw the flat I was moving into. When it arrived, my boyfriend and I worked for hours trying to find a layout that would work, and we just couldn’t. But I inately felt a solution would appear, and after a few more heavings and pushes, we found it, and it was perfect. This lesson applies to so much of my life: you gotta shove and push and think and take breaks and take advice and shove a bit more, but there is a combination out there that works if you push hard enough.

My favourite quote is from my lead investor’s blog about this deal – he sums it up really well (perhaps better than he realises):

Skimbit is led by tenacious Australian entrepreneur Alicia Navarro who kept her company and vision alive by sheer force of will through a long search for the right business model and then for financing.

Yep, it sure was a sheer force of will. But I’m here now, relieved, thankful, energised and thrilled. My dream continues… to be honest, it kinda has already happened. Yes, I want riches and wealth, but really what drives me isn’t money, its proving I can do it. And in this climate, as an Aussie female with a Spanish name in London in the midst of a financial crisis, to get enough really smart and amazing VCs and Angels to fund my tech startup because they believe in me… and to have my father say he is proud of me… well, what more do I need to do, really? Oh yes, become a millionaire, but its that sense of inner glee and pride that I yearned for, and now, have.

The road still stretches out before me, but I tread it now confidently, and with a brave heart.

As many of you know, we are crazy busily working on the new release of Skimbit (due this week – I’m sure you are waiting with anticipation how amazing it will be!).

This has of course meant lots of late nights in the office. Sometimes we don’t eat at all (not good), and sometimes we get pizza delivered to the office for dinner (even worse). I’ve had pizza two nights in a row and feel like a bloated heifer.

So this morning, in the interests of team health and vitality, I bought a heap of fruit for the team to feast on when they get peckish.

And isn’t is wonderfully symbolic that completely unintentionally, the bowl of fruit is placed obstinately on top of the pamphlet for our local pizza place. I think there is something meaningful there for all of us

My favourite saying at the moment is this:

“I can either work myself to the bone, and not get everything done that I need to; or I can NOT work myself to the bone, and STILL not get everything done that I need to…. so there is little point in killing myself in the process.”

I say this, yet here I am, its half past midnight, my eyes are so blurry I can’t focus on the font before me, my back is screaming in agony, and my tummy is not at its prettiest after too much toast… and STILL I haven’t got everything done that I need to.

As you may have read in a previous post, I recently had an incident with a wayward cup of miso soup, that decided to disastrously waterfall all over my IBM laptop. I should be grateful that due to some quick-thinking drying under a ladies room hairdryer, and a kind boyfriend who spent the next hour dismantling the computer so I could dry each component, the computer remained pretty much intact: no data was lost, and I could still use the laptop.

However, one quite hilarious outcome was the screen lost the ability to render black, and rendered it as red instead… so everything was in shades of pink. You could work on it fine, and I did get used to it, but every now and then someone would pass my desk and laugh at me for being so girlie… I then had to explain that the pink was absolutely not a deliberate choice… After a while, this became more of an issue than I like to admit!

Of course, there were other more sensible reasons to change laptops – my computer had ground to a halt speed-wise, and considering I like to work with about 20 open applications, my little ol’ PC just wasn’t coping. And the final problem was Norton’s anti-virus which managed to render my computer unusable for 30 minutes a few times a day. So, for all these reasons, I decided to buy a new laptop.

I steadfastly refused to buy a Mac for ages, despite my office-mates all using them and singing Apple’s praises constantly. And my reasons, I admit, were a little strange. Firstly, I like the IBM trackpoint (that little red thing you use instead of a trackpad), and only IBM has them. I like how I don’t have to move my hand to do everything I need to do on my computer, and again, due to the manic pace at which I use my laptop, this is a critical factor for me. Secondly, I have little hands, and I liked having a US/Aus keyboard as I could reach the Enter key easily (UK keyboards have a small enter key that is too far away for my little finger to reach while touch-typing). Finally, there was this resistance to going with the crowd – everyone kept praising Macs, it was almost not cool enough to do what everyone else did. Yes, I know, silly reasons.

In the end, I went for it though. And I mitigated my first two complaints by buying an IBM USB keyboard in Australia – so I can still use the IBM trackpoint on an Aussie keyboard, on my new MacBook Pro!! And in the end, I see what the fuss is all about – it really is an utterly superb machine and operating system. I bow gracefully to all those I rebuked for so long, it is a delight and pleasure to use, and considering the amount of time I spend at my computer, a little bit of extra pleasure never goes astray!

The Apple purists around me still moan and laugh when they see me – there with an IBM USB keyboard attached to my Mac, and perhaps this little idiosyncracy helps mitigate my third concern – I certainly am not going with the crowd with THIS ol’ system!