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CB Stealth - our start-up gaining traction

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This is the third in a running series of stories I have been posting about a new Internet company that I am a seed investor in and sit on the advisory board of. I hope to report on the progress of the company from the inside and share my feelings and education about the process, and the progress of the company as it grows. This afternoon we are having another investor presentation. We expect to have our beta site up and running in two to three weeks, and we hope to go 'live' and start building the community a month after that.

New social networking sites are springing up every day and becoming more specialized. When we go live I will be able to disclose more but for now CB Stealth is doing all the right things as we reach for rung after rung. We are not a social networking site -- we are a community. There is a social aspect to our community but it is not the heart of the community. Our business model depends on subscriptions and software sales and support. Targeted advertising will be a secondary revenue generator but our model does not rely on that. We expect some corporate and foundation sponsorship based on the focused community we are growing.

Raising capital is interesting because some people are able to write the check without much hesitation and others fret about all the wrong things, and more often than you would think having the liquidity is not an issue although some use that as an excuse. CB Stealth is getting a big head start by acquiring another smaller and even more focused community that the founders played a role in creating.

Last week we achieved several milestones. We received a VC seal of approval when one of the first round angel investors in Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) joined our advisory board and invested. We also made our first presentation to a segment of our target community and were overwhelmingly well-received. We developed four new revenue features beyond the subscriptions, software sales upgrades, advertising, and sponsorships.

Internet start-ups seem to operate in hyper-drive: Money, time, and energy get used up fast no matter how much you plan and things seem ready to explode to the upside each day, although some of that is in our imaginations as we consider the potential of the company. We always need to temper our exuberance, and the real world of business does a good job of keeping everyone grounded. The big event though will be when we go live and find out if the free version of our platform experiences a viral growth pattern. I'll keep you posted.

The first two stories in this adventure were Angel Investing: the considerations - Chapter 1 and Angel Investing: CB Stealth beta - impressive

Those of you who are new to Bloggingstocks.com can check out my other stories and read Chasing Value or Serious Money to find more potential opportunities and verify my track record as well.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the vice president for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. Check out his other posts for BloggingStocks here.

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Last updated: November 23, 2009: 08:42 AM

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