Friday, March 7, 2008

Almost Perfect Feedback

To start a company is to climb aboard an emotional rollercoaster. I left the office on Monday on a real high; we had spent much of the day discussing development plans, and I was exceedingly optimistic about all of them. As I rode the elevator down with a colleague, I said "today was so great that tomorrow is certain to be a downer." And it was, as we focused on all the hard work in front of us to make these plans a reality. Because of my prior experience, I've been able to adopt the Stockdale Paradox (see my earlier blog post) of confronting reality while never losing faith that we will ultimately be successful, in large part because I've assembled a truly remarkable team of talented and passionate people, and passionate people are unstoppable. And yet its still quite rewarding to receive third-party appreciation to affirm our efforts. A week ago, we published AlmostPerfectSeason.com, an anthology of media coverage of the NY Giants' remarkable 2007 season. To read how the media elite emphatically wrote off the team, its defense, quarterback and head coach as hopelessly mediocre, and then celebrating the dramatic Super Bowl win is a terrific tale of redemption.

On Monday, Sports Illustrated named AlmostPerfectSeason a "hot click," and wrote "Here's one of the more amazing sites we've seen in a while." The glowing reviews have poured in steadily since:

"A great website called Almost Perfect Season serves as a time capsule of the incredible 2007-08 Giants campaign..... It is really interesting to look back at many of these articles and how down on the Giants many were early on. "

"stumbled across this amazingly comprehensive synopsis"

"This is an amazing read. If you have the time you can get lost in it for hours."

"Ah, absolutely loved it."

All of these pats on the back don't change the reality that we have a lot of hard work in front of us to make FindingDulcinea the next great Internet brand. But they do strenghten our conviction that we will ultimately triumph.

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