Bickel Blog

I get pinged a couple of times per week by people about starting up a business.  Almost always the question is "How do I get funded". My common answer is take money when you don't need it, because that is the only time when people will want to give it to you. And don't take money when you need it, because people won't want to give it to you then. Why I was a Fan of VC Funding Here is an example story. In 1994 Bluestone had created a tool that made it easy to develop applications for the web that were driven from a database.  Today this is how all websites work, but it was the early days.  We were funding the development ourselves out of cash flow, and investors approached us - Bessemer actually gave us a term sheet. The founder declined.  Our competitors (Spider Technology, which became NetDynamics) got funding and we were forced to respond to match their higher levels of spending and go look for venture funds.  Of course when we did, our final term sheet w

We are developing some really great technology at RunSignUp.  So we are starting a separate company to bring some of the technology to market.  I'll be posting more about this later, but this is worth talking about now as it is in production and we have a number of people who have stumbled upon it and are using it. One of the things we developed was a   Zip Code API  (some people spell it Zipcode API ) .  We developed this API to provide a list of Zip Codes within a certain Radius.  We use this for the Running Club/Store widget for providing a list of races within a certain distance of a store or club.  We are also going to be updating our UI so runners can enter their zip code and we will fill in the City and State automatically. The  Zip Code API  provides the following functions: Distance Between Zip Code API  - The API allows you to quickly and easily figure out the distance between zip codes. Zip Codes in Radius API  - You can use this API to find all zip codes withi