Life is what happens while you are making plans....

John Lennon said it (probably quoting someone else) but it is true.

I started to write this blog entry. Then the unexpected came to visit. And things changed. 

smudge being groomed by scout

Smudge, the darker of my two adopted cats ran away for two nights.  She simply vanished without a trace. Around my neighborhood, that usually means an owl, coyote, bobcat or mountain lion had been to visit.  I spent a day mourning. But an old story was about to repeat itself.

But the cat came back, she couldn't stay no long-er,
Yes the cat came back de very next day,
the cat came back—thought she were a goner,
But the cat came back for it wouldn't stay away.    
 (Traditional - Harry S. Miller, 1924)

In our case, three days. 35 feet up in a neighbor's tree, we saw ravens croaking and diving at something. It was Smudge. We coaxed her down from her treetop. Since then, it has been like having a ghost share our house. A changed ghost. Always hard to catch outdoors at twilight, she would run away and play "chase me" in the gathering dark, sometimes with coyotes starting to howl not so far away. We'll never know what happened. But she is quiet proof that hope is a durable thing, that faith has a place in our lives, that courage and self reliance can outlast, outwait and outlive overwhelming odds with sharp teeth.

--- Meanwhile ----

The dog I adopted from the pound a month ago has been looking a bit unkempt.

day he arrived from the pound. this is one worried pup

Then, yesterday his hair began to come off of him in handfuls.  Uh-oh.  Was he sick?  A thorough brushing revealed no, he was getting his long summer coat.

at 2 weeks after adoption

at one month after adoption

  What I thought was a short haired dog appears to be getting "feathers" the long hair of a ruff and tail that is typical of a border collie.  Who knows why he'd been clipped, but it is beginning to look like what I thought was a border collie cross may end up having the long hair typical of a border collie.  That makes me happy.


While 3D's fur lengthens, we continue to work on our Pony Pals game.

Launching Club Pony Pals took a lot of hard work and patient negotiation. We got the rights to a best selling book series and launched an internet site to promote its brand.

I've been acting on well honed instincts. My dad was an entrepreneur in the classic mold. He built a company in Minnesota and was bought out. Then he moved to California and built a company there and was bought out by a different big company.

So I've got the spirit in my genes.

But that alone may not be enough these days.

Pundits love to pound out persistent, lurid, dire warnings of ruin and failure for the venturesome: 

TechCrunch published an article that said if you are over 25 you can forget getting VC.

Then there is the "known lack of VC going to women entrepreneurs."

But was Arrington's (acquired) magazine quoting fact or fancy? Here are his charts about who gets venture money

Looking at the graphs, it is clear that men get a lot of angel investments. 

But judging from the amount of money invested, the winners are teams who are over 35, mixed gender, and have two founders.  Like, say, for instance....US!

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.  Lucille Ball

An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity. Sir Winston Churchill

We have great member retention.  Of our members who completed registration, better than half return monthly, many several times a day. A whole wagon load of better funded competitors of ours do not do anywhere near as well as we do, either.

So we look good. We have revenue. Our members are not into gore, violence, killing or shooting.  There is no combat in our club. Yet a legendary warrior had a sage insight:

No time is wasted that is spent in the saddle. Winston Churchill

Club Pony Pals offers riding.
We offer a respite from armchair warfare.
We reward compassion and caring for others.
In short, we have created an online destination where members are rewarded for being -- well, nice.

So far, all of our site's growth has been via word of mouth. That tells us that there is a global, underserved market that desperately wants a place where members and their parents don't have to worry about being bullied or hassled. 

So we have worldwide demand, our members stick around, we have revenue.  We are now ready to scale.

But we aren't just a passenger on this wild ride. 
 
Now we are publishing a magazine, too.

As it turns out, the world is watching us rather closely. As always, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. 

Another publisher apparently is trying draft our marketing of the Pony Pals brand.

One article said

...a lot of the dollars currently spent on traditional advertising are migrating to gaming. Businesses are beginning to understand keeping customers engaged on their website is easier if something entertaining is being offered.

But originality, boldness, daring and nerve are on our side.

We have created an entertaining, sticky online game, and have a suite of rights that includes online, mobile, an existing Facebook game, console game rights, feature film rights and television. And merchandise.

And sometimes, even small things make a big difference:
this week we started sending a follow up letter to people who tried to register for our site but did not succeed, almost all the time due to the ubiquitous Spam filter.

Our percentage of completed registrations has promptly risen by 10%.

Cats come back, persistence pays off and not all sensational headlines are true. To paraphrase the late IF Stone, ".....the secret is not to mope and to get out of bed in the morning."