Friday 5 September 2008

If Not Trees - Where Does Money Grow?


Yes, after our brief hiatus we are back and blogging.

I feel like I owe you all an update and an explanation so lets start with the latter. Money.

For the last fortnight, RBD-HQ has been consumed by the activities surrounding raising finance. As many of you will know, and contrary to popular media, we have to date funded the company through competitions, grants, personal investment, in kind support and scrooge-like penny pinching. Not because it was our planned funding route, but because we were able to seize opportunities to access unconventional funds by being active in our network and on the internet. These opportunities enabled us to stave off the sale of equity until we felt the company had become sufficiently appealing and valuable. We are now feeling the benefits of that painful catch-22 "it takes money to grow money". This infinite regress is the bane of every start up but (to adopt the analogy) you need only one seed planted carefully to grow a tree full of your own seeds. Our tree started with £500, took root, and we're now trying get it to grow.
So we've been out.
Gardening ;o)

On to the update: aside from laps of the garden (literally this time, see above) we're arranged meetings for the next six weeks including representatives from EU External Aid Funding, UNHCR, The Red Cross, Asian Development Bank, and the World Health Organisation. We'll also be filming for "Newsnight Scotland" and the follow up for "The Dragons' Den", and on Friday I'll be back in London for the "Girls! Make Your Mark" Award Ceremony - if you voted, thank you, the results of the public vote and the prizes awarded by the judging panel will be announced live that afternoon.

And of course, we've been settling into our new website design. Isn’t it stunning? Just another couple of strings to James’ bow, not only did he do almost all the coding (I took what you might want to call a 'supervisory' role), but the photography is his handywork too.* If you're accessing this blog direct or from an RSS syndication I encourage you to take a peek at our new website at www.thisisredbutton.co.uk or our newly acquired and long awaited domain www.redbuttondesign.co.uk where this blog can also be accessed directly.

Needless to say with all the exciting things we've got lined up over the next month and a half, this blog will be buzzing. Make sure you don't miss anything by adding us to your syndication.

*If you want to see more of James’ Photography, or incidentally another website he authored, check out his personal photography and portfolio site www.james-elliot.co.uk

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