Voip2020

Toktumi's launch at DEMO 2008

Toktumi is Live!  We launched yesterday at 10:03 am, but not without drama! Despite endless rehearsals, we forgot one scenario - what if MSFT powerpoint pops up an unexpected message during the demo!?!?!  Well, that happened, and it threw off my biz partner Ben.  We managed to get most of what we wanted to show done, and finished within 6 minutes as required, but is was a moment of shear terror for both of us.  Lucky for us, we got to do a redo - so that unhappy start has been vaporized and replaced with a fine demo on our website.  I thank the DEMO tech team for offering us the redo - it's a very rare thing! I must say I can't help but wonder if we were helped a little bit by Ben's expressiveness.  The stream of words that came out of his mouth (words spelled like this: *#&%@!) were picked up on the mic, loud and clear!

On the brink of launch

Toktumi launches next Tuesday, Jan 29th, at the DEMO conference.  I have neglected my blog during the past few months because I've been swamped getting ready for launch.   We have a superb team of Moscow-based developers who have been doing most of the work on the desktop software and website, but beyond that we rely on the kindness of our partners Global IP Solutions and Color Broadband, both of whom have dedicated resources to help make sure everything is in place for our launch, along with our excellent board of advisors, our commercial partners, and others who are working to make Toktumi a success.  But to save money, I've hired no employees yet!  I want to keep our cash burn as low as possible until we can raise our next round of capital.  This allows us to reach important milestones (launch being the biggest) without spending too much money.  Plus, I don't like to make promises I can't keep, and I don't like to hire people unless I'm sure I'm going to have the money to pay them.   I've had to design the website and software almost entirely myself!  Just about every word on the website, every item in the software, every error message was written by me, with obvious room for improvement.  I can't wait to close our Series B so I can start hiring some help!