jamparii

According to Jim Tuffin, CEO and founder of Jamparii, they have now put the project on hold due to lack of funding. He says that all funds received are returned. I have no reason not to trust his words.

Jamparii serves as an example of how good (or bad) ideas need a critical mass to survive. Building a business is hard work and high risk. I usually see two main reasons young business fails:

• Lack of funding
• Lack of patience

Lack of funding is usually due to the fact that things takes much more time, and costs more money than first imagined. I have seen, and been part of, this kind of failure. It hurts, and it is not fun. The only way to deal with this is to get the funds in time, and enough of it.

Lack of patience is different - this happens if investors, or key members, stop trusting the product. This creates a downward spiral where all energy in the venture goes away, and takes with it the passion that is required to succeed.

Happily, way too few business creators know this. And if they know, they are able to push it aside and get their venture going anyway.

One year ago, I wrote about my thoughts on Jamparii, and I asked if it was just another scam.

Back then, Jim Tuffin, the CEO and founder, claimed that this would be the next great success within social networking. In a comment to my blog post, he also said that he did not want to involve professional venture capital, as they would require a high number of shares in exchange of their cash. Who would blame them?

Anyway, I would be very interested in knowing what happened to Jamparii, and their founder members. Do you know anything? Did you join? What are the prospect of getting your cash back? If you did not join, what where your reasons not doing it? Any news you have, please share!

Dear anonymous (I would much rather prefer to say Dear John),

First - I post this as a blogpost instead of a reply to your comment on my post about Jamparii. 

Thank you for your input. As I know you are not only claiming to do what you say, but actually are trying to build your own tool for business networking, I would much rather that you did enter your own name, John.

However, what you are pointing at is true in all new ventures. It does take capital to build success. And there are several different paths to choose from. Jim has chosen one path, and John, you took another path.

My experience tells me that the path of money alone is not enough. To build a successful networking site, you need quality. You need content. You need active users. And you need a value proposition to your users.

Linkedin, Xing and Facebook are three successful networking tools, but they are very different. Ecademy and Viadeo are others. Myspace and Orcut are there too. Just to name a few of your competitors. They offer value. Distinctive value. And they have success. 

You need to present a clear value to me before I will even consider your new tool. No matter how you choose to finance you venture. Scam or not.

This is about risk as well. Do you have what it takes to break the bank? Did you consider all options? Have you done your homework, so you know how to position yourself?

What if you fail? What if it takes twice the time to break even? Or three times the time? What if you only secure half the funds you need? What if only one tenth of the required users actually signs up? 

So the question to you two competitors - do you have the BUZZ?