The Loan Gunman

After a few false starts, we finally talked to a loan officer at a bank that offers SBA loans. The meeting was very informative, but it pretty well confirmed our suspicions: our stumbling block is going to be collatoral. The idea that we should go put ourselves in enormous debt by buying a house, just so we could have something to put up for collatoral, is a little strange. That's the way of things though.

Anyway, we've got several options. Businesses like this are typically funded by venture capital, but we've heard a lot of horror stories from people who have gone that route.

A good idea is a good idea

Just about three years ago, Sunny was finishing reading her 537th mystery novel of the year, and she said something along the lines of

"These things are great, but I always know how they're going to end by the time I'm 2/3 of the way through them..."

OK, that's not exactly how it went (Sunny swears like a sailor, so I can't really publish any direct quotes), but you get the idea. She was saying that mystery novels were entertaining, but predictable. In fact, more than predictable, they were formulaic. After that, she immediately started the 538th book, and enjoyed every bit of it.

Being a programmer, that gave me an idea; If fictional mysteries were formulaic, it stood to reason you could create a formula that produced mysteries. Furthermore, it seemed like the basis for a really fun game.

About a year later (Feb 2004), we formed a company called Hypothetical Software and launched the beta version of Sleuth: a Noir themed, on-line, Detective game. Over the past two years, Sleuth has logged well over 100,000 unique users, millions of visits, tens of millions of page views and eaten up a surprising amount of my free time. We've also managed to make some money off of it. Not a lot of money, but enough to pay its hosting and advertising bills, and pay for it's own equipment upgrades.

Here's where things get really interesting. We've decided to give it a go, try out our entrepreneurial luck, and toss our fates to the fickle whims of commerce. We're going to take Sleuth primetime. We're going to take Hypothetical Software primetime. Are we crazy?

The big idea: This blog will be a place for us to immortalize our journey. The end of the trip might find us fat and happy, enjoying the fruits of our own labors and knowing that we've created great products for an appreciative audience... Or maybe we'll just be back where we are today: working for other people, and a little more in debt. Either way, it should make for some interesting reading.