It appears that the triathlon race market is reaching saturation.  We have NEVER seen race companies like Setup Events come out with a 2012 calendar in October the year before...usually it's in the early new year.  Several other companies have done this within the last month too.

Glimpses of Steve Jobs biography seems to cement what I have always thought.  Very rarely can you build a great company and be a family man at the same time.  The two just aren't destined to be intertwined.  This doesn't mean that you are a bad person.  Building a great company like Apple involves a ton of mental capital.  Family issues or just spending time with your family doesn't help acheive that goal.  Steve jobs seems to be painted as fiercly driven and 'hypercompetitive'.  Yeah, that's the guy you want running your company...but you don't necessarily want to raise a family with him.

And therein lies my conundrum.  BT so far has had a great run.  It went from nothing to the biggest triathlon specific internet site in about 10 years.  Early on it was a lot of work - but only because I had other jobs and BT was done 'at night'. The last 5 years it has been a normal full time job.  Since the kids have started school, it has given Mike and I the flexibility needed to be around after school, spending time with our kids on homework and just being with them.  But BT needs to grow up.  Mike and I need to take BT higher without risking our families that we are so much a part of and love to be around.

To take BT to the next level will require more work, more capital.  BT hasn't even tapped 'the next level' as we have never even spent a dime on marketing.  I will admit, we are behind technologically on our interface and look, even though we are packed with features that most other logs don't even have.  But that is being worked on now with a redesign slated for next Spring.  But after that.  What happens after that?  Mike and I have ideas.  We have great ideas.  But these ideas will take time and money to take BT to a higher level.

We strongly want to preserve BT's organic culture and experience but realize that we may need some outside funding for that next level.  Unlike a lot of startups with no product who look for capital from Angel investors, we actually have a great track record, years of financials.  Years of internet data.  VC probably wouldn't touch us as we really don't need that amount of capital to make some great strides, plus you lose a lot of control.  We need an smaller investor that knows what little gem is in our neck of the woods, the fact that it is perfectly positioned in triathlon.  An investor that would offer some help, direction and connections on marketing.  We would gladly accept marketing help and it would be a line item in a new budget.  An investor that won't micromanage our daily training log and forum operations - though we will be all ears on new ideas. 

We have come this far, but we would rather not jeopardize our families by going to the next level by trying to do everything ourselves.  If we only just keep on doing what we have been, and unwilling to put in over 40 hrs per week, we may eventually lose our edge.  We need to up our game.  I think we are at the perfect time and place to look at investment opportunities that can get us there.

We have about a half a million monthly unique visitors along with a half a million Search Engine landing pages that people come in on every month. A couple million visits per month. 6-12 million page views per month.  3-4k new registered users per month.  We have some impressive stats.  We have a built-in marketing machine.

Though Mike and I have not firmly discussed or agreed on an exact way to go, we are looking for ideas for that next level.  I figured presenting it to BT'ers first would be only fair.

re: The Ironman Brand.

While I have no comments for this in particular, the Apple vs PC came up as people don't understand why Apple people are such fervent followers.  Well, I 'was' a PC guy for my entire life up until a few years ago.  With BT I started getting into video encoding, having lot's of multiple windows and programs open at once, etc.  Very processor and memory demanding.  Well, I switched to Apple purely as I heard that it was a much more stable platform...I didn't want to as my PC could support any program, Apple maybe not.  My PC frequently froze doing a variety of processes.  *Note, I am not a computer geek, I don't tweak my system to perfection.  I just expect it to run as it came out of the box.  Well, when I switched to Apple, I never looked back.  I can keep dozens of browser windows open and dozens of programs open for weeks without even turning off my computer and no problem.  Both systems had comparable memory and processors.  Apple truly does build a rock-solid OS and if you are a higher-performance user like me, it will be immediately apparent.  Even the 'power-up' times are dramatically shorter for an Apple.  If you just browse the web and maybe fire up Word every once in a awhile, the difference will not be noticeable. 

I'm not a Apple 'fanboy'...but they do make a more stable OS.