Odeo Rollin With VC Funding

Yesterday Odeo announced they received their first round of VC funding. This is a big boost of confidence in the whole podcasting landscape. Before I give a couple of my thoughts on it here's a blurb from PaidContent on Odeo's first round of funding.

"Odeo, the much-hyped podcasting distribution and tool firm started by former Blogger founder Ev Williams, has received first round of funding. The round was led by Charles River Ventures, along with Amicus Ventures, and a substantial group of individuals in the funding round: Mitch Kapor, Joe Kraus, Tim O'Reilly, Ron Conway, Josh Kopelman, Don Hutchinson, Dave Pell, Mike Maples, Francesco Caio, Barbara Poggiali, Emanuele Angelidis, James Hong, and Ed Zschau."

First it's cool to see Tim O'Reilly in the group of individual investors since Ev worked for him in the pre Pyra days. Secondly, it's cool to see Ev learning from his experience with growing Pyra and Blogger. From my earlier conversations with Shellen on the subject of Blogger before Blogger was cool, everything was pretty much bootstrapped. Funds were low, business plans were scarce, and there seemed to be a general lack of direction before a few key events happened that got Blogger and Pyra Labs on the map. Now, Ev's more focused, obviously has a sharp business plan in hand [this has Shellen all over it ;)] and has a group of investors / advisors guiding him on his second major venture.

Hmmm, wonder if someone should start a new blog called VentureShift and talk about the migration from bootstrap mode to VC mode and all of the hiccups and changes in between. I'm not registering the domain so consider this my gift to you.

Ev writes about getting the funding and a bit about having to give some serious thought as to what they wanted to accomplish with Odeo.

...We also did a lot of deep thinking and soul searching about what we were really trying to do with Odeo, which is a crucial part of the company-building / money-raising process. And we ended up doing a deal we're really happy about.

My last 2 cents and then I'm out.
Most people want to know how much money a startup gets during each round of funding but I'm glad those details were left out. It goes to the whole "less is more" approach of building a business. The numbers truly only matter to the company receiving the funding. Because they can plan features and growth based on what they have and know with certainty how long they can expect to be in business before they're forced to show a return on investment. It's about an accounting term called "going concern". Every company in the United States [and most of the world for that matter] is based on the going concern principle. It means they plan on being in business and being able to pay back debt, provide paychecks, sell product, etc... because if there was no expectation for companies to stay in business then there would be no need for them to create financial statements and file tax returns. Anyway, I'm glad Ev's keeping that info on the downlow.