I am pleased to report that three months’ worth of work has finally paid off, and the employees at my company can relax a bit (or at least not work 70 hours a week). Tuesday was the day of the big launch; we announced three major pieces of news, which were quickly picked up by a number of major sources including, but by no means limited to, the New York Times, CNN Money, and The 451 Group.

In essence, our launch was three-fold:

1. IBM became an investor in our latest round of financing, joining existing investors Charles River Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and Fidelity Ventures.
2. We released the Postgres Plus family of products, a free and open source version and a proprietary, Oracle-compatible Advanced Server version. Postgres Plus is an open source distribution of the PostgreSQL database and is the fastest and most scalable PostgreSQL-based database ever created. Bundled into a one-click, cross-platform installer, Postgres Plus is targeted at developers of next-generation applications and sets a new standard for commercial distributions of open source databases.
3. We have open sourced GridSQL and fully integrated it with the open source version of Postgres Plus; you can download it now from SourceForge. GridSQL enables organizations to easily meet complex Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence challenges using true grid technology that implements a shared-nothing, distributed data architecture.

In anticipation of all this, we redesigned the company web site, launched numerous marketing campaigns that included everything from banner ads, e-newsletter sponsorships, webcasts, and print ads, and, this week, had our CEO sit on the panel at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco to discuss the state of open source in the current market.

Traffic on our web site has exploded, and the industry is buzzing. I’m pleased to be so deeply involved in the company at such an exciting time. Way to go, team!

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I miss designing web sites. Back in the summer of 1996, I found a book on HTML in the discount bin at my local bookstore and took it upon myself to learn the ins and outs of the art of web design. My first site, Pure Fun (can you tell I started this one at thirteen?), was a mess of everything from wallpapers to animated icons to random commentary to advice columns. Let’s face it: it wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world. Luckily I moved on quickly, learning some Java and CGI along the way, and came up with a prototype for what would be one of my biggest web accomplishments. HoMM3 Unleashed, dedicated to the 1999 3DO PC game Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia, was a side hobby of mine that I started at the beginning of my junior year of high school. I took it upon myself to outclass and outperform the already established web sites dedicated to the game, and found myself rapidly amassing an international fan base. Once all the kinks had been worked out, the 100+ page site received multiple awards, including one from the game company itself, and was even featured in the now-defunct PC Games magazine, which, in its heyday, rivalled ubermag PC Gamer. Ultimately, though, with over three hundred thousand visitors, and needing to update the site multiple times daily, it proved too time-consuming for a high school student to handle, and I handed it over to one of the most frequent visitors, who merged with a fellow gamer to create the Might and Magic haven known as Celestial Heavens.

My other site, developed from my love for European pop music, was a fan site dedicated to Swedish pop sensations the A*Teens, formerly Abba*Teens. In the summer of 1999, my sister and I traveled to Sweden to visit relatives, and I was introduced to the Abba tribute band, whose singles “Mamma Mia,” “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” and “Super Trouper” were catchy and upbeat. I figured there would be a small market for such music, as I really enjoyed it. My site, Somewhere in the Crowd, quickly grew to be one of the most popular A*Teens sites on the web, so much so that even the maintainers of the official site noticed and would periodically send me autographed CDs and pictures to use as prizes in site contests. Once again, though, updating became a nuisance, and I dropped it in senior year due to a load of AP courses and tae kwon do training. The A*Teens have since split to allow its members to pursue individual projects - both Dhani Lennevald and Marie Serneholt (who was voted the sexiest woman in Sweden a year or so ago - quite a change from when A*Teens first began in 1998!) have released albums in Sweden since then - but on occasion I do listen to their songs and remember the days when they were my main musical focus.

I never received any compensation for my sites, though in hindsight, HoMM3 Unleashed could have done well with some advertising. I was never in it for the money, however. I made sites because I enjoyed a) the product I was marketing, and b) creating the sites themselves. And I miss it! I miss the enjoyment of putting together a professional-looking site just from typing a bit of text into Notepad, I miss scouring the ‘net for means of attracting visitors, and most of all I miss creating a product that was both useful and enjoyable for people I might never meet, from all around the globe.

I’d like to get back into web design. This would entail, however, re-teaching myself the tricks of HTML as well as learning the languages and technologies that have emerged since my departure from the web scene, including DHTML, Flash, PHP, and so forth. That, and I require a good idea for a site. Obviously this is a long way off, but it’s fun to think about.

At age 8, I wanted to be Elvis.

At age 10, I wanted to be a pathologist.

At age 13, I wanted to be a surgeon.

At age 16, I wanted to be a web designer.

At age 18, I decided that I would continue taking classes in Spanish and get a degree in International Relations. I also decided that an American college education was not for me; I’ve always been more of the “independent learning” type, rather than a day-to-day, homework every night kind of person. So I shipped myself across the ocean to a little town on the North Sea, St Andrews, and began my mission to turn myself into a State Department ambassador. Four years later, I walked out with a Master’s degree and returned to northern Virginia having decided that I simply was not ready to become a civil servant. My parents, both former Army officers, were rather against this idea, so I temped for six months at various government and government-affiliated agencies, all of which provided me with good office experience but which also strengthened my resolve to make a success of myself in the private sector.

And where better to do that than in New York City? In February of 2006, I moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, just outside of the city, where I could keep my car (and my rent!) without signing away the lives of my first five children. It was at a job fair near the Meadowlands that I met and charmed an executive from a major financial firm, who offered me an interview an hour later and hired me within two weeks. As a financial adviser trainee, I earned what I considered to be an extremely healthy paycheck as I plowed through four-inch study guides in an effort to pass the NASD exams necessary to become a full-fledged financial advisor.

All of this was all well and good, and I passed two of the exams (the Series 7 and the Series 31, for those of you who know the business) and took the life and health insurance course before I realized … wait a minute. First, I don’t want to be a salesperson. I had tried that, briefly, back in Virginia, and disliked every minute of it. And second, I especially don’t want to sell a product that I don’t back 100%. Given the nature of articles I had read about the company, which mentioned that even those high up in the ranks didn’t invest in the company’s funds, it seemed as though this was a wise decision. So, after six months, I made my departure.

Two months, a move, and a stolen car later, I received a call from an HR executive for an enterprise software company. “How would you like to work six miles from your house?” he asked, to which I responded with great enthusiasm, “Would I!” It was the beginning of a beautiful - albeit tumultuous on occasion - relationship with the enterprise software company for which I still work.

In essence, it took five jobs and fifteen months to decide what I wanted to do, but at last I seem to have found it. I’ve become the marketing professional that I never dreamed I’d be, and I get to work with personable, knowledgeable people from whom I’m learning tricks of the trade on a daily basis. Whatever happens here - and you never know with a start-up - this place will serve as a strong foundation to my career. And that’s what this blog is all about.

Last year, on a whim, I typed in the name of the marketing company for which I worked about a month or two after college, just to see if anyone I knew had made it into management. Yes, I had fallen for one of those pyramid schemes, the ones wherein new college graduates are recruited to sell or market a product door-to-door for as little money as possible. On paper, it looked amazing: the opportunity to make $45K your first year of working, flexible hours, no day the same as the day before, potential to reach management within six months, et cetera, et cetera. I was interviewed by the head honcho, an intense woman, probably in her mid-twenties, who was dressed impeccably in a very expensive suit. After the usual questions - “Tell me about yourself,” “Why are you interested in this position?” and “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” - she took me into the back room, which was full of excited twenty-something-year-old people. I remember the thought striking me that those people all seemed strangely happy and enthusiastic, but I took that to be a good sign.

I was asked to come back the next day for an eight-hour interview. Yeah, you read that right - eight hours. I should’ve seen the warning signs right then. And of course, no one told me to wear comfortable clothes, so I show up in my suit and stilettos only to be dragged out the door by one of the so-called ‘leaders’ for an incredibly long day of going door-to-door, from business to business, trying to gain or retain Verizon customers.

I honestly thought it would get better. Once I was put out on my own, I figured I had the flexibility to create my own selling style, and actually did pretty well - but the fact that work was commission-based hit me hard. I made approximately $120 my first week, putting in nine- to ten-hour days. And this is without benefits, mind you. In addition to this, gas, wear-’n-tear on the car, meals, and everything were all covered by me and not the company.

I pulled out about a month later. The place seemed too much like a cult to me; many of the people working there seemed, well, almost brainwashed, if I can say that. As in, they seemed devoid of logical thought. One of the young women who trained me actually freaked me out when she was talking to potential customers; she got this wild-eyed look and leaned forward as she shot out her spiel. Honestly, if I were a customer, I’d wouldn’t want to have anything to do with her. And as her trainee … well, damn. Even on our ‘business trip’ to Lynchburg, Virginia - classy, eh? - she refused to talk about anything but work, even at dinner, or when we were chilling in the hotel room after an extremely long, hot day. Let’s face it, she lacked a good personality. Hell, she practically didn’t seem human. But this was the same for quite a few people working there.

Well. You live, you learn, I guess. It was certainly an experience!

But anyway. As I was saying, I looked up the company last year, just for fun, and guess what I found? Surprise, surprise. Dozens of comments about the company and its CEO on web sites dedicated to revealing scams and rip-offs. Ha. Apparently head honcho woman had had problems with legality in the past, and has actually changed the name of the company three times to avoid pursuit. One former employee said, “I became … aware that we were ripping people off. When I would voice these concerns, I was hushed and reassured that everything was protocol by legal standards. After reviewing [a worksheet for sales reps from AT&T] I realized that I had been committing fraud.” Well, it’s true. I saw numerous people flat-out lie about what we were marketing, and it was just awful.

It’s amazing to me that people can get away with things like this, but head honcho woman certainly has. While I was working there, she drove a BMW, flew down to Miami every Thursday for a long weekend with her boyfriend, and came in with a new, expensive suit every day. I’d like to be in her position one day, but not if it’s the result of exploiting my employees. I have too much pride for that.