Gathering string

There's a mention of Guidepoint in today's Detroit Free Press. It's related to the annual Michigan Growth Capital Symposium, held by the University of Michigan each year. We presented at the Symposium a few years back, and that's where we met Plymouth Venture Partners, an Ann Arbor firm that ended up investing in the Company. The PVP deal then introduced us to Mike O'Brien, a serial entrepreneur from Detroit who sits on our board and is involved in several other businesses including Saxon Motorcycles. Well, Mike has since introduced us to some of his business partners in the motorcycle and powersports channel, and we've adapted our technology for that market. This spring, we intend to roll out Guidepoint for Motorcycles (and ATVs, snowmobiles, etc.) with the help of the folks Mike introduced us to.

It's been a great lesson -- and reminder -- of how business often works for entrepreneurial companies. You go out and meet people and learn somethings, then play off those relationships and knowledge to build new relationships and knowledge and so on. It's not unlike what my editors in the newspaper business used to call "gathering string." For you younger folks, it's kind of like how you used to surf the Web before Google. You would find a link and then follow that another site, and so forth. Honestly, Google's ruthless efficiency killed the whole notion of surfing the Web and the serendipity that comes with it, but that's another topic.