Don Park’s Daily Habit

I’ve been hoping to avoid having to write this post but I have some bad news to share regarding my startup.

SafePage was founded a year ago to build a secure personal portal that offered Internet users convenience, security, and control across the private part of the Web, all those web pages hidden behind passwords, giving users one-click access to protected sites and, eventually, at-a-glance overview of personal data across those sites using widgets.

We had three things going for us:

• Highly talented team of security-minded engineers from RSA and Passmark, the same that built the technology currently protecting millions of online bank accounts. We got the whole team, Mo!
• Deep experience and connections at the top level. Bill was CEO of Intuit and Paypal. Louie was CIO/GM of Platform Services at Excite and SVP of Internet Services at Wells Fargo. What about me? I am world class at coming up with confusing zen koans and tasteless analogies.
• Unusually large seed funding, by today’s Web 2.0 startup standard, from Bill and Canaan Partners, a highly respected VC firm.

So we spent a year in stealth mode and prepared to launch in January. Just when we started looking for more funding to take the service to market, world economy fell apart. To make the painful story short, SafePage is exiting stealth mode and entering ghost mode, as in R.I.P.

What I regret the most is that, except for closed-beta users, the world never got to see SafePage in action. So, what will I be doing now that I find myself naked in a shitstorm? I am working on some interesting ideas and looking over my options. Long ring finger part of me is whispering: Naked is the best time to dive into the shitstorm.