Turn By Turn

Do you remember what was going on in the world when you graduated or when your first child was born? I, too, relate major milestones in my life to things going on in the world, and as a founder, things going on in business at Networks In Motion.

Looking back, I can map various business milestones to personal ones. Our first angel round of investment happened around the time of my most important merger: my wedding to my fellow co-founder! Our first institutional round of investment came upon my first child’s birth (i.e., picture receiving the final executed term sheet from your hospital bed). The birth of our second child followed some major changes at NIM, including a second round of venture capital and reorganization to support what became the biggest growth NIM ever experienced, both in size and deployments of our recently released VZ Navigator. And now this month I celebrate the birth of my third child (hooray!), which happens to coincide with the launch of NIM’s self-branded navigator, Gokivo Navigator, on Blackberry App World.

There’s an old Spanish saying that goes “el bebe con la palanqueta bajo del brazo,”, which translates to “a baby with a baguette under his arm.”. I found it confusing at first when my mother first said it to me, but it basically means that a baby brings with it prosperity. I dare say in the past this has proven true, and by the looks of Gokivo’s stellar reviews, including a win of Microsoft’s Mobile Incubation Week award, we’re off to a great start.

As for the happy occasion of my third child’s birth, one might think the hard part’s over. But, as with the birth of a company, that’s really the easy part. It’s raising it up to be everything you dreamed and hoped for it that is the real challenge - and the real joy - of being both a parent and an entrepreneur. So let the fun begin!