8th Ring

8th Ring was the third company I helped start and the first company I co-founded while at Polaris.

It was an Internet/mobile mashup, a consumer mobile play connecting existing social networks to the mobile ecosystem. This was more than a year before Facebook’s F8, OpenSocial, the iPhone and Android. I helped assemble the founding team, CEO Bill Wittenberg from the Internet space and CTO Ted Wugofski from the mobile space. In a short period of time we solved some very hard technical problems which led to deep conversations with large social networks and mobile operators. Based on the feedback, we determined that despite customer and partner interest the company faced significant development risks and the best choice was to stop operations. By that time we had spent less than a year and just a few hundred thousands.

We failed quickly and cheaply, which in my book is considered a minor success (a major success is knocking the ball out of the park). Bill and Ted have gone on to do great things. Bill started a new company. Ted is CTO at Handmark.