Fwd: In the Arena

[Rohit Khare]

Well, gang, here it is... launch day!

No product is ever perfect on day 1. So I encourage you to drop by, 
try it out, and flame me personally :-)

Thanks,
   Rohit Khare

Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 11:02:34 -0700
Subject: In the Arena
From: Rohit Khare <Rohit@KnowNow.com>
To: <all@knownow.com>

Congratulations to each of you on our corporate launch today!

When I got up this morning, I put on the same t-shirt and jeans I wore a
year ago back in Seattle, when the war room, machine room, lunchroom, and
even bedroom were the same decaying old 92-year old warehouse -- since
condemned by last year's quake!

Moral #1: It's good to be the CTO.
You don't have to wear a collared shirt every day!

More to the point, the shirt is from WhatUWant. It was another Seattle
outfit run by no less than Edward Jung and Nathan Myrvhold, then wunderkind
of Redmond. You can now find them at OpenDesign.com, but it's still a T-shirt,
not software

Moral #2: We're shipping!
They're not. And there's a whole lot of "They" out there!

Except for Groove, the friends we've made over the last year and a half at
Kenamea and GrandCentral and Bang and CrossGain and CrossWeave and Avogadro
and OpenDesign still haven't put their product out there, in the arena...

> The Man in the Arena
>
>  "It is not the critic who counts,
> not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled
> or how the doer of deeds might have done them better.
>
> The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
> whose face is marred with sweat and
> dust and blood;
>
> who strives valiantly:
> who errs and comes short again and again;
> who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
> and spends himself in a worthy cause:
>
> who, if he wins knows the triumph of high achievement;
> and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,
> so that his place shall never be with those
> cold and timid souls who know neither
> victory or defeat"
>
> -Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910, in his address entitled 
>"Citizenship in a
> Republic," at the Sorbonne in Paris

My sincere, personal congratulations to each and every one of you to for
bringing our shared vision of KnowNow to market!

Thanks,
   Rohit Khare
   (& Adam Rifkin)
   Founders, KnowNow Inc.