Congratulations, Jeremy! That is great news. Blessings,
Dave On Saturday, September 20, 2014 8:21:43 AM UTC-5, Jeremy Ruston wrote: > > I'm very pleased to announce some news about my quest to find a way to > support myself while working on the development of TiddlyWiki into the > future. > > For just over a year I've been Chief Technology Officer of CTRLio, a > London-based startup that has been operating in "stealth mode". It is > thanks to CTRLio that I have been able to continue work on TiddlyWiki. > > CTRLio is a venture capital backed company. That means that we have > secured preliminary investment from a group of angels, and plan to raise > further rounds of funding as we develop the company. I am working with two > experienced co-founders, Laurence John and Dominic Strowbridge. Our tech > team includes Jon Lister, one of my original Osmosoft team at BT. > > In concrete terms, CTRLio is setting out to build a chain of tools that > anyone can use to collect and manage their personal data, and to safely > share information drawn from it with other individuals and companies to > help them get more out of life. Using TiddlyWiki as the roots of that > toolchain means that we're not locking our users into a proprietary > platform. > > I'll post separately in the next few days about our initial product > offering - it's something that I hope will be of interest to many > TiddlyWiki users. > > People may have an understandable fear that the involvement of a VC-backed > startup might somehow taint TiddlyWiki. An important point is that CTRLio > is absolutely not an attempt to "monetise" TiddlyWiki or its users. > CTRLio's offering to people rests on top of TiddlyWiki, but extends off > into new directions. More to the point, for CTRLio's business to work, > TiddlyWiki needs to continue to be what it is today: an open source, > community-driven product that respects its users by giving them an > unprecedented degree of independence and control. > > The "intellectual property" of TiddlyWiki is still owned by UnaMesa, a > charity dedicated to improving healthcare, education, and social services > through innovations in technology and tools for sharing knowledge. > > I emphasise these points about the protection of TiddlyWiki because they > are important to me personally. I've been lucky enough in my career to work > for and with many different types of organisation: the BBC, an investment > bank, several startups, and most recently the acquisition by BT. Through > all those experiences I've learned what's important to me, and as I've got > older I have felt more and more compelled to try to live up to my clumsy > natural idealism. > > So, a crucial ingredient in setting up CTRLio was finding co-founders who > had the same enthusiasm for building a business that wasn't afraid to > explore alternatives to the traditional startup model. > > Better than that, we've also been able to find investors who share that > vision. I'm delighted that one of our leading investors is the musician and > entrepreneur Peter Gabriel, who many of us will remember from his days in > Genesis and subsequent solo career. Peter has been an active investor in > technology companies for many years. I was particularly pleased that > Peter's first concern was to make sure that we regard our users ownership > of their own data as sacred and are determined to put them first and look > after them rather than being the kind of company that would sell them out > to the highest bidder. > > Anyhow, this isn't the place for me to try to wax lyrical about CTRLio's > business. You can find out more on our website at http://ctrlio.com. Of > course, feel free to ask any questions here. I'm very happy to answer > anything I can. > > Best wishes > > Jeremy > > > -- > Jeremy Ruston > mailto:[email protected] <javascript:> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
