A ^(very) Brief History of Flat World Knowledge

2007: Planning. Author Signing. Funding.

It began with “The Trip” – 90 days of travel, talking to students, professors, authors, and advisors. Seven radically different versions of our business plan later, we were ready to go. Eric gets car sick. Jeff drives a bit herky-jerky. It was a rough 90 days.

Then we started talking to authors. Turns out a bunch of them (some of the best out there) are just as crazy as us. They share our conviction that a new, more open model of publishing is the future of textbooks. So they signed up. The pipeline is rapidly filling with tomorrow’s best-sellers.

And then there was funding. We’ve got some stories. Suffice it to say that we closed a highly successful seed round with more money in the bank than we asked for, and the best darn investor group in the world – smart, passionate, and involved (appropriately!).

Somewhere along the way, we picked up Brad and David. They’ve both driven with Jeff. They’re both still here. That’s good.

2008: Developing. Testing. More Signing (always).

We’re big believers in showing people stuff and getting their reactions. So that’s what we’re doing. We have lots of students and professors giving us feedback on everything from our book content, to our platform (hidden from general view), to our pricing and business model. This year is all about that. In fact we will be conducting full scale testing in actual classrooms later this year as the final stage of our testing process.

We’ll continue to develop the books we have under contract. We’ll continue to sign more books from more great authors. And we’ll continue building our product until it’s perfect. Or close, anyway.

2009: Finding Out if This Was Such a Good Idea After All.

Full-on commercial launch. Need we say more?