I missed the days when I hopped into the Central Line from Leytonstone to Oxford Circus for work. The skill of finding a suitable seat during peak hour, balancing on a moving tube and reading the Metro should not be undermined. For 3 plus years, the Metro was the source of news in the morning for free. A tad bit dated, but on February 7, 2007, the Metro ran an article entitled Your life in their hands. In a snippet, it discussed the value of our digital assets - it is easy to forget that computers are among the most fragile devices we own. BT estimates the average Brit’s digital assets to be worth more than 600 POUNDS! This is before totting up the sentimental value of home movies and photos. The article goes on to recommend sites such as MP3 Tunes, BT, Streamload, Omnidrive, and Mozy.

The article does provide an understandable warning - upload speed in Britain is pretty dismal (universal fact, I guess). If you’re backing up a whole PC, the first full upload will take a very long time. And with online storage, the monthly charges NEVER stop. Free services, especially, should be used with caution. Most will dump your data if you don’t use them for a couple of months. The beauty of the fine print most of us DO NOT READ!

This is especially worrying since most Internet businesses do not last the first 3 years - e.g. the switch from Friendster to MySpace - remember these ‘backup’ sites are asking us to entrust our valuable digital assets to them.

What IF, MuSMo take a leaf from the building societies in U.K., instead of relying on the common start up funding methods (i.e. friends, families, fools, bank loans, angel, and venture capitalist), MuSMo will gain $$$ from our users. MuSMo will not request for donations, but will reward our users with ownership. Stock options to motivate employees are well promoted in various companies, so aren’t we neglecting our most valuable asset? Our customers!?

More information will follow soon. Your comments will be appreciated, especially if there is a better alternative funding method. And NO, bootstrapping is not a funding method!