Things are really hotting up in Web2Thing land.

We’ve secured a small round of financing. Enough to speed up development, and really put us in a position to launch something in a few months. The exercise in getting the money, setting up a business, doing due-diligence in a few areas, have all been very interesting and exciting.

Saying that, it’s not half as exciting as getting some early designs of logos and interfaces from the company we’ve enlisted to ramp up development.

We managed to find Digital Ventures, a local design and development house, when hunting for a Python guru. To be honest they probably found us, but regardless we’ve been pretty damn happy with the outcome so far.

They’ve been coding away on some of the features we believe are core to our service, and also working on the branding. So to be fair, they’ve done a heap of work already, it’s just the initial user interface (work in progress) and logo (also a work in progress) they’ve sent through are the first real visual representations of our vision. So for a quasi-marketing guy like myself, it’s a fun time.

Check out their Enjo TV commercial.

It has come time for us to look at opening a bank account for the business. Given that Graeme and I live on opposite ends of the planet, potential international investors, and we aim to service a global market, I figured we should look for a global bank.

A little googling turned up Citibank and HSBC as potential corporations. So I set about checking their site for business account details and paid a visit to their local branches. However, as it turns out, neither are really global banks. They both are local operations that happen to be branded the same as international banks. Given that HSBC tout themselves as “the world’s local bank,” I was extremely disappointed to find that this means there is really little benefit to go with either, and raises the question of who should we bank with.

Anyone have an suggestions?

In the last post I mentioned our meeting with a development company. We met, chatted for about three hours, and was promised a draft scope document sent to our sticky little Gmail accounts within two weeks.

Three weeks passed and still no document. So I began formulating a different plan. Initially we intended to create a feature rich environment for launch, but a second option was always available. Something akin to a 37 Signals approach: keep it simple and launch early. At least that’s what we’ve taken away from their school of thought.

We’re now in discussions with a different development company, and are in the throws of raising a small amount of funding. This will allow us to launch late in the year with the core features. As we add members we’ll extend the feature set based on feedback.

Lesson learned: always have a “plan b” running in parallel.

There’s been plenty of speculation around Amanda’s unbooming. Scoble, Calacanis, Winer, TechCrunch, etc. all weighed in.

By far the most sophisticated analysis of the event is Heather Green’s article at BusinessWeek.

As an entrepreneur involved in Web2Thing I’m constantly thinking of what’s best for the business, and I think this is a great endorsement for seeking early funding for a startup. Green’s article suggests that there just wasn’t any money flowing into Rocketboom, which of course means there’s pressure on the founders, and no flexibility.

I’m not suggesting the Rocketboom team did anything wrong, but it does underscore a couple of the reasons it’s good to seek funding. Now that my trip to the US looking for advisors is done, I’m moving onto the next step of seeking some cash to help accelerate Web2Thing’s development. That’s another art unto itself.