So the team is formed with 4 person, me, Gvinto, Cymric, and the graphics guy. I couldn't remember exactly when is the date but I believe it is around the month of May 2005 when the exams are just over. Gvinto and the graphics guy have officially graduated. Cymric and I are still going for our final year in university.

Every week or so, we will find an empty tutorial classroom in the campus and sneak in to discuss our vMall virtual world. Gvinto will do some of the biz dev matters, Cymric is our technical strongman, with me helping him with the technical development, and of course the graphics guy trying to come up with the characters and stuff. I will then go around to source for reference materials in the library and read up on virtual worlds. However, this kind of working relationship did not last very long.

The graphics guy is the first to go, cause he is not that well-verse in drawing characters and stuff, and more importantly, he is not entrepreneurial. So ok, we are screwed with no artist. But next is worse, Cymric is gone ... yes virtually disappeared into thin air. No phone, no email, no instant messaging, totally uncontactable at all times (like a ninja that has perfected the art of concealment). So ok, we are screwed with no technical strongman. Fresbo team is just left with me and Gvinto.

Gvinto is by far the most entrepreneurial person in our team. He founded another company around at the same time in May 2005 called GigaSys which we sometimes make fun of it by calling it GigaCyst haha. The company was doing B2B outsourced work like data entry and buying of computer equipments and stuff. But it was not long that the company was not doing well. Seeing the current state of his GigaSys and Fresbo, he said he needed to find a job as both biz is heading nowhere. So ok, I am officially alone, and that is in August 2005.

So what's next I thought. Well, I still have another year in school and since I am not interested in studying anymore, maybe while I am still in school, I can take the time to try and work out something first. There is an organization within the university that provide funding to startups. So I met up with one of the guys in charge and showed him the vMall idea. He was quite skeptical about the viability of this whole thing. Nevertheless, he then told me that there is this student seed funding scheme that I can try to pitch for. So I thought ok, why not, I need funds to move on anyway.

So then I began to code the prototype. I also found a freelance artist to come up with the game graphics. Gvinto was helping me to write the business plan and stuff part-time. After some cursing, pacing, and days of not bathing at times, I finally managed to code a simple prototype virtual world. A non-scalable single-server version that only has a single room for users to chat in. So with the prototype, we readied ourselves for the funding pitch in June 2006 ...