PERSPIRATION
As you know from Part I of our history, the seed for Girls Horse Club started with my own love for horses, but the *real* inspiration came from young (and not-so-young) horse girls like you. Even before I started riding and training, I saw how horses inspired people to learn and create.

Horses and children, I often think, have a lot of the good sense there is in the world.

~~Josephine Demott Robinson

So in 2001 I left a full-time job working for an educational toy company. With lots of help from a partner, we founded a company behind the idea of Girls Horse Club with the mission to entertain, educate, empower, and inspire girls through their love for horses. What you see at GirlsHorseClub.com is a small part of the BIG vision for creating a global community with features and products that support our mission.

For the first two years, we developed a business plan and raised a bit of money from friends and family. The funds were used to move forward with our plan and create designs for the web site, books, electronic games, collectibles, and more. Our first product would be a series of collectible horse models based on the horses in the Stables. With a lot of help from horse girls of all ages, we created prototypes that would knock your socks off.

But it doesn’t matter if the product is great unless you can sell it, and timing is everything. During the period following the tragic events of September 11th 2001 we tried to raise more money to manufacture and sell the horse models. Unfortunately the investors weren’t buying.

Wikipedia says: An angel investor (known as a business angel in Europe, or simply an angel) is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for ownership equity.

After searching unsuccessfully for an angel, there we were having worked on Girls Horse Club for nearly three years without pay. I had exhausted my savings (and then some), so took a full-time job for a start-up company making games and applications for mobile phones. For various reasons, my heart wasn’t in it, and after a year I found myself looking for something more.

As fate would have it, Girls Horse Club was about to get a second chance…

Click here to read GirlsHorseClub.com History: Part III