Dan Gillmore has a fascinating open letter about why Bayosphere, his citizen media start-up, has stopped spending VC money. It's a frank and insightful piece on the emerging citizen journalism trend and the trials and tribulations of running a start-up. A few things resonated with me: first, Gillmore's admission Bayosphere might have dropped the ball by trying to start with a quasi-business model rather than running as fast as possible out of the gate to attract a critical mass of users and then figuring out a way to make money - a challenge Memeorandum and Digg are going to have resolve sooner rather than later. Another comment that hit really close to home was Gillmore's concession that "as an an entrepreneur, let's just say I wasn't in my element. The relentless focus on a single, limited project for long periods of time, combined with the inevitable compromises inherent in for-profit decision-making, turned out not to be my best skills." This is the exact lesson I learned while co-starting Blanketware Corp. After seven years as a technology journalist, I assumed it wouldn't be too difficult to transfer my "strategic thinking", reporting and writing skills to the business world. Well, I was dead wrong. What I learned is being an entrepreneur is a different world requiring different skill-sets and priorities. In the newspaper business, you write one or two stories a day, and finish these "projects" before you walk out the door. In a start-up, the business of running a business never ends. It's a 7/24 occupation. I learned entrepreneurs are different kinds of cats, and my skills weren't a good match - at least in this particular situation. Does it mean I can't or won't be an entrepreneur again? Probably not, but I learned the hard way it has to be the right situation at the right time with the right people and enough financial backing.

SiliconBeat offers up its take on their former colleague's venture, while Mathew Ingram argues failure is not necessasrily a bad thing.