Peek looks back on first year

Peek, the cheap (and good) email-only cellular handset, has been in business for a year. Dan Morel, Peek's chief geek, looks back on how close they came to doom, right from the outset:

Starting a business is mind-blowingly, exhausting. But let me tell you this, the first year thereafter is gutwrenching emotionally. The highs and lows of sales, reviews, customers, staff.... wow! There are so many firsts and so many new things you do. Your first big bugs, your first angry customers, your first bad reviews, problems with your model, sneaking costs, your first disaster/outages, these are all real things that come up that you don't think about in the starry-eyed days of launch.

If you don't own a smartphone, but keep stealing the smartphones of others in order to check your mail, this device--service is $15 a month, no contract-- is strongly recommended.