Congrats to Tony Conrad on two major recent events for his new blog search engine company, Sphere. First, Sphere came out of the closet following what seemed like an extended private beta period. Industry observers seem pleased with initial results. Second, Tony closed a major round of financing to ensure that Sphere will have the arsenal to duke it out in what has become a competitive space (Google, Yahoo, Technorati, BlogLines).

Tony also demonstrates a good time-line for entrepreneurial financing.

1. Get an idea
2. Find a group of Angels with Halos. For Sphere, that was $500K from 7 people in the spring of 2005.
3. Use the angel round to gather a small group of talented folks to build a prototype. For Sphere, around 5.
4. Prototype in hand, land your first big round to get the product out there, and now that you’re in the race, to run it in competitive fashion. For Sphere, the round came in just over a year after the angels. It was a cool $3.75M.

Not that anyone is taking notes here …

we’re flush now