Harris and VandeHei had heard of Allbrittons planshe had spoken to a few colleagues of theirs as he tried to recruit staff for his new venture. Harris recalls: I was watching it with curiosity because this wasnt obvious to me Weve got two sort of lame newspapers up on Capitol Hill, who the hell needs a third? In September, Capitol Leader Editor Tolchin asked VandeHei over lunch whether he would be interested in running the newspaper. VandeHei had no interest. At the same time, he found it encouraging that Allbritton was willing to invest in a news startup. Perhaps that meant there were others who might want to fund his and Harris website.

VandeHei and Harris were meanwhile trying to fashion a business plan. On Saturday, October 28, 2006, the two met with a venture capitalist in a basement in McLean, VA. The venture capitalist set up easels and began to sketch the components Harris and VandeHeis new company would require. As the diagram gathered detail, Harris and VandeHei studied it with growing unease. They gradually realized that their area of expertisepolitical journalism and its most popular reportersrepresented a tiny fraction of the business in which it would be embedded. It appeared to be the easy partHarris and VandeHei would have to offer salaries commensurate with or higher than those at the top news organizations in the country if they hoped to attract well-regarded reporters. As Harris recalls, the venture capitalist said: Ok, you want to hire this number of reporters at x price, good, ok, we can do that.

Then, Harris remarks, it was on to all kinds of other stuff that we didnt have expertise in or even much thought about. They needed a chief financial officer to manage their expenses and revenues. They needed a sales team to court advertisers. They had to decide how much money to allocate for Web development, and whether or not to keep a Web team on staffexpensive but convenient, particularly in emergencies, or hire outside consultantscheaper but not always available at a moments notice. They needed someone to set up and maintain their internal computer system. They would have to find an officespace was more expensive in downtown Washington, so perhaps they should consider the nearby suburbs in Maryland or Virginia. They needed legal counselboth for the business side and the journalism sideand a benefits manager. There also remained the matter of finding an investor to fund the publication.

VandeHei and Harris had entered the meeting with a staff structure in mindthe two of them, 12 writers, and a handful of support staff. It now appeared impossible to run a company that way. VandeHei recalls: Next thing you know, hes sketched out essentially a company of 48 employees with a budget of several million dollars. Remembers Harris: We were faced with the sort of prosaic reality.

Listen to VandeHei describe the meeting.

Harris and VandeHei feared that, on their own, they lacked the expertise to staff and start their new venture. In any case, it might be impossible to do it in time to cover the 2008 presidential election. Harris and VandeHei wanted to launch the website by early 2007. The Presidents State of the Union address in January was always heavily covered in the political pressand Harris and VandeHei thought tying their political news sites launch to that event would earn them some helpful publicity.

But their entire model depended on luring established reporters to join them. How could they convince well-reputed writers, all of them with secure jobs, to risk joining a startup right before an election, especially if they hadnt yet assembled the infrastructure to make the project work? Harris and VandeHei were considering taking a tremendous risk of their ownbut could they rely on other reporters to do the same thing?