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Wild Apricot is a young technology company out of Toronto, Canada. We provide Software-as-as-Service for associations, clubs, and non-profit organizations. This is our story of an investment round that fell through due to economic conditions.

You can't turn on the TV, visit Yahoo Finance or pick up the Wall Street Journal without hearing about the economic crisis we're in. It's caused most of us to step back and look at our own financial situation. In the next episode of RWW Live, to be broadcasted live at 3.30pm PST Monday (6.30pm EST), we look at how you can use Web tools to improve your personal finances. We have executives from Mint, Wesabe and Tip'd joining us.

You can tune into the show, and interact with us via the chat, by clicking here. You can also use the Calliflower Facebook app to tune in and participate.

With all the talk of the financial turmoil that the U.S. economy is experiencing, some industries are hoping that they can escape the heat unscathed. In fact, a small portion of the tech industry practically bragged that they wouldn't encounter the same damage as Wall Street by attempting to recruit jobless stock brokers for their start-ups. This week may have put the tech industry on alert with the rest of the U.S. as two relatively high profile tech companies made grand changes to their staff.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Times are now tougher. Which makes most people head home. The half-hearted entrepreneurs, the wannabes who thought it was going to be easy, the folks with connections to VCs who could get a $5m Series A for a copycat app. Who will be left? The gritty entrepreneur of the old school who knows that it is really, really tough to build a great company. At ReadWriteWeb we celebrate these gritty entrepreneurs and in a series kicking off today we will be writing about them - and for them.