We’ve been very slow in posting this, but when some of your investors are serious bloggers, they can often beat you to the punch. We’re really happy to announce that we’ve closed a small angel round of financing from Esther Dyson, Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito. Esther and Joi’s posts about it are here and here, respectively.

This is a great thing, not just because it means we’ll have an easier time dealing with the insane growth we’ve been experiencing while we scramble to get all the features, bug fixes and tweaks done for the launch of version 1.0, but because we really couldn’t have picked a better group of people to invest. Esther, Reid and Joi are people I have a profound respect for, and are all incredibly smart, seasoned, wise, powerful, connected and wonderfully supportive.

And it’s that last thing that I wanted to post about. This means a lot to us. Not just because it means paycheques and new servers and all the other things that go into actually making Flickr happen at the operational level, but because knowing that someone you admire believes in you is a powerful source of motivation. So – Esther, Reid and Joi: on behalf of everyone on the team, a deep and genuine thank you. We will do you proud.

And because no post should go without pictures, and because start-up life is risky, exhilarating, and a lot of fun, some amazing action shots of a group of extreme stunt bikers I’ve been meaning to post here for quite a while:

(See more in i_borrowed_these_shoes’ photostream.)