Putting your life on the line for a 50% chance to fail
drstarcat.com
drstarcat.com
Except, wrapped in several layers of self-aggrandizing drama. An awful lot of hat for very little cattle.
I recognized a lot in his account, and it was good to see someone being honest about the internal drama, even at the risk of appearing ridiculous.
While I applaud his openness, I wonder if he's shooting himself in the foot by airing this much dirty laundry.
His experience isn't worth writing about because, somewhere out there, someone has experienced something more interesting?
I don't see the logic.
I don't get the negativity here - I thought it was a well-written account of the kind of last minute ninja dance before any launch. The author certainly had a lot riding on the demo, and I didn't find it self-aggrandizing in any overt way.
I found the histrionic tone and especially the title of the article to be out of all proportion with the content. I don't think my description was in any way unfair. The article does a sufficiently good job of trivializing itself.
Nor did he ever claim it to be... I think you're reading far more into that post than was ever implied. It's clear that he has a large amount of personal money invested, and that this demo could be the make-or-break moment for his company - and a culmination of perhaps years of preparation and work. I think that qualifies as a big deal.
You're still trying to trivialize this man's experiences.
He totally did. He said he put his life on the line. What really got put on the line was his lifestyle.
I’ve put $50,000 into SetJam so far, and I’ll probably have to put in $50,000 more before I can hope to take in some outside money. I’ve had to spend the last 4 years saving while I built an amazing company for someone else just to have a chance to take this shot on my own again. I’ve got a wife and a baby girl and our life savings is riding on a company that, even if I execute perfectly, has a less than 50% chance of succeeding. Launching this product meant a lot.
Your nonchalance about the whole thing reads to me like:
"Well, you know, if it dies, he can always make another kid."
Factually correct, but rather inhuman.
It is surprising to me that many years after the fact that you only remember the highs and not the lows.
Give the guy a break, he's gone the distance, put his money where his mouth is and his future is riding on this, on top of that he's open about it.
Kudos from me, if half the armchair entrepreneur-wannabes in the world would be doing what he's doing it would be a good thing. You really shouldn't discount the emotional roller coaster that a start-up is.
Idle words indeed.
Do people really just show screenshots or screencasts?
Our demos are also usually performed with trunk code or 1-2 days old at most.
How do you handle it when you get a question about a particular aspect and can't show it?
And yes, you've been VERY lucky. :)
Good luck to him.
I believe the CEO of the video game company I used to work at was basically exactly like that. He had been a producer before, and then started his own studio. Granted, his principle role was marketing, business deals, and strategy. He occasionally made comments on design decisions, but everyone knew how to work around him because he didn't know what he was talking about..
(Steve was medium-technical, back in the day, though IIRC he never designed any of Apple's hardware or wrote any of their software.)
Flipping a coin has a 50% chance to fail, because there's little you can do to affect that probability.
There's a lot you can do to affect the probability of success in a start-up. In fact, everything you do affects that probability.
This is like comparing video poker to a slot machine. On one, you have an opportunity for input. On the other, you don't. So they're not the same thing.