Infected by the Entrepreneurial Parasite!
My favorite line from the movie Inception is the one from it’s opening scene by Cobb, the character played by Leonardo DeCaprio:
Cobb: What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?… An idea. Resilient, highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it’s almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed, fully understood. That sticks, right in there somewhere.
I have been infected by the Entrepreneurial parasite.
I have been bitten before and have started companies in the past too – two real and many more virtual. The virtual ones are the ones that start on a Friday night with a group of friends who just want to start something! Anything. They are really driven by frustration with their Dilbert-esque jobs (or worse Wally-esque) more than a real idea. The two real companies I have started before have both done well, but have not (yet) scaled the way I had envisioned they would. (For the curious, one is an online franchise and the other a blog).
What is different this time around is the idea behind the venture. That idea has taken root in my brain and is festering in there, establishing itself and growing. The idea I have is truly unique and could potentially change the world in it’s domain. It is truly scalable, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes in The Black Swan. More on that book and how it applies to an Entrepreneurial venture in later posts.
This bug I have will require an Entrepreneurial venture like none I have been involved in before. It will require setting up a company, potentially getting a co-founder aboard, definitely putting a whole team together, coding web and mobile apps, (maybe) raising capital, marketing, getting customers, developing a business model to make a profit online (no simple task, ask the folks @twitter), etc. In a nutshell, I need to start a tech startup.
So I have started on a journey, alone at the moment with just my wife’s support. I still have a day job and plan to (read need to) keep it till my Startup can afford to hire me. In other words, I’m bootstrapping it.
My first steps have been in the learning department. I have started learning all about:
I will be documenting my journey on this blog. The goal is to share, learn, express my thoughts and when needed, vent. I still have innumerable questions that I am seeking answers for – asking people I know, on Quora, stackoverflow, other startup blogs, you name it. I am sure this journey will have it’s ups and downs. Hopefully I will find readers who will interact and provide help, support and advice as I share.
This blog will have two major categories – tech and business. I am doing both at the moment. That way readers can filter out the part they don’t care about. Also, I am sure I will need professional coders soon (again, my code sucks). That way I can hand over the engineering blog to real techies.
Come back and please do leave comments to provide feedback and hopefully some support too. I am sure things will get interesting!
Cobb: I have it under control.
Arthur: I’d hate to see you out of control.
Do Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.You can also follow us on Twitter…
I too have this parasite, and I’m glad to see someone else has decided to keep a blog on it.
@Nick, thanks for being the first to leave a comment on my blog. Glad to hear you have the ‘parasite’ too. Do keep in touch and share your experiences.
God help me, I put aside a whole afternoon to fgiure this out.