Walking the razor’s edge…

Trying to create a startup venture can be a gut wrenching process.  I remember in the founding days of Avnera, some VC we were courting came into the lunch room and wanted to speak to the entire team.  A totally ego-maniacal thing to do in retrospect — more on that later — but it was his chance to tell us an anecdote that stuck with me, though it was put quite melodramatically… and it went a little something like this:

“in startups, you will experience life’s highest highs and lowest lows”

Let me add my take on this:

• First, this resonated with me at the time.  I definitely was living the roller-coaster that was Avnera those days.  Days of good news, breakthroughs, or great ideas via collaboration were some great times… and days of frustration, toil, and failure were, conversely, quite rough and discouraging.
• Second, it’s overstated.  Life’s Highest highs?  Lowest lows?  Not really.  It’s entirely possible to let these emotions color the rest of your life, but mature entrepreneurs (and in my experience, the serially successful ones) know that life goes on whether you fail or succeed in business… and personal happiness or despair beyond either are no guarantee.  This VC who sat down to pontificate and tell us all how much he knew about “our pain” was either full of it, or needed to get a life.  I hope he has.  The roller coaster of the start-up life should be a manageable ride - something that can be sequestered to the “professional” part of one’s existence.
• Third, for a critically-minded person, the start-up “highs” are far out-numbered by the “lows.”  I think this comes about from the focus on finding shortcomings in things, striving for improving current conditions and being hyper-analytical — even paranoid — about what it is you are setting out to accomplish.  And so…
• Fourth, countering one’s own critical mindset (required to manage responsibly) with the hope and faith (required to embark down an entrepreneurial path) in one’s ability to achieve something new is how one walks the razor’s edge during a start-up process.  Letting discouraging events result in abandonment of faith in the opportunity is how stillborn startups happen.  The flipside is letting stubborn belief in a bad idea lead to a poor deployment of scarce resources.

Delicate, delicate.

Today, I had a chat with a very seasoned and accomplished guy in the space.  He currently invests (VC-like), but realistically not at the stage and amounts I am currently seeking.  His feedback was heartening and disheartening… but all fair and balanced, even if charted by his own battle scars.  A stimulating event.

So today has become a day of digestion.  My thoughts are finally coalescing to where I see more clearly the chunks of value that are out there to monetize.  I am just trying to get my products built in a way that returns enough of that value to myself and my investors.  A key part of this process is identifying and convincing the right investors.  I have a pretty good of who that might be… now for the convincing…