I am now entering into my third small business venture, and what is likely to be my most ambitious... and sometimes I wonder if I am what is referred to as a "Job Creator". Most days I sure don't feel like one, in fact I would be dancing a jig right now if I could pay one employee (let alone quit my day job and do this small business thing full time). I guess I might be better described as an American who still has faith in the Dream.
I decided today to start posting regular diary entries about my journey into the land of the Job Creators, the challenges that I run into, the lessons that I learn. In the end I hope to show that one can succeed at following their dream through hard work without sacrificing their ethics in the process.
This is my first entry in what I expect to be a long series of diary entries. Today I and the rest of my partners in this adventure discussed financing and giving equity to the people that we have brought into the team so far.
Honestly I want to pay them for all of the hard work that they have done, I have lucked out to have some of the most intelligent and dedicated people I have ever worked with as part of my team for this project. The problem, we haven't made any money. Hell we don't even have a marketable product yet, just a prototype with a lot of promise, and a team that believes in what we are doing. Everybody there was looking at me to be able to scare up some investment capital so that we can actually make some purchases and start paying a few of the developers. Unfortunately it was also up to me to lay out just how hard of a slog we had before us, and how it might be 12 months (maybe 24 or more) before any of us can quit our day jobs and start working on this full time.
There was a time, when my parents were young, when if you wanted to start a business you could walk down to the local bank where they likely already knew you, tell them the idea and get a small loan to get it started (if you had a decent local reputation). Well... that may be an over exaggeration... but there was a time when getting investment was a lot easier. More people had savings and disposable income to put into a moderately risky ventures, and as such for idea people like me there were more opportunities to be a job creator and create a new business.
Luckily for me, all of the team understood that we had just taken the first few steps in what is to be a long marathon before us; and also that these are the hardest of all of those steps. For their faith, we decided to give each of member of the team who has worked on this project over the last six months to create the prototype, a share of equity in the company (something that used to be called stock options). The idea being that if my math is sound and my projections pan out all of them will have more than enough money to retire on, get their kids through college, and make themselves comfortable.
The aim is not just for me to attain the American Dream... it is also for all of the people with me to get there too.
Next week I will write about how a patent lawyer told me he didn't want to take my money... because the part of our legal system that he works in on a daily basis is broken.