Generally speaking boot-strapped start-ups are all between 60 days and 9 months from guaranteed bankruptcy, and at the same time about to shoot up the hockey stick and make hundreds of millions in revenue. Of course, neither is actually true, but when you are constantly looking at your financial reports and projections, it’s hard not to feel that way. And in that mode, it feels so much like it must feel to hang-glide (disclaimer, I only fantasize about it, but have never done it). But in a start up, you have to start buckling your straps as you are running, being chased by wild boars. So, maybe not quite the same thing. If you get yourself buckled up, hit the updraft and don’t get gorged, you will sail up and the world will fall away below you in glory. If you don’t buckle, you fall to your death below. And if you get impaled on the tusks of a boar… not pretty. It’s just the nature of it. And why start-ups are fun, and rewarding and terrifying and not for the feint of heart. There is something strange about people who hang-glide, and something strange about entrepreneurs. But, like all things that have a rush and transcendence to them, there is a lot of work that must happen before, during and after. Thinking, preparing, training and working out the kinks. And there are friends to be made. It can be said that to know an entrepreneur is to know all entrepreneurs, and I think to a certain extent that is true. I like how how it’s talked about in this video

Originally published on WordPress on June 25, 2009. Migrated to this blog on May 29, 2025.