Matt Gemmell wrote in Losing Direction:
One of my dreams is of course to do the shareware thing; start a little software company and get some well-focused, beautiful little apps out there, targeting niche markets and filling those needs as perfectly as I can engineer them to.
That’s exactly my dream with Happy Apps and WebnoteHappy, my well-focused (on bookmarking the web), beautiful little app. The trouble is, and I think Matt is trying to come to terms with this, is that this is not easy. Its also not what society wants you to do. And unlike college, your parents (or anyone else for that matter) are not going to pay for it. If you were to start the next wbtwo.oh company, then _maybe_ you would have a slim chance of getting VC money. And health insurance in the US isn’t cheap. So its a big struggle to live out this dream.
At least you have to give it a shot. I watched the movie Dodgeball recently and the main character was in the process of giving up his dream. Then Lance Armstrong, the man who singlehandedly popularized colored wrist bands, shows up and basically tells him “look I was diagnosed with brain, liver and testicular cancer” and says that even with all that he managed to live out his dream and something like “I’m sure you have a good reason for quitting your dream but you’ll probably regret this for the rest of your life.”
So to Matt and others out there, I say go for it. But do some planning first to maximize your chances before you take the leap. Maybe I should write about that more.
If you crash and burn, then try again. Or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. But you have to try. Otherwise, you’ll never know, probably after a year or two of difficulty in starting up, if you would have succeeded.
Yes, please do! Whenever I hear entrepreneurs say ‘just go out and do it!’, my reaction is ‘fine, but I have a family, and a mortgage, and I don’t want to live on credit cards to support my dream.’ Maybe if I was single and renting again I’d feel differently. I’d be interested in knowing how others are doing it.
I’ll write about this later as I’m exhausted after putting out two private beta builds tonight. But in the meantime, read Pamela Slim’s Is starting a business impossible when you are the sole income earner in your family? from her blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation.
Some positive thoughts for “the little guy”: http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
Just bought a license to WebNoteHappy (great app!)
But to the point: not five minutes ago I was reading this post on Understanding Local Max.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/11/understanding_l.html
Perhaps of interest?
Cheers.
Cheryl,
Glad you like WebnoteHappy and thanks for buying a license!
Good pointer to Seth’s Understanding Local Max. I saw this a while back but it didn’t really hit me until you showed it to me again today. I’m realizing that I’m heading towards Point B now. And I’m gaining the courage daily to push through to Point C. That’s probably one of the toughest things about this – performing the big mental shifts needed to succeed.