Entrepreneurs anonymous

This is also one of the weird things about 'getting rich' (or a rapid change in net worth to the positive). A friend of mine who actually made it out of the dot com era with lots of residual wealth, was retelling a situation where a co-worker asked what he had done over the long weekend; What he had actually done was fly down to the Carribean with his girlfriend and spent the weekend on a sailboat (he lived in Boston). He related that he could say what he had done, but then his co-worker is pissed off because he thinks he his bragging, he can not say anything and get them pissed off about being anti-social, or he can lie about what he did, which when it gets out that it was a lie he gets in trouble too.

His take on it was he wasn't going to not do these things because it caused problems, he just wouldn't socialize. When you have kids and your friends don't, they don't want to hear about your kids and yet they are consuming your life. When your an entrepreneur and your friends aren't they don't want to hear about your business and yet your business is all you spend your time on.

So basically you can't be successful as an entrepreneur unless you're a sociopath? That's a disappointingly cynical view.

Some advice from someone who has also been in the trenches:

First, you don't need to waste time thinking or complaining about angels and VCs when you start a business you can fund yourself.

Second, if you're expecting growth to come easily and quickly, and you don't have the capital necessary to execute a realistic plan in a realistic amount of time, you're setting yourself up for unnecessary disappointment before you even begin.

Third, if you can't identify the primary drivers of your success and truly believe that you have 100 things to do, you don't have a good understanding of your business.

Fourth, fundraising won't impact your team when you don't need to raise capital.

Fifth, rejection, while hard, is a part of life. Even the most successful salespeople hear "no" far more often than they hear "yes." If you have unrealistic expectations about this and can't maintain a positive attitude unless you close the majority of the people you sell to, you might want to reconsider entrepreneurship.

It doesn't have to be that way. It certainly wasn't for me.

The cool thing about running your own business is that you can run it any way you like. Yes, you can work 120 hour weeks, lose your wife, and have your heart attack at 45. But you can also work one 8 hour day per week, with a quick 10 minute email spin on the other weekdays, and spend the rest of your time enjoying your life.

Both of those routes will get your product shipped, fit it to the market, and ramp you up to a full time living if you do it right.

The idea that you have to work yourself into the ground is just a story they tell people to scare them off. The reality is that entrepreneurship isn't particularly hard, particularly stressful, or particularly scary. Unless you want it to be.

I used to work as a care assistant. I basically agree with the parent but while reading about massive psychological toll of being rejected I could not help but think "try to observe a half-conscious guy in terminal stadium of cancer moan and scream from pain for hours before he finally dies" - I was working night shifts and after THAT I could not believe that sun was still rising.

And working as a minimum wage 'robo-slave' in a pen factory for one week when I was at high school made me realize that this kind of work is no cake either.

Entrepreneurship, however hard, is still one of the easiest methods how to make a living.

Actually, this sounds like a non-problem.

The most crucial first step is to change your frame of mind: you're not bound to any employer, and your personal time is entirely your own.

Develop a prototype in your own time, get lots of feedback to improve it, and suddenly all sorts of avenues and options will be open to you.

You could license it back to your company (for a price); if that's rejected, go somewhere else. It certainly sounds as though there's a gap in the market, so the obvious thing to do would be to fill it - ASAP.

Think of it this way: you're working your way toward financial freedom. Why allow anyone to put obstacles in your way?