Building Stuff is Hard

Keep Trying 

Building a company is hard. No shit sherlock. Well it’s not so obvious when you have certain apps that are built around a stupid colloquialism and have otherwise very smart people pouring money into it. We have become a world that is avoiding solving tough problems and focusing solely on short term gains of material wealth (with some exceptions). Where are the fountainheads for innovation? They walk a lonely path of having ideas and companies die because they can’t demonstrate the right metrics around user or revenue growth. Had the innovators of the past been tied to similar metrics, I shudder to think where we would be as a society. We tout the advancements of our technology and our internet of things, but all of those things are nothing, when thinking of the brilliance of things like AWS. But ironically, AWS has been the catalyst allowing dilettantes to build a generation of meaningless things, rather than germinating true greatness. I love and loath it for democratizing entrepreneurship, because it creates lower barriers to entry and allows anyone with a little cash to pursue ideas, regardless of intrinsic value. The common retort is that someone values it so it has value, but that is pandering to the lowest common denominator.

In the past 2.5 years I have worked to solve a problem that would truly benefit all market participants, only to have to bow down to the Lean startup notion. While I understand using the scientific method to validate whether the smallest test of whether something is truly useful, one must ask, does the public really know what is good for them? Copernicus and many others come to mind when thinking of revolutionaries, and I certainly don’t profess to be as innovative as them. However, in pandering to the almighty metrics of revenue growth or user growth, I find myself making endless compromises against what I truly believe is the right solution. It seems like the flavor of the year is mobile connected commerce, where you have a basic workflow connected to an app. While I applaud those businesses for generating revenue, I hope the successful among them follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps and use that wealth to pursue the next level problems that will be beneficial to society. Remember, until we have legalization of stem cell therapy en masse, you will die before 100 years of age. Let’s think a little about future generations and remember, you can take it with you. In the meantime, I’ll continue bootstrapping my little company hoping that maybe someone with deep enough pockets will say you guys don’t completely suck and have some valid ideas.