Someone asked me why I’ve founded 64 startups…
…with only 3 successful exits??
- First of all, that’s 3 very lucrative exits where I retained an average of 40% personal equity which is insanely high.
- Second, that’s 4.6% to exit which is just under the average percentage of all startups that make it to exit.
- Thirdly, those 64 startups were spread over the course of my 42-year career and include many where I was merely a seed stage member of the founding team and bucked heads with other founding team members. None of my exits had more than two founding team members and were bootstrapped.
- The fact that I’m 64 with 3 big exits and overdrawn at my banks with a sub-500 Fico driving a 1991 Ford “Exploder” has nothing to do with my business acumen but rather everything to do with the fact that I am a “Rake” of epic proportions. (my bad)
In a historical context, a rake (short for rakehell, analogous to “hellraiser”) was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process. Cad is a closely related term. Comparable terms are “libertine” and “debauchee”.
The Restoration rake was a carefree, witty, sexually irresistible aristocrat whose heyday was during the English Restoration period (1660–1688) at the court of King Charles II. They were typified by the “Merry Gang” of courtiers, who included as prominent members John Wilmot, George Villiers, and Charles Sackville, who combined riotous living with intellectual pursuits and patronage of the arts. At this time the rake featured as a stock character in Restoration comedy.[1][2][3]
After the reign of Charles II, and especially after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the cultural perception of the rake took a dive into squalor. The rake became the butt of moralistic tales, in which his typical fate was debtors’ prison, venereal disease, or, in the case of William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, insanity in Bedlam.
The other thing is that do believe I have some sort of record (please fact check) as having been put on public record as charged with the dubious crimes of “moral turpitude”, “habitual offender”, “habitual absconder” and classified as “chronic and unrehabilitatable” in four states. I am neither proud nor ashamed of this, simply stating a matter of public record to beat any detractors to the punch. I fly my own flag over my own ship and pay my own penalties along the way…find someone who says otherwise and I’ll toss my “rake gauntlet” down and challenge them to a duel on the spot and the only person I’ve ever harmed along the way has been myself and my dearly departed mother.
That said, with this latest crash and burn I had three unforeseeable external occurrences contributing to the failure and shuttering of El Lodge Taos which I will touch upon below that were not of my doing and I’m going to break (for the first time in my life) the brother’s code of “Omerta” and name names because one motherf#cker was my friend and “brother” for 35 years and now won’t answer my emails or take my calls and has me blocked on all channels and I’m calling you out son. I’m going to drop your name on all my 100+ social network profiles and blogs and I may even rent some full-page advertising spaces in select business publications and reprint this post and a billboard or two or a hundred and rat you the fu#k out. The fact that you were at one time my sponsor in a 12-Step program be damned. I’m gonna break your anonymity and that’s all on you. Bill Wilson would approve of the exception I’m quite sure! You can sue me for libel and or slander and even win which I doubt and I’ll say try to collect on the judgment and get in the back of the line, please. This is not even the first time you’ve screwed me, it’s the second so shame on me I guess.
So here goes…drumroll please maestro…
…to be continued in 48 hours if repayment arrangement have not been made via direct contact to me at sgbmedia@gmail.com or text to 442–218–5898.
