My startup founding story

All great companies have a great founding story. When I sat down on my couch, I thought to myself, “I want to be a serial entrepenuer.”

Then I realized, I couldn’t even spell entrepreneur. Worse, I had no ideas.

Of course, the internet is filled with great content about doing a startup. The first thing is focus. You have to focus completely on your startup.

So for three weeks, I read Hacker News, Sam Altman’s blog, Joel on software, and watched the Stanford class on how to start a startup.

GrubHub was my only connection to the outside world. Tips were done on the credit card, and the extra instructions said that I was a nun who had taken a vow of silence, and to leave the food on the doorstep.

Over a pork eggroll, I realized that I had truly taken the plunge into the startup world when I determined that not showing up to work might impact getting paid. I already had my first financial pressure, and I knew soon I would be begging VC’s for money.

I giggled in girlish glee, what a right of passage! I went through my closet and did many careful calculations about which outfit would work for my different fantasy VCs.

It was this time of distraction that proved to be my ‘aha’ moment. After reading dozens of articles on how to be a creative person, the common thread seemed to be “don’t try too hard.” I came up with a lot of great ideas, but many of them just seemed too hard.

I kept hearing that “Ideas are cheap, execution is everything!” It was this time when I realized that, “yeah, ideas ARE cheap!” I’ve heard various pricing from “free”, to .83 cents each if you buy them by the dozen.

Anything you can get for cheap, you can sell for way more than its worth in Silicon Valley. Then it came to me, I need to be a company that provides ideas!

Every tech company is founded on great ideas! If we took all the tech companies together, it would easily top $1 trillion dollars. That’s one of the biggest markets on earth! Just being able to skim 0.01% of that would already make my company a unicorn!

Some might say, if you publish an idea, someone will steal it! Mainstream advice has been to share your ideas! Most people will think they are crap anyway. Of the people that like an idea, most won’t even remember it after 3 more stories on Hacker News.

Most importantly, none are as awesome at execution as you, dear reader.

So follow me, dear friends, for more great ideas! Since we’re still in our growth phase, we’re offering ideas for free to grow the brand! Tell your friends and spread the word.

How much will it cost? We don’t know. We’re going to change the world first, then figure out the business plan.

Welcome to Shallot (pronounced shallow) Ideas Incorporated. Where you get to make my daydreams come true.