Come for the Ride…

I’m not sure if most developers and entrepreneurs operate the same way as I do, but when I’m in true startup mode, I tend to shut off most if not all distractions. For me, this means no TV during the day, no nights out on the weekends, no early nights before 1am and basically zero fun during the early (development) sprint. Though it’s not a big deal for me, I basically skipped the holidays this year too.

When needed, I’ll take a ramen break if my body stops being productive or watch a movie so my conscious brain and eyes can take a break while the subconscious figures out problems in the background; gotta love the backup brain. In more recent times, I’ve been putting music on… but I think most people do that when they code. Since music doesn’t provide anything new like news or gossip, it doesn’t provide distractions like Digg or Engadget would.

Like a sick marathon runner who repeatedly train and sign up for races, I’ve been down this path a few times without a medal to show off the achievements; but the motivation is still there. In all honesty, I can’t tell you why I like doing this to myself even 15 years later… but I’m doing it. As baffled as I am of the marathon runners, I’m sure my choice is one that most people don’t understand either. For the record, I only run when disasters happen. (e.g. a tornado chasing me)

So this lifestyle takes a toll… a little on me but I’m sure more so for everyone around me. My wife has been a champ; taking care of the house, the dogs and keeping the shelves full of ramen. Well, she’s actually a great cook, but I’ve gotten lazy when it comes to personal nourishment.

My friends have been great though I honestly haven’t seen them in recent times except for holiday gatherings. I’m sure there are about 10 bad movies out there I want to see with them but I’ll have to wait till they’re available on Netflix.

So I guess this post is a question for all the entrepreneurs who are reading this: what do you guys do when you’re working on your idea? Do you try to do a better job at balancing life and work or is it a mad dash every time you start something new? I’d be interested in seeing if successful startups share this craziness or if they approach it more modestly. At this rate if nothing else changes, burnout seems to be the only way this process could end.

The very last thing my ex-employer said to me before walking out the door was “Your health insurance will run out at the end of the month. You must tell us before then if you want to continue your coverage on COBRA.”

I am fortunately one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have major medical problems (knock on wood), and within the last 5 years I’ve suffered one serious cold. However, the option for COBRA from the jobs I’ve left has always intrigued me. First of all, why is it called COBRA? Aren’t cobras bad?

Ever since I was a little kid, I was told to avoid cobras; not that I was living in a jungle or a desert or wherever these snakes lived, but my teacher was nice enough to tell me “IF you see one, walk away slowly.” My learnings were reaffirmed when watching G.I. Joe — Americans fight cobras. (Or at least with my limited English, that’s what I gathered.)

So what’s the deal? I feel like the program is a scam. What you used to pay for to cover your butt now costs 10x more… and fittingly, this special perk comes while you’re unemployed. Yippie for the jobless! (I guess) Seriously, what thoughtful person came up with this program?

You may argue that “COBRA stands for something dummy!” To which I researched and found that it stood for: Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. Yeah, WTF is that and how is that remotely medical related? I think someone picked the word COBRA first (this is how we can symbolize picking off the weak), and then came up with some random words to fill the letters so that word could be an acronym.

Sure, I can do that too:

SPAM - sh*t passed as meat
SCUM - secret club of unsanitary men
and so on…

So… does anyone even use this thing? There’s gotta be a better way.

If you haven’t noticed in recent times, companies are messing up more, apologizing more and are coming out more into the public that make them appear more human than being some large, evil corporate entity. I may not know who the owners of Walmart, Waffle House, Publix or Sears are, but I can put a human face to many of the others such as Microsoft, Apple, Dell, Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Web 2.0, amongst some of the other definitions can also be defined as shifting the focus to people. Part of this transition of opening up is to get people from various positions in the company to come out from behind the walls of the corporation and share some behind-the-scene stuff with the general public. Why is this good? Well, when a human speaks to another human, you get honest feedback. When a company speaks to the public, we as consumers, put up our defenses.

In the blogosphere, it’s pretty easy to tell if a person is blogging from their passions vs. another who’s blogging because their job mandated it. Even if you’re a great writer, if your heart’s not into the topic, the blog usually sucks.

Part of the reason why we’re blogging about this new autos classified venture is because we’re genuinely passionate about scratching the entrepreneur itch and we actually enjoy what we do. Also, I don’t know about y’all, but I think it’s sexy as hell to have grown men keep diaries like 13 yr old girls. (Unfortunately this one lacks a pink, heart shaped lock.)

Anyway, in my pursuit to hunt down the next great buzz maker to join our team, I’ve been scouring the web for like-minded individuals and randomly landing on various blogs by other entrepreneurs that are also dictating their journey into their own start-ups. Even if their idea is not directly related to what we’re doing, it’s great to see others walk down a similar path to try to educate their audience on the stresses of starting up something from nada.

One such blog I found was by another entrepreneur named Jimmy Huen who talks about his trial and tribulation of starting his idea. While I don’t know what exactly he’s working on, it was interesting to read about his execution style and how it’s different from what we’re writing about here.

In a way, some of his stories kinda mirrored my last attempt at outsourcing which failed miserably for me. Granted, I’m not saying Jimmy is doing anything wrong; but I can certainly sympathize with him on those days where he felt like his developers are just screwing him and can’t be reached via regular communications.

If you’re interested in what his story is, feel free to hop on over to his blog to see where he’s at in his process. Although Jimmy’s currently hit a bump in the road, I’m pretty confident he’ll find ways to solve the problems. Of course, our videos on starting a venture with zero budget may also help. (It’s worth checking out Jimmy!)

While the title here would have made more sense if the blog changed to a red theme (something we’re working on if time allows), what it’s really describing is sense or urgency that entrepreneurs feel when we get excited about our new pet project.

You guys may have noticed that the last few posts this month have pretty much nothing in common; and you may be asking…

Is this blog about cars?

Yes but not exactly.

Is this blog about web design?

Well, right now it kinda is.

Alright guy, is this blog really about inspirational videos?

Whatever helps right?

The truth is, this blog has been jumping around (about topics that would bore your first date to tears) mainly because these are the hats entrepreneurs have to wear when starting a new venture. Well okay, part of it is probably b/c of my A.D.D. but for real, there are a lot to consider when you decide to dedicate your free time to work. I mean, what kind of crazy person choose to load themselves with MORE work after a long day?

They say ignorance is bliss and I would have to agree. The first time I started out back in college we launched a site in a few weeks. I did not take into consideration nearly as many futuristic variables as much as I am now. Which designer are we going to use? What width should the site be? How will we promote it? Where are we hosting it? Is 300gb’s of space enough for 3 million cars’ worth of pictures? Yeah, if this had been done years before, I would have been a lot more reactive than proactive; but it would have been short and sweet.

Is that bad? Not necessarily. If nothing else, a basic site would be up now and someone out there would be trying it out and telling me I did great job or to shove my P.O.S. site on to an unstable hard drive. (Hey, feedback is great either way!) Also, if you’ll notice, a lot of what’s being considered are things that can be fixed or upgraded as the need arises. Do I really need to worry about getting a world class server right now when we have a total of -2 users? Probably not. But yet I am and we’ll probably write about it in our next post.

So anyway, why the red alert? Well, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, this past weekend I interviewed a guy for the position of CTO. The meet and greet with Randall went great and it’s refreshing to finally meet someone that gets it both on the technical side but more importantly, the business side. For those of you that don’t know what CTO means, it means that he will be effectively replacing my left side of the brain so I can focus more on other things instead of technical details of how to setup Linux or writing code. What a relief…

But since we’ve decided to collaborate on this venture; things have been moving close to double speed; which is welcomed but stressful. I’d be lying (and not doing enough) if I say things are calm. The good news is that positive energy and positive reinforcement charges my batteries (which explains the current video kick on entrepreneurial successes) but more importantly, it feels like this venture is headed somewhere and that it’ll meet my virtual deadline!

All good GREAT things!