Startup 1: Lucision - process-flow based document organization for law firms. http://www.memestreams.net/users/jello/blogid315504 Saved money and moved to India to build a prototype. Lawyer friend bailed.
End State: The Beach. The Himalayas. The Dalai Lama's birthday party.
Startup 2: Upon return to states, kept the company name, changed the tune - http://www.lucision.com Web-based appliance for slot machine analytics. Focused on tribal market. Raised seed money, lots of industry press, beta install at one casino, integrated with leading casino management system. Slugged it out for two years as salesman and developer, and doomed self to failure with a front-heavy pricing model (coulda signed up many casinos for a monthly fee), bizarre denial about the reality of a two year sales cycle, gross underestimation of competition, FOSS stack in an MS centric market, being a lone founder after the first three months, selling to the gaming market from Atlanta (why!?) when I should have been in Vegas, too much time spent very ineffectively trying to raise money, and figuring out what the hell I was doing. Should have failed way, way sooner.
End State: "Hey, with my experience I can now get good jobs!"
Startup 3: http://www.starcaller.com Star Caller - went to beach to relax after a couple years of intense international consulting, surfing buddy is a film hustler... a startup happened. Didn't go full time on it, learned a lot about producing multimedia and the film industry. Think we coulda made this work if we were in LA - we had leads, just not a thick pipeline. Still get calls from studios to pitch them campaigns - decline. Was always a sideline.
End State: "Hey, cool - I know about (prematurely) scaling things using AWS!"
Startup 4: Cloud Stenography http://www.cloudstenography.com - prototyped a web-based Apache Pig GUI. Early abort - after some good interest, decided I had insufficient personal savings to even think about pursuing a company.
End State: "Hey, I know Hadoop - I can get a job in Silicon Valley in big data!" Moved to Silicon Valley.
I've lost a lot of money tanking startups, but its worked out reasonably well career wise. I can't sit in a classroom for more than 15 minutes without going nuts, so I figure I got my street MBA and some technical skills. Did a lot of consulting in between. Can't say I regret anything other than not moving to Silicon Valley sooner.
My next company will be with talented people from my network, in silicon valley, solving a data problem that cures someone's pain.
"a front-heavy pricing model (coulda signed up many casinos for a monthly fee), bizarre denial about the reality of a two year sales cycle, gross underestimation of competition, FOSS stack in an MS centric market, being a lone founder after the first three months, selling to the gaming market from Atlanta (why!?) when I should have been in Vegas, "
Are you talking about yourself there ? It almost looks like a third-person narrative.
Startup 1: Lucision - process-flow based document organization for law firms. http://www.memestreams.net/users/jello/blogid315504 Saved money and moved to India to build a prototype. Lawyer friend bailed.
End State: The Beach. The Himalayas. The Dalai Lama's birthday party.
Startup 2: Upon return to states, kept the company name, changed the tune - http://www.lucision.com Web-based appliance for slot machine analytics. Focused on tribal market. Raised seed money, lots of industry press, beta install at one casino, integrated with leading casino management system. Slugged it out for two years as salesman and developer, and doomed self to failure with a front-heavy pricing model (coulda signed up many casinos for a monthly fee), bizarre denial about the reality of a two year sales cycle, gross underestimation of competition, FOSS stack in an MS centric market, being a lone founder after the first three months, selling to the gaming market from Atlanta (why!?) when I should have been in Vegas, too much time spent very ineffectively trying to raise money, and figuring out what the hell I was doing. Should have failed way, way sooner.
End State: "Hey, with my experience I can now get good jobs!"
Startup 3: http://www.starcaller.com Star Caller - went to beach to relax after a couple years of intense international consulting, surfing buddy is a film hustler... a startup happened. Didn't go full time on it, learned a lot about producing multimedia and the film industry. Think we coulda made this work if we were in LA - we had leads, just not a thick pipeline. Still get calls from studios to pitch them campaigns - decline. Was always a sideline.
End State: "Hey, cool - I know about (prematurely) scaling things using AWS!"
Startup 4: Cloud Stenography http://www.cloudstenography.com - prototyped a web-based Apache Pig GUI. Early abort - after some good interest, decided I had insufficient personal savings to even think about pursuing a company.
End State: "Hey, I know Hadoop - I can get a job in Silicon Valley in big data!" Moved to Silicon Valley.
I've lost a lot of money tanking startups, but its worked out reasonably well career wise. I can't sit in a classroom for more than 15 minutes without going nuts, so I figure I got my street MBA and some technical skills. Did a lot of consulting in between. Can't say I regret anything other than not moving to Silicon Valley sooner.
My next company will be with talented people from my network, in silicon valley, solving a data problem that cures someone's pain.