Friday, August 31, 2012

I Get Knocked Down; Still Anything is Possible

It's the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend and I dropped a bunch of teens off at coffee shop in Arlington. They're young, sexy, pretty and handsome, thrilled to be heading into Harvard Square on the bus to knock around. And they are excited, happy, silly. Are you?

I pull away and I'm trying to put my finger on that feeling. It's the feeling that anything is possible.  Anything!




And I'm thinking,  Shit, that's it!  That's what it feels like to be an entrepreneur! That's the feeling you get in an accelerator! You are surrounded by BRAVE, CRAZY, ANYTHING-IS-POSSIBLE people 24x7 and once you've experienced that, it's a bitch to live any other way.

I mean face it, most businesses are all about, "Oh sorry, we don't do that here," or "Oh no, we've always done it this way," or "Why reinvent the wheel?"

Okay, ready, SOMETIMES THE WHEEL NEEDS REINVENTING! And that's what enterpreneurs have -- insane amounts of optimism and the ability to jump on an opportunity and make something happen.

Whether they're chasing a hot girl down the street, chatting up a stranger in a bar, reimagining how a time-honored practice can be completely revamped, they are open to all possibility.

What a way to live! On the edge of possibility, creativity, chutzpah and welcoming new ways of thinking and bringing new products and things into being.  They try things.  They fail on a regular basis.  They are ready to try try again.

Oh yeah! They get knocked down but they get up again!  He sings the songs that remind him of the good times.

And that's what I'm writing about.  Thanks again for all the support.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Thanks to my fellow Kickstarter project managers for sharing their stories last night at our event at the Microsoft NERD (New England Research & Development Center) in Cambridge. Laurie Kahn, who just hit her pledge goal yesterday spoke about her project Love Between the Covers, a documentary film about romance writers. Joel Brown left beautiful Newburyport to visit the city and talk about his guide book to the gorgeous area around his home -- The Essex Coastal Byway Guide. Check it out here. Ian Schon added his great Pen Project to the other bibliophile projects. His pen is terrific and like the others, despite making their goals, you can find them all on Kickstarter and still buy into all three. And my project is starting to take baby steps -- it's only 2 days old -- and you can find my Founders Less Than Three video here.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Kickstarter LIVE!

So here goes! I'm kicking off my Kickstarter project today, with a little help from my friends. It's called Founders Less Than Three and you can support it right here!

It's a novel all about entrepreneurs -- five CEO guys and five CEO girls and their teams are building new companies from scratch and racing to get funding.  Boston is the best place in the world to found a start-up and my enterprenerds come from all over the world.

It's early here in Boston and I am thinking about my characters getting up, washing their faces, getting ready for the day. It's 5:30am, so a bunch of them have been working all night at their offices at Kendall Square. It's just one of those things, you figure you'll grab the T in time to get home late and then you just keep working through the night instead.

If you haven't tried Kickstarter, this is a great time to join. You can support my project for as little as a $1.00 and there's no complicated sign-up process and all that. Have you ever bought anything from Amazon? If so, then that's all you do with Kickstarter -- it all runs through Amazon and you don't even pay for a month (and only if my project gets fully funded.) So try it out and be sure to peruse the other amazing creative projects over at Kickstarter as well.