Re:The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship
by MicahWedemeyer on Thursday July 09, 2009 @09:59AM
(#695859)
Very true. We constantly hear the "I woke up rich the very next day!" type stories, and it skews the perception of what running a business is like.
I have a lot of sympathy for old-school businesses that need a lot of operating capital. Putting your house in danger to support your business is a choice I hope I never have to make. In my case, that would essentially be the same as putting my marriage on the line.
Interesting quote I heard last week, from Stephen Fleming, successful VC and now Vice Provost of Georgia Tech. It was something like, "I've never seen a married founder bootstrap a company to a large exit and had the marriage survive."
I think it depends upon what value of large. One counter-example: Greg Gianforte bootstrapped RightNow technologies to 100M in revenue, still runs the company, and is still married. Two others would be Bill Hewlett and David Packard.
Its not that there aren't outliers. Its that bootstrapped divorce is very common - maybe more common than not.
Think of it as farming, if you sow a lot of seeds some will never come up, some will come up, wither and die and some will come up and grow to great height, then whither and die.
Everything has a lifecycle, businesses do too.
Any business that has generated money over its lifespan and has employed people and paid them is by some measure a successful business.
The timescale at which that cycle plays and the size of the business are not relevant.
Also, most people don't have the luxury of 'capital light.' When small businesses fail, families usually suffer. That is part of the game, and its worth talking about once in a while, in between articles about guys that hit it big.