What makes a king out of a slave? Courage. What makes the flag on the mast to wave? What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? -Courage.
Others may exist, but I've only seen three successful kinds of ventures. 1) The charismatic entrepreneur who lulls everyone into the venture with promises of untold riches and fame. 2) The evil genius who inserts human beings as cogs into his totalitarian machine. 3) The keystone cops who bumble their way into something that is already successful, and somehow manage not to &^%$ it all up. I think each can be successful, but they don't mix well.
You haven't seen many successful ventures then! The startup world is chock full of smart teams that solve a problem better/cheaper/faster than the existing solution and make a few 10s of millions for the founding team and potentially some angels, and hundreds of thousands for the rest of the people who worked there. They aren't splashy, their CEOs tend toward geekdom more than messiah, a lot are in software most don't even realize exists, but for every unicorn everyone knows about there are hundreds of these types of successes you'd only know about if you were in their niche or personally knew someone on their team.
Yes, I'm weird. May the WYNN always be at your back and SVXY stay forever sexy! Other than RH, I made four solid calls: WYNN, SVXY, two major market turns (including the SVXY call), plus a good market continuation call. Some of these calls are still in play. So there!
You're not weird, I'm just goofy lol. That wasn't a shot at you. Just the way you wrote that post made me think of that Wizard of Oz scene, and it kinda fit in with the spirit of the thread. My bad.
#1, #2, #3 is the intended roadmap, with the problem that I'm stuck at #1 since quite a while. I'm carrying on regardless, but essentially getting un-stuck is the reason I'm considering a cofounder. >> One of the keys to success is using other people's time and expertise. Precisely, I've come to realize that it may be worth splitting the equity and incurring some costs, if that expertise can be profitable for the both of us. Note that from the cofounder's point of view, I am that "other people's time and expertise", just like he is mine. >> However, my questions for the OP would address his willingness to put forth the sustained effort required in finding someone suitable for this task and properly maintaining that relationship. As long as it's more of a background process, it seems that the potential upside is worth the investment of time, effort and money. I see it also as a diversification of my investments, in not putting all my eggs in the "only by my own" basket. The key element is that I'm able to "lose" that investment, as generally there's no reward without risk.
>> Did I get everything right? Your post is full of words like "wage", "job", "labor" which means you are seriously confusing "employee" with "entrepreneur". I've zero interest in the former, by all means I'm not holding a gun to anyone's head to take my offer, there are a zillion jobs out there to apply for and no doubt that Black Rock and Goldman Sachs can't wait to get a hold of these talented guys, they just gotta call the hedge fund and let it know they exist. My post is addressed to what I define as "entrepreneur". You can do a litmus test to yourself to figure out weather you're one of them or not: pay $1000 / month out of your pocket for another guy to help you with the stuff you deem worthy. Pay $10,000 / month if you have them and are confident that it's worth the investment. If you can't, won't or find whatever excuse why you don't do that then you're the employee type, which is perfectly fine, just don't think you understand how things really work on the other side.
You sound like me, except I have two fast food jobs. Grin. Neither has full time hours because they want to avoid paying for the Affortable Care Act. Maybe if the OP throws in room and board, he will have a bunch of ETer's lined up!