New York 1999. I am a business school student with a combination of dangerous ideas, irrelevant experiences, incomplete education and out of control ambitions. In any other country I would be institutionalized. In New York City, I am the startup guy, the dude with the business plan.
While a few leads from Goldman and an offer from Viant, the consulting firm, beckons, I decide to dump everything for a shot at running my own business from the beach front cities of southern California. There are a number of warning signs that I chose to ignore. Even now, a decade and change later, when I look back I ask myself what made me do it? What was I on? And if you thought this post would offer a rational world view that you could use to build a model for entrepreneurial decision making, I can only say the following. Ha!
So to be brief, I jumped without looking. And when the times come, so will you. One fine day I had a 6 figure offer to work as a senior consultant with one of the hottest technology practice in the world, the next morning I was running my own startup in Santa Ana. A week later (actually 18 months, but it seemed like a week on speed), everything was dead or dying.
It took five years in Detox and a 200 page book on failure to get it out of my system
Do or do not do, there is no try.