After I Hit SUBMIT to an Incubator

What do you think happened after submitting my application to an incubator? My mind proceeded to dip into insanity. For an entire day I would think I'm ninety nine percent sure they will accept me into their incubator program. Then the next day I'm ninety nine percent sure they laughed and threw my application into the delete bin.

This is how's it's been ever since I hit SUBMIT. I wish I could stop thinking about it. Each day it's one way or the other way. I can't seem to stop the obsession of my curiosity. I don't want to wait six weeks for the answer. So my mind has to argue with itself. Each ninety nine percent viewpoint has good reason to win.

It's not my current startup that I seek to join an incubator, it's the offspring from my current startup. Since I am the only one who can see inside of my head, of course I know how truly scalable, and awesome the idea is. Yet on the side of tossing me into the trash, is the fact that I do not know all the knowledge that the people running the incubator know. They may know about such an idea and they may know why it's not a good idea.

If I was in an incubator, oh man could I sore. I would not waste one moment of knowledge. I would use the time with them to the fullest extent of shaping my new idea. I could never let down these professors whom would guide me into creating a gift for humanity. And those handicaps I have, no co-founder, no coding skills, third grade level of grammar, borderline crazy, well I never worry about those things, but they might. They might judge me wrongly. Or I did not do a good enough job at explaining my idea.

So back in forth my mind will fight out the decision that only they can make.

One thing is for sure. It's either going to be acceptance, which would give me jubilation beyond reason. Or it's going to be rejection, which would put me into a few days of sorrow – then I'd have to drink a six pack – boo whoooo

When Your Start Up Idea Morphs

Often times when you get an idea and start working on it, it morphs into something else. This is a common occurrence. This is happening to me and my start up idea DigiThin.

As I developed DigiThin, something was happening in my mind. Some whispering thought, kept whispering to me. "You have to do this" it would whisper to me. I'd tell it "I cannot do that, because I'm so busy with building DigiThin, that I have no time to do it". 

Yet the whispering thought would never leave me. It just kept adding more to it's whisper. It would add more cool things, that even I was blown away by. Of course I wanted to do it, it was way cooler then DigiThin. More scale able then DigiThin,and it was DigiThin's offspring, even DigiThin wanted me to do it.

As a parent you always want your children to do better then you. To have a better life then you did. DigiThin wants it's off spring to be better then it. And I have no doubt it will be. 

I think it's pretty awesome when your start up idea morphs. This is what us founders love to have happen, and so do all those VC's and Angels. 

Me and The Nag

Lately, it's been a daily beating in the brain. My thoughts keep attacking me, telling me to do this for my startup or telling me to do that. No I'm not crazy like the man who goes into the Navel base and kills a bunch of people. He says he heard voices in his head. He probably suffered with schizophrenia.

Yet we all have an internal voice. It talks to us all the time. I just choose to talk back to mine. If I had a co-founder I would talk with that person. But it's just me and my idea going straight ahead, following the nag as I often refer to my internal voice. 

I finally started hanging out where other entrepreneurs hang out. I am hoping to find a co-founder, but the chances are pretty slim for me, especially if they can not see what I see in DigiThin. If only I could invite them into my head and have them see all the things I know about it's future. Maybe they would even see my other idea, that really could be the idea to work on. 

Some days I feel really happy and enthusiastic about my startup, but other days I feel really down. Like today. I really hate being all alone in this walk with the nag. I think I won't be able to get help until I have traction. First I have to prove to people there is something here. Something valuable to others. 

Until then - it's just me and the nag

Those Odds Stacked Against Me

Just what are these odds stacked against me? The one that comes to mind first is, NO co-founder. From my research about start ups, I found that single founder companies fail more often then those with two or three co-founders. The reason being is, there is a ton of work to be done and one person can not do it all. That's not to say that single co-founder companies all fail, there are those who succeed, but the odds are really slim.

Number two odd stacked against me is: Not having a good idea. Now this is something to be debated. Of course bad ideas usually burn out quickly. But what about an idea that doesn't look like a good idea? According to Paul Graham, there are plenty of those around. Facebook, Airbnb, Google to name a few. When these ideas were in there infancy who really thought they were good ideas? Only the founders, and some lucky investors. But the founders of these great companies carried on with the task of building their start up, because they could see the idea was a good idea, and they, probably like me, could not get that nagging monkey off their back, they had to keep building them.

Number three odd stacked against me is: No funding. The surest way to sink a company is no money. When someone starts a new business they have to have funding. The tricky part is when you're building this new business you're not usually making any money. So it's all burn rate money in the beginning. Start ups often use their own money, and then money from family and friends. They also spend a ton of TIME seeking funding. We have some new options now with the new laws allowing crowd funding. There is money out there, but who is going to invest in your start up if your idea does not look like a good idea? And you do not have a co-founder?

So there are three big odds stacked against me. Certainly there are lots of tiny odds to add to that list. How am I going to continue on? We'll I like what the swimmer DianaNyad said today, after swimming from Cuba To Florida this past weekend. She said “Find A Way”. That is what I must do. Find a way.