Happy New Year's Eve Startups

Your Startup Crown

May Your Startup Hit Many Milestones This Year!

We Build

We Discover

We A/B Test

We Pivot

WE

Reach

Milestones

Just to

We Struggle

We Shine

We Suffer

We Whine

In the end, there is no end, because us Entrepreneurs always have another idea.

As hard as those first so many ideas have been, don't worry, your successful beautiful one is coming!

Founder Goes On Addiction Quitting Spree

I have been on a path of quitting addictions. You know, those annoying but sometimes fun addictions like overeating? I'm not doing it for the coming New Year. I rarely do a New Years resolution. I'm doing it for my health, and frankly some of those Woohoo fun addictions are making me miserable.

The first thing I quit was a long term medication I've been on. It was for a serious neck injury that happened in my thritys. Spine and neck injuries are so painful, and the struggle to recovery from or live with them can make a person depressed. After dealing with the injury for a few years I came upon a Doctor that really did give me the magic pill. He said it was safe to use for years and years, practically forever! To me it was the wonder drug.

 Amitriptyline helped the suffering I was in, almost disappear. Yep, I loved it. Yet as the years went by so did the misconceptions of this drug. I attempted to wean myself off it many times, but I found that I could not sleep. I'd be up for days without much sleep, because Ami as one Doctor once told me was Benadryl. Hmm, that's an antihistamine, how can that be what I use for spine pain? (Long term use of this drug can have serious side effects, like a type of early dementia)

So I worked with my Doctor and stepped down off of it, as you can't go cold turkey because you can have seizures. This time I did it. Yeah, I'm having some trouble sleeping and a bit of neck pain flare ups, oh well. Over time I'm sure chamomile and other natural sedatives will ease my sleeplessness and some strength training will help my neck muscles!

The next addiction I quit was chewing tobacco. Yep, this crazy old lady woman founder dipped! Kind of a weird. Totally gross. I started the damn crap for a serious reason, but it was a stupid choice. One of my brothers was murdered and I wanted a cigarette.

Love This Can From The Quit.org

I had smoked years before and for some reason, all the desire came back to me upon my brothers death. My husband dipped and I grabbed his can and stuck it in my mouth. Done! Addiction started. I have quit this many times in the past. I do hope this time is my final quit, and that I do not get oral cancer from my poor decision. 

That's two and I have more. : - ) For now, I'm scared. I do not want to return to those addictions, as they do me no good. They only destroy me. Addictions are crazy, they make no sense. At least the bad ones don't. Why put something in your body that hurts you in the long run? Yet many of us do it over and over. 

I have a few more to conquer, I'll post them in the future. For now all you startup addicts like me, keep building great startups, that's one positive addiction, no reason to quit it! 

You Are Brave: Body Spiders

In many ways, dying from cancer is like being an entrepreneur. Yeah, that sounds like a crazy kind of combo you order at some remote dump food joint you took a chance on because you believe in the small guy. 

I'm living the life of these two conditions right now. I'm an entrepreneur chasing after crazy ideas to build things to make peoples lives better. I am also witnessing the slow death of my brother in law, Rob. I've hardly had a chance to get to know Rob, as he joined the family less than three years ago. Of course I would know him extremely well at this point in time, except one tiny little problem, the giant spider inside his body. It's labelled cancer, but I call it a body spider, as that is how it displays itself. It spreads like a spider with some sort of core and legs that reach into his lungs, taking life from him, and giving him extreme pain. 

Rob and Sara's little girl

Tonight was a very special Christmas Eve. I had thought none of us should go to the family Christmas, as, how can we laugh, and open presents, as Rob lys upstairs awaiting his death? Surely he would hear us. Surely it would hurt his heart to hear the life party he will soon be gone from. HIs mind might think: How I wish I could live to grow old with my family, and of course that is on his heart, entirely.


I didn't know my brother Rob was an Entrepreneur until recently. He worked for the Government when I met him, and he left that job when he got sick. I noticed one day on his Facebook page that he said he was an entrepreneur. When I read these words it melted my heart. I knew there would never be enough time left for him and I, to create. I knew the spider was consuming him. I know that if I can carry his entrepreneur gift to you, I would. But I do not know what it is. Or do I?

Yeah, if you want to build, well build something people want, maybe you cannot save lives, but maybe you can build life. 

To Rob Proctor: My dear brother, my spiritual arms surround you. I hug you in my thoughts and heart. I'm so sad we did not get the opportunity to build. i'm positive you are an ass kicker, and you would never let schmucks fool you. You are going to Heaven before us because, well, all the good ones go first. Us fuck ups have to wait. 

Christmas 2014 

You Are Brave, Sara says to Rob as she wraps her her loving arms around him.

 You are so brave Rob! 
We Love You, Don't Ever Forget That!

The: It Would Be Grand Holiday Season...but

Ahh wow, how do I carry on? It's been an extremly hard year for me, and I had shitty 2013, so I set myself up with hope that 2014 was going to be smoking awesome! I had started the year with all kinds of fantasies and dreams of good life to come. 

I do try to think positive and be a positive person, yet it's kinda hard when death and disappointments persist. I know my life is not bad. It's not even that bad. I'm not homeless. I have a beautiful husband that loves me dearly, two great kids I love dearly. No dog, but I have a live in roommate dog that I pretend is mine(Jenny). 

If you have been a regular reader, I'm sorry I've written about so much disappointment and death, but this is how it is,or how it has been. Right now we are sadly awaiting the death of our beloved brother in law Rob. He is on hospice care now which is a good thing. He can have RN's come to his house and give him pain medication and give him tender loving care to ease his suffering from the horrible pain the cancer is giving him. Of course we pray for a miracle so that Rob can see his one year old daughter grow up and she can have her dad, and his wife of two years can have her husband, but it's not looking like that will happen. Rob is a young entrepreneur and his life is being cut short. He just developed a rare cancer that is fast spreading and rarely can anyone survive it.

Rob, his wife Sara and Arielle 

Yeah, it would be a Grand Holiday Season...but I don't know, it feels twenty shades of sorrow. 

On the startup front, I have so many things to share with you, but I just can't write about it right now. I keep wondering how will I smile at my kids when they open up their Christmas presents? All I will be thinking is how much I love them and hoping their life will not be cut short or filled with unrelenting struggle. 

DRA: A Condition Startup Builders Get ; - )

I'm doing some research on data storage. It's very interesting and complex. Filled with all kinds of lingo I have never heard of, like DRA. That's Durable Reduced Availability storage. I was reading this on Google cloud services. It was also interesting to me that they put it in a bucket. So you have this large amount of data you want to store but you do not need to access it often then you might want the DRA bucket storage. 

If you have a regular bucket of stored data that you need to access more often, well you cannot switch it to DRA if the need changes to rarely used access. I mean you can, but it's not easy. It's a complete download and upload to the DRA bucket. So you have to think of what kind of data storage you really need. The DRA bucket storage is less expensive.

I've spent the day working on Passdown. Had a bunch of different things to do, and I feel like I accomplished nothing. This feeling happens often in a startup build. There you are extremly busy making no money, working hours on end and you do not feel like you had a great day of achievements. 

I think the thing I like best about todays work is learning about DRA. I seem to get some kind of kick out of that statement, as I feel my mind is DRA. It's durable, yet it has reduced availability. Building takes me out of regular life. My mind is consumed by the build and every aspect to get it to the next milestone. In fact the last few years my startup building obsession has lead me to neglect regular chores, like cleaning the house, laundry and making dinner. All those things used to be important to me. I hated having a dirty house. It's amazing to me that I can now live in a dirty house. Dust, unimportant compared to building a great company that helps people. 

I have DRA, a condition imposed on people who build startups. Here is my Christmas tree this year. That's all I could do. 

Awaiting A Sad Painful Death

It might not seem respectful that I title this post awaiting death. It is, what I am doing. My brother in law is in his last weeks of life. There is no doubt, but there is trouble with each person in the family's, perspective on what is to come. 

Some of the family like I, know for a fact, death will happen in this cancer case. I work in a hospital, I know this story all too well. Others, like to have a hope in a miracle, so much so that they only believe that will happen. As a hospital worker, I have also seen this exact same scenario over and over. In the end, the cancer victim and the family are constantly seeking to find the one doctor who has the answer, the one hospital that will save their beloved's life. It's super sad. 

The people who know the truth about certain kinds of cancer have told them over and over. You can only prolong your life, but you will not live very long. These are the doctors. Yet, families are so desperate to save the person, they keep going to doctor after doctor seeking to find the one who will save them. They seek holistic medicine, wild prayer vigils, weeklong prayer conferences, and none of them including modern medicine can save this dying person's life. It's super sad. They can't be saved. This kind of cancer is aggressive, and we have no weapons to fight it, only prolong it.

Often times in my work in the hospital we hear the overhead speaker announce "Paul Bunyan" A Paul Bunyan announcement is some kind of fight among people, either yelling or throwing punches. Sometimes it includes the patient,but more often it is the family members fighting over the decisions for the patient. 

I have had this issue with my brother in law. I became really angry about the choices they were making early on to help him. They decided to go with the natural route for survival, instead of chemo. I was furious about this. I was more than furious, I was outraged! How do you not do what a doctor who has studied this says? What makes you think you have any time to play around with natural products and healthy eating? So four months went by on the natural way and the cancer doubled in size. Well, I was extremly pissed. I blew up! I told them off! Yet in the end, chemo or natural, neither would have worked to fight this type of cancer. 

Right now I'm struggling with end of life care. Because my sister in law and Rob believe a miracle will happen, they do not want to agree to end of life care. I am super upset about this, because, comfort care is the best thing anyone could give Rob right now and to the end. God gives miracles, people give comfort care. 

They think for whatever reason that comfort care means admitting defeat, means not having faith in God, they won't do it. But comfort care is making a person who is dying suffer in less pain. It means a registered nurse will come to your house and administer extremly strong pain medication. It means someone will help change you if you cannot get up and go to the bathroom,it means someone will put a cold rag on your forehead and chapstick on your lips. If you choose not to have comfort care you will suffer a greater death. This upsets me, that anyone would want to suffer great pain or that anyone else would allow that, in hopes that God will miraculously save them. No one is Jesus except Jesus. We do not have to suffer to prove our faith. 

I'm sad because I think my brother in law is choosing the path of the greatest pain to his death. All he has to do is accept comfort care and his passing will not be this intense suffering. Right now he goes the emergency room every other day to get intravenous pain drugs. Only people who are dying go the ER that often. Or the crazies in the mind.

I told my husband,if this should be my experience please I want comfort care. I want the highest amount of morphine pumped into me. What the f**k! Why would you suffer the most incredible painful death possible, when you can have the choice of comfort care? Just because you have comfort care does not mean you are giving up on your hope for a miracle, or your faith. It means dying with dignity and comfort. 

Awaiting a sad painful death I am...............

The life choices we make.

Startups Can't Live Without Vocal Entrepreneurs:The Voice

I'm watching The Voice tonight and wow, I'm always inspired by these vocal entrepreneurs. I can't decide on who to vote for. Love them all, so amazing. I always play music while I work on Passdown. Can't wait to add these young men to my playlist. I always feel sad as the show goes on week by week and great singers do not make it to the next round. I feel for them, as I know how not getting into that accelerator is so much like not making it to the next round. 

I've had many sad blog post lately. It's been a very hard December in my personal life. In my startup life, my team did not make the cut into Dreamit Philly. Dreamit sent an email that said they had received an unusually large amount of submissions this go around. 

After a couple of days of feeling bummed about not making it. I'm back working on Passdown. Of course all those thoughts of doubt had encased me all weekend and I was wondering if I wanted to continue this build. We are going to face constant rejection's. Building a startup is a brutal endeavor that often ends in failure. Not only are you solving a problem for people, you have to solve about a eleven thousand other problems just to get to the created product. This is what us treps do. We solve problems.

We also discover as we build. One of our team members Tesmond has seen another insight that Passdown can be, or added in addition to it. I love it. It's something I had not thought of but it's absolutely perfect for Passdown. 

As I had people come and go in my last startup, I never really had a team. However this build I have three beautiful extremly smart young men who want to be apart of this startup. I'm incredibly grateful and honored by them. I hope none of them go. As we spend time building while working our day jobs, we have a journey to conquer together not without extreme challenges, and a few hundred rejections.

Can't wait to see who win's The Voice, and purchase the music from all those who did not. They inspire me.

Keep Your Head Up Success Is Coming

Waiting On Dreamit While Helping A Young Vet

Waiting for the rejection email, is mildly disturbing to my soul. Dreamit has said they will let all teams know if they were a finalist or not today. Accelerators do not call them rejection emails, but all of us startup treps always feel a bit rejected when we find out our team did not make it. It's a grand hope shattered in a millisecond. Then you go on building or pivoting to something else. I've been checking email all day and no rejection email. Y Combinator sent their rejection email really late in the day, so there is still time to get rejected. ; - ) 

Today I spent the day helping one of our country's young veterans, Cody. I met Cody a few years ago and he did some work on my last startup DigiThin. He also is in my top ten list most popular stories Wrapping Your Head Around The Self Judgement Of Yourself  Cody

Cody

served in Afghanistan. Like me he has PTSD. We have helped each other in our quest to not suffer. A few weeks ago he was really down to the point of suicidal thoughts. I was there to talk him out of if. Yes he made it back alive, but he is set to be parentless at the age of twenty six. His mother came down with breast cancer while he was serving and he received leave, to come home and say goodbye to her before she passed. After his four years was up, his dad got brain cancer and as I type this, his dad lays on his deathbed. It's heart breaking. 

Cody is struggling to find a job and he mentioned to me he was the most broke he had ever been in his life. I told him, I have a yard full of leaves you can come rake and I'll pay you. He was so happy to get a little work he showed up promptly. But then I told him, we have to go somewhere first. I have to show you something. I took him to Fort Logan National Cemetery. I showed him my dads grave and then Danny Dietz Jr's grave. Danny is one of the four men portrayed in the movie Lone Survivor. My husband and I know Danny's parents. 

Danny's grave was beautiful. As every year, since he passed, his mother Cindy has placed a grave blanket made of Evergreen at Christmas time. Cody was inspired in his heart. He said, I've never

been to a cemetery like this, and I'm honored and humbled. I told him, that I always want to help our veterans, and there are a million causes out there to participate in or give money to, but that I just wanted to help one. I told him, that I'm adopting you as the one veteran I help the rest of my life. I said you made it back, and you have to know that means something. I'm your family and as long as I live you can count on me to help when you need help, listen when you need to vent, encourage when you are at your lowest. Laugh with you when life is good.

We returned to my house and Cody began working. It was an extraordinary warm day in Denver for December, sixty seven degrees! All along I would check my email for the Dreamit rejection email. No email all day. As I type this at 4:56 PM Denver time, still no email. I do not know why this bothers me so much. Who waits for a rejection email? I think inside of me I have 1% hope playing. It's sad I ought to have more faith in my team and idea,and I do, but it's hard getting into an accelerator, especially if you do not have traction. When I get the reject email, well, I can then move on in my mind. I won't be stuck in the waiting period. That's all. 

I took Cody out to lunch, then filled up his gas tank. WOW gas prices are wonderful! $2.55 for premium and $2.25 for regular. AMAZING! I think it's time for a whole bunch of road trips! Maybe I should visit every national cemetery! I love cemeteries, they are filled will beautiful people. They are not sad to me at all. They are inspiring! 

Eve Of The Dreamit Decision

Tomorrow as promised Dreamit Ventures will send a "sorry we did not pick your startup" email, or possible "We are interested enough in you, that we invite you to interview"

As with the agony of struggling with the wait for Y Combinators decision, my mind has also done the same ping ponging game, of yes they like us or no they do not,with Dreamit. 

I have a ton of sadness and pending sorrow in my life right now, that in many ways, the expected decline or surprising yes, really has no effect on me either way. It's like my body is at all time numb horizon with life. I'm existing, and doing life in such a mechanical way that, I'm sort of robot. 

The weirdness of being consumed by grief is that you go on doing, when you don't want to, or think you can. I know my body will make it to the days I can feel feelings again. I know I'm going to bask in the joy when my team and I have made headway into Passdown. When we built our list of rejections, we will be standing, ragidly torn by all the venture capitalist who said no.

Funny thing is, this is the system you must endure. You have to have a freight ship full of rejections, unless you're super lucky and just happen upon all the right situations at the right time. Only a few get that. The rest of us have to beat walk the rejection path, and it's pretty brutal. Thing is, yes we want funding, and yes we want to be in an accelerator, but what we really want is the people to want us. To want our product. How we get to that, is up to me.

I will apply to every accelerator I can, but I cannot think that is the only way, as it's not the way. It's a help to the way. (maybe a distraction to the way) The way is a thousand forks in the road. You go down some with precision testing and others by chance, still others by suggestion. What the hell is a startup? It's a few people who know they can build something that will grow quickly, once it gets going. 

I've applied to Dreamit three times now, but not for the same startup. I suck at answering the questions, but this time Dreamit changed things, in the past I could type a ton of rambling, they cut it short, so you had to sum up your answer. I think I did that this time. Still, haunting thoughts race through my brain, "if I could only explain this more" hmmm. Maybe short and to the point will work for us. I don't know. 

The one thing I know about Passdown is, no one but me knows exactly how cool it is. Yep even my team does not know. They do know enough to recognize the amazement of it. Sometimes I have flashes of the future, and their they are looking at me and saying "WOW, I was skeptical, and hesitant at first, yet I saw something, I just didn't see this, and I thank you for believing in me enough, to bring me along this journey" 

I also wish I knew code, cause I would have it built by now. At least the MVP. I think if Dreamit turns us down that is what I should do, just learn code. I hate having ideas and not being able to build them into something, it's super frustrating. As I know my mind will always have ideas, I should give myself the skills to build them. 

So tomorrow,hmm, be ready for a NO. 

Founders Family Saved By Prayer

Grandad's funeral was perfect. The temperature was in the low twenties with no snow to trek through. The sky was gloomy gray, but the clouds were spectacular.

It was open casket. Always an odd thing to look at a body with no soul. 

He was ninety years old. So as sad as funerals may seem, I wasn't really too sad as I know LaVern lived a full life with many interesting stories. 

Like the one when he was flying his small plane and he came in to land. It was a perfect landing, except for one small problem. He and another small plane were landing at the exact same time, and somehow he landed his plane on top of the other airplane as if it was some sort of stunt show, but it was not. It was one of those million in one chance freak happenings with a good ending. No one could belive it. Especially him and the other fella he landed on. 

On the drive to North Platte, Nebraska from Denver we had a interesting life story happen, though not as amazing as the airplane story. We left in the late afternoon, so it became dark quick. We were about halfway into the four hour drive and I had Rob (my brother in law) on my mind. Rob is in the last days of a cancer that will take his life. You can see more of his story in my post Death Surrounds This Founder. For some reason I decided to pray for Rob, and I rarely pray. Half way into my silent prayer my husband lets out a *gasp* I look up and a deer is standing in the highway. It's at my side of the car, it looks at us and turns around and goes back into the lane beside us. We were passing a semi on the right. It pauses in front of the semi, and I think the semi is going to hit it. But it bounds off into the darkness.

My husband says "I thought we were going to be killed" and I say "I thought we were going to kill the deer." We were going eighty miles per hour. 

Truly I felt (because I was praying for Rob) that God made the deer turn back. If the deer had continued on, we would have hit it dead center. The entire thing happened in seconds, but it seemed like it happened in slow motion. 

My daughter was discussing the afterthoughts of this with me and she and I agree the deer was a representation of Rob. My daughter says, Rob is pausing, he has out lived the doctors death date of last spring. He paused to stay with us, but he will go into the darkness, just like the deer.

The small writing says: More Things Are Wrought By Prayer Than This World Dreams Of

and one more thing, LaVern's Sunset as we drove back to Colorado.

Death Surrounds This Founder

About three weeks ago I said to my husband "I have the death feeling" he said "oh no, you usually can sense that someone is going to pass".

Then I had my run in with the swat team, but it was not my time. Today we travel to North Platte, Nebraska to go to his Grandad's funeral. Sad, but not really because he lived a long life. 

The other looming death is my husbands only sister's husband. Yesterday was their two year wedding anniversary. It was almost nine months after they were married baby Arielle came along, and a beautiful young family was growing. Just two months after the baby's birth Rob had a back ache that would not go away. Upon getting an xray, the monster cancer inside is chest was revealed. 

Today Rob posted this on Facebook:Rob Proctor

This past week was ultra scary. It's been a little over three months now since I stopped chemo in order to try alternative protocols until I found one to work to shrink it. Over the past few weeks is the first time that I have actually felt the tumors by touch. I feel a large one coming out of my chest, a large one out of the back and more underneath my armpit-shall on my left side. The pain had also been getting to the unbearable state. I've been implementing a lot of cannabis oil to help with pain, but most of the time the cannabis oil nor the heavy narcotics would do much to help it. Last Tuesday I felt the need to get a CT scan due to feeling the rapid growth inside my body, terrible pain and an increased difficulty breathing. The scan was a bad report, showing lots of spreading of additional tumors, fluid around my heart and another almost totally collapsed lung, etc. I went to the hospital this morning in an attempt to get some pain relief and left hours later with some relief, an oxygen tank and then later in the day oxygen system installed in the house since I'm not getting enough.

Tomorrow is a busy day for Sara Proctor and I to find an oncologist here in Colorado who specializes in synovial sarcoma and is educated experientially with trials and cutting edge things to do to remove it. So far, no one wants or no one can shrink it and remove it what is in my body. We haven't been able to find anyone here up until this point, but I'm really wanting to stay home in Colorado. If anyone knows what it's like traveling out of state for cancer treatments they may have an idea of why I just want to be close to home.

I don't know how much time I have to live, and it feels like the end is coming upon me quickly. I ask for prayer for my wife and for my little girl. I am wanting that Papa will take care of them in a precious way, being able to saturate them with the love I was meant to give them. I'm also seeking to let go of my life here on earth in order to be at peace.

I'm very sad today behind words I just can not describe and beyond the false comforts that are typically in place in times like these when I assume someone or someone's concepts will fix everything all up, making everything all better. That person exist and that theme cannot apply to my situation Its now about letting go of this world and answering the new questions that will lead me out of permanent self pity and into peace and contentment. Good night for now.

I don't know....I just don't know. My heart is broken all kinds of ways. It's been a really hard 2014. I'm still suffering the grief of my twin brothers death last March. Still waiting for the coroner's report as to why. Yes, death surrounds me. A long life, and a young life waiting in the balance of fate................... ; - ( 

Why I Rarely Post Pictures Of Me

I use only a few pictures of myself publicly and there are a few reasons. There is no order to the reasons.

• I'm not cute, I never was
• I'm not photogenic
• My Twitter Pic is of me when I was twenty five years old. Yes, right before I attempted my uptenth suicide attempt. I use it on Twitter because there was no internet back then. And if I had succeeded in my mission to die, well not one person who follows me on Twitter today, would ever have seen that photo. I also don't remove it as people have come to know me with that photo, if I take it off they could unfollow me as they won't know who the hell is the new chick.
• People say amazingly hurtful things when they see photos of me. This is probably my number one reason I don't show myself. Yep, because I posted my photo yesterday, I got hate mail. Really? Truly. Because of this reason, I do not like to post photo's of myself. I've been told many hurtful comments about my appearance, even though I'm not running for a beauty pageant. I'm building a startup. One man asked me if I was really a man trying to be a woman, that really hurt. Because of the photo I posted on my last post a man spewed out "You have the nose of a black person" This was not said in the way as if an African American person can have a good nose. It was said in the way as if I was a horrible person, because I have a black person's nose and that black people only have horrible noses. I wrote the person back and said, you are an immature racist! But I felt the racism a black person must feel, even though I can only feel about a smidgen compared to what they face their entire life. How harmful is it to be judged on your appearance. the color of your skin, your weight, the size of your nose? WTF? To be homely like me, or be of an undesirable race? It's the saddest thing I have ever had to deal with. It's so hurtful, that I can't bear to deal with it, so I don't. I just don't post photo's of myself. Cause I don't want to hear immature, ignorant people's statements. I suppose I'm not strong enough to hear them. Or more likely that I will attack back. I'll stand up for myself, yet I have found that when I do that, I often have become bullied even more severely. It's best to just ignore these kinds of people. And get them out of your life quickly.

                                                    Trapped In Homely Prison : - /

Our Dreamit Application Has Been Submitted

The team and I are continuing to pursue getting into an accelerator. As we all know, how much this could help the development of Passdown. Here in the USA there are accelerators galore. We are super lucky. We will be even luckier if we get into one. Or maybe I should say, humanity will be luckier. As our app is going to help people in a way, they might not notice for sixty years. 

Don't get me wrong, our app will be every bit as wonderful and useful for people to use on a daily basis right now, but in the long term, well, it's sort of going to be a big surprise. Interestingly surprise might not be the word I'm looking for. It's just the word that comes to mind right now. 

What could possible happen in sixty years from now? Something I can see, but most people won't. My team may not even see it. It's only because I have spent a ton of time inside the fantasy of Passdown. It's what entrepreneurs do. Think about the idea and everything good and everything bad about it. All the what if's, and of course all the, but someone else is doing something similar, or the constant questions as to how can you possible do that, being the legal issues are immense! 

That's when the entrepreneurs mind goes to work. Intense thinking about everything possible and not possible. Of course I know, there are a ton of things that my mind has not thought of. That's why I keep it OPEN. 

It's a dreadful waiting period every time your team hits submit. You wait for the day they will tell you, you made it to the next level, or you are out, done, toast, at least for this session. : - /

The worst part for me is the video submission. It's not an easy thing to make a video of yourself speaking and remember all the answers to the questions they ask. You can ramble on, or get stuck and have to make a retake. I've done it. I think I made forty cuts for my part on the Dreamit app. I would watch them and ask myself "What the hell is wrong with my head?" It bobs all over the place, and my eyeballs look like I'm on crack! It super frustrating watching myself on film. Yep, I'm critical, and I wonder, do I really look like this to others in real life? That's probably the reason I have few friends. I'm a freaking freakoid. 

I suppose it all goes to the fact that most of us do not like to hear ourselves on tape speaking, and we also do not like to see ourselves on film for the same reason. It's super odd looking at yourself. 

Dec 2014. One of the few photo's of me.

May Your Holiday Season Be Blessed With Happy Times!

My Dying Words: Please, Someone Build Passdown

Ahh, another long day at my pc, building the Passdown company. After struggling through the weekend, attempting to fix a website problem. The thought kept crossing my mind to scratch it. Delet it! Get rid of the mother fucker! 

I lived through the local area swat team pointing their assault weapon at me on Saturday.

As much as they seemed serious, in all honesty, I was so depressed about so many things in our startup that, I didn't realize till I saw the photo that I was a target, and that one pull on the trigger could have silenced my life. I probably wouldn't have cared much. My dying words would have been. Please, someone build Passdown.

On Monday I did it. I deleted my old website and started building the new one. More problems presented and irritated me, yet it was looking to be a better site. I'm no designer and I do not have knack for it. It's another one of the many things you have to do, because your startup has no money to pay someone to do it. The list is long in this area! What is the saying? I can do all, but I'm not the expert in anything? Something like that. 

Passdown has a great team now. Wael, Jie, Tesmond, and I. Yet we all have day jobs and other responsibilities. It's super hard to build a startup in the beginning. That borderline of keeping the day job to survive can almost never be let go of. It pushes the entrepreneur to extremes. When can you make the choice to commit to the startup one hundred percent? You can't, unless you get traction or funding. Super hard to get either of those. That's another mountain we climb. How do we get traction? Well we can, without funding. So I don't worry about traction as much as I worry about getting funding so my team can afford to quit their day jobs and go on a journey with me. It's hell. It's worse than getting an assault weapon pointed at you. It's way worse. Traction seems to be our only answer. Traction won't be easy but if we can nab that without funding, than we will have put ourselves in the best possible position to succeed.

That cold hard bullet pointed at you. That's a startup. The risk we take may not be life threatening, but we are always on this brink of life or death. Most of our startups fail. So sad. That's the death part. The ones that succeed,that's the life part. Most of us entrepreneurs know the death part pretty well. 

The Startup Graveyard.

Seek traction, and don't worry about funding. The key is TRACTION. And that can be achieved with minimal funds and no funding.

OMG, The Police Could Have Killed Me Today

I have written two post tonight and this is my third. I wrote about my trauma today, as being trapped in a active crime zone. I only took one photo during the ordeal. The camera makes the picture look far away, but in reality it's not that far away. So I took the time to blow the photo up and I was surprised as I had thought all the swat team was looking one way and pointing their guns one way. I saw that one person in the middle seemed to be pointing the rifle or AK 47 or whatever cops have at me. Yep directly at me.

Now I do not blame them from doing so, as this is their job. But I was an innocent person trapped into their world. There were no other cars driving around as they had blocked all ways in, as they thought. But they didn't. I came upon the scene thinking it was just some bad car accident, so I turned and decided to take the route I knew to my house, the back way. This lead me right into the active crime zone. Did I know this? No. Did they know I was an innocent person? No. Do I blame them for pointing the high powered gun at me? No. Am I thankful to be alive, Yes. 

I think about the Michael Brown case and all the uproar about his death because of it, and I think of me today, and how easy it would have been for them to kill me, just because of my mistakes or theirs. They didn't know I wasn't the bad guy. They didn't know if the bad guy had took me hostage. I didn't know they were looking for a bad guy, I just thought it was a car accident.

So many things went wrong and went good today. What went wrong was that the police had not blocked off every way into the crime zone. So I wandered in unknowingly. What went right is that they did not shoot me, and they could have easily. I was the only car in there driving around. But I was just trying to get home. I didn't know it was a manhunt for a criminal. I didn't know why I was trapped in their world. When I saw the string of cops with big guns, I knew I was in big deep trouble. I also knew I had done nothing wrong. I also knew if I did not do the right thing, I was dead. If the cops are lining up with big guns walking in a line, oh shit, your fucked. You better think wise and make the correct choice. 

If I had pulled out because the light turned green, I might not be alive. Or I might be injured. I saw them, but they were all looking a certain way.(except the one) I knew they did not see me. I knew if I pulled out they would shoot me. So I didn't. I waited. I waited until I knew they had gotten to where they were going. That was just instinct. I could see they were on a mission, so I let them do it. I wasn't going to turn until I felt I was safe, from them, the cops. Hey, they had the guns, and there were no other random gunmen that I could see, so the cops were my fear, not some ~ on the loose criminal. 

I can tell you,that after today's experience that none of us can know what happens when a cop shoots someone. None of us can know what the exact details are. It's scary that's for sure. The tables could have gone the wrong way for me today. I could be a white woman shot by white cops and no one would have ever heard about it. End of story, Dead.

A mistake, because they could have thought the person in the car was the on the loose gunman they sought. Praise the Lord, I had some common sense and cop pointing the rifle at me did too.

Thank You Startup Gods!

Ahh, as founder I go through all kinds of emotions building a startup.  Probably more than the treps who join me. I have never joined another teams startup, that is my next adventure if Passdown fails. Yep, I have already decided I'm going to help someone else build their fantasy. But that's a ways down the road. For now I have to manage the hoopla for Passdown.

I'm in a very interesting place with Passdown. First, when I made the decision to chase Passdown, it was only to develop a test site to see if people wanted such a service. But that got blown out of the water by the few people I told the vision too, those early adopters. Oh, yeah I still have a test site, and right now it's in a big mess, as I spent the day hacking it up to get rid of all my excessive talking! I'm building the second test site, you know you have to have A/B testing! So I have two test sites to either build or redo. On top of that I am building the Passdown team. Oh, I'm doing so many things, it's crazy.

Today was  beautiful in Denver. It was seventy degrees, and if you look at my last post you will see I went through some trauma, with being trapped in a active crime, police zone. But all the while before that, I was pretty down. My mind was fighting the doubt of Passdown. The naysayers were yelling in my head. The Venture Capitalist were wrinkling their faces and saying you suck! The personal self beating of the mind was taking place along side the crime scene. I wasn't really afraid of getting shot, as I didn't really care at that point. A wild gunman shooting me was like nothing to the crap in my head. Of course I didn't want to be shot by the cops, as that never turns out good. But a wild gunman on the loose is a bit sexier. He can shoot me, but the cops cannot!

Safely home, I wanted to curl up into a cocoon and not come out for six months. Yeah, humbug. I figured out what I need to do to fix my current test site problems. So that gave me some sort of relief from my brains beating down on me. Then I got an email. Wha wha what? Another developer wants to be apart of Passdown! Well Damn! I just asked the startup Gods the other day if they would send me developers who want to work on Passdown and two request have been sent in the same week! Hallelujah!

   

How is that even possible? My 90% profile has been on Cofounderslab for six months now. It's a crappy profile and I don't care to fix it. In the first few months of being on Cofounderslab I reached out to many developers and none of them have ever responded back to me. You see developers in America don't have too, they don't need work. They can get any job they want for top pay. They do not need to work for equity.

We have a shortage of developers in America. To me when none I sought out replied, I felt like dirt. I felt like my idea must be bunk. But now, developers are reaching out to me. Hmmm, something changed, and that was my test site, and of course the Startup Gods, who ever they are. I believe they heard my prayer. I believe, because building a startup is believing in the unknown. It's believing in building something that has a certain idea, but that idea will be shaped and changed along the way. It's believing in an uncertainty as a possibility. 

I was so excited to read this developers email. This person was so excited about my idea. This person could see that Passdown has something truly unique, yet the growth opportunity is not only worldwide, but Passdown finds a market right there in front our faces. 

I cannot be more thankful for this email at a time my mind was butchering me. This beating I take is not new to me. It's my startup minds design. I will always be tormented. Sometimes I wonder if the torment will end if I am successful, but I bet not. I cannot create without the tormentor. Sometimes I wonder how I live with the tormentor, but I always do. It's the someone who replied to my request. It's the Venture Capitalist who said yes, it's the gunman who didn't take my life. It all works out, even though the suffering, can be grueling.