The whole point for Passdown has been to build a test product. Just put something out there and see if I can get enough feedback or test traction to know if people want it or not. It's just supposed to be a test!
Completing the test part has turned into a struggle in itself. Filled with highs so high I kept on chasing. Now it's, lows so low that I have fights in my mind. "Keep going, you haven't even achieved the test" "Stop chasing this crazy one and wait for the next one" or the useless one "Quit being an entrepreneur at all" These fights between self doubt and hope for digging out a creation for humanity, well, I hate this part. It doesn't play well with the tormentor of my soul.
I have managed to excite people, get people to join my build, fire people, make some enemies, get rejected regularly, be a jerk, inspire some, and mostly frustrate the hell out of myself. Yep, that's startup building. I still suck at it.
I'm not quitting Passdown yet. I haven't done much in a month or more. What I have been doing is letting my mind figure out what to do. It's been thinking seriously, while I dealt with some life struggles. If I quit before I accomplish the test, then I'm just a quitter. I don't want to do that. So I must move forward and figure out the best, fastest, smoothest, way to get test results. What ever the test shows to be the answer is when I can rest assured that either Passdown moves forward or becomes another skeleton.
Haunted by my startup ideas I will always be. Today I had a horrible thought. It was that I would be remembered as the Terminally Failed Startup Girl. The trep that never had a success. That was a very depressing and sad thought. I don't want that.
My timeline is: I will build startups until I'm ninety years old. From ninety till one hundred I will retire and enjoy life. If I have had no successes, I will be successful, as the oldest person living who never gave up the desire to build gifts for humanity. I will also be a speaker at Y Combinator from the age of ninety one to the age of one hundred. If my gift for humanity is to inspire others to not give up, even when failure after failure beats you down, well, maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I do this. Suffer millions of failures to build just one successful startup, or help another person who suffers from failures. I don't know. I just have to follow the drive inside of me, even if a simple life has always been available to me. I have something in me for humanity,I can feel it. I just have to suffer the struggle to get it out of me. No matter how many years that will be.
*all photos taken by me at Denver Botanic Gardens of Dale Chihuly 2014
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