Last night, I went to the Soap Factory‘s Haunted Basement with some friends.  I tend not to find haunted houses scary, and the Haunted Basement was no different.  The production values were good.  The actors were making a strong effort.  I once again failed to be scared.

The good news is that I didn’t start laughing uncontrollably.  I sometimes find haunted houses to be hilariously funny.

What would it take to make a truly scary haunted house?  Here are some thoughts:

• Beer goggles, like the ones used to simulate various levels of intoxication.  Would lessen situational awareness and severely restrict vision, leading to increased spookiness and impact of surprises.
• Actual ghosts.  Could be difficult to procure.
• Lots of chainsaws, lots of dental drills, lots of needles.  All of them make me squirm.
• Set in a naturally scary location, like an old mental hospital or a spooky forest.  The scarier the environment, the less needs to be added.
• Plainclothes actors (i.e., dressed like normal customers), who would be grabbed by costumed actors and subjected to various simulated gory deeds in front of the true customers.   Would provide a sense of actual danger, assuming that the plainclothes actors were convincing and the simulated deeds were sufficiently unexpected.

I wonder if there are any walk-through haunted houses presently in operation that are actually, you know, scary.

One month ago, I declared my intentions to work on my startup full time.  The response was surprisingly positive, and I felt like I was making the right move.  I still do.

To be honest, I’ve been working on my product for far longer than a month.  The idea is about a year old, the current round of work started in late June, and significant coding started to get done in early August.  The change since mid September has been mostly cosmetic: I no longer split my attention between a traditional job hunt and entrepreneurial efforts.

So how’s it going?  Well… the product is not functional yet.  The web site is in place, the payment system has been integrated, and the IT issues have been addressed, but the heart and soul of the isn’t quite there.  That’s somewhat discouraging, as I would like to be able to push the prototype out and begin getting feedback (as well as some revenue).  The delay is encouraging, too, as it reflects the very significant technical challenges associated with a product of this type.  Barriers to entry are good things.

What's around the bend?

Based on the current state of the project, I anticipate that an early prototype will be stable and useful enough for limited public interaction by the end of October.  Don’t expect a polished product.  Don’t expect a beautiful interface.  Do expect something that shows promise.  Do expect something that has nothing at all to do with any of the current “flavors of the month.” Do expect something that solves an actual problem.

It’s getting closer.  I’m excited!

In support of the entrepreneurial spirit, I thought I’d plug a couple of new sites produced by my friends.

Let’s start with one of my great loves: cars.  I enjoy driving cars.  I enjoy talking about cars.  I enjoy working on cars.  My inner child can’t stop ogling high-end exotic cars like Ferraris and Aston Martins.  Sadly, my very real aging self needs more reliable, more practical transportation on a daily basis.

I love my Subaru Outback.  It’s not fast, it’s not filled with electronic gizmos, and it’s even a bit on the ugly side.  But it’s dependable, affordable, versatile, and great for hauling my hockey gear to ice rinks in the middle of blizzards.  Plus, it made two trips between Minnesota and California while significantly overloaded.  It’s a solid car.

Middle Class Motoring, run by my friend John, celebrates “middle class” cars of all types.  I like the idea.  It’s a mix of reviews, arguments, and retrospectives.  Plus, the recurring segments have titles like “Car Crushes” and “Crap Car of the Week.”  How can you go wrong?

One of my other great loves is hockey.  Unfortunately, none of my friends have built any sites related to hockey, so we’ll move on to…

Photography.  I have passion for photography.  Even though my idle Flickr stream might suggest otherwise, I still love the art of taking photos.  I’m just on sabatical while I work on my photo deblurring product.

I like to think that I know a thing or two about capturing images with a camera, but that skill did not come easily.  It was won through hard work and countless hours of practice.  I had many questions along the way.  Some were answered on photography forums, and others were eventually puzzled out.  It would have been nice to have a consolidated place to find answers to my photography questions online.

PhotoQnA, run by my friend Tyler, provides and easy-to-use service for asking and answering photography questions.  It’s similar in form to Stack Overflow (and in fact uses the same engine): users can post questions, users can answer questions, and users can vote on the questions and answers (a la Digg).  The internal search function works quite well, and the reputation system supports and rewards high-quality dialogue.   If you have a photography-related question, I encourage you to post it there.

Both sites are relatively new, so a few parts are rough around the edges and the content is not too extensive.  However, they satisfy previously unmet needs and niches, so I have high hopes for them.

There’s a thread over on HN right now about the untimely death of a young startup co-founder.    It was suicide.  There were no warning signs.   I’m not sure why, but I found this particular story quite moving.  I didn’t know the deceased nor anybody connected to him, but it touched my heart all the same.

We all go through ups and downs in life.  If you, my friend, are ever suffering through a low point and need somebody to talk to, I will be there for you and will gladly lend you my ear.  I care about you.  Call me.  I would rather be woken up in the middle of the night with your voice on the line than by a mutual acquaintance in the morning.

About six and a half years ago, a man named David Roux came to speak at Rose-Hulman.  I was an undergrad at the time, in my junior year, and I was probably more concerned with an upcoming snowboarding trip to Steamboat Springs than a lecture from some unfamiliar old guy.  However, his main point sunk in: Don’t be a worker bee.  Start.  Lead.  Explore.  Create.  Be an entrepreneur.

As of today, I am officially abandoning my job hunt.  I have found what I was looking for; I had it all along.  The problem was a lack of complete commitment.

I have been doing entrepreneurial things since I was a child.  Mowing lawns at first, later doing IT consulting and computer repair.  While in undergrad, I dabbled in the world of web development by building Bonneville Club, which served as an invaluable lab for me to learn about server administration, community building, people management, and revenue generation.  Later, I experienced the thrill of being web-famous with a couple of popular blog posts and millions of visitors to my webcomic.

The business card from my IT consulting "company" during high school, a decade ago.

I valued my time at Medtronic after undergrad.  I had wonderful co-workers, a company that treated its employees very well, and a salary higher than many see in their lifetimes.  But I wasn’t satisfied.

“I realize this seems odd advice. If they make your life so good that you don’t want to leave, why not work there? Because, in effect, you’re probably getting a local maximum. You need a certain activation energy to start a startup. So an employer who’s fairly pleasant to work for can lull you into staying indefinitely, even if it would be a net win for you to leave.”

— Paul Graham

When I went to grad school, I chose to study entrepreneurship in the Management Science and Engineering program.  I took courses on starting companies.  I attended lectures by famous entrepreneurs.  I talked with Silicon Valley venture capitalists and CEOs.  I idolized my successful-entrepreneur professors. I watched my friends start and build businesses.

There was, I believe, a bit of jealousy. If my friends could do it, why not me?  I mean, I was smart, too.   Why couldn’t I experience the dizzying highs and crushing lows?  Why couldn’t I build amazing products?  Why couldn’t I achieve financial freedom?   Why not?

I have come to realize that there were two things holding me back: fear and social expectations.  For a time I used money or a lack of ideas as excuses, but a detailed examination of business case studies shows that deficiencies in those areas rarely represented insurmountable obstacles.  No, the fear of the unknown kept me locked in place, and that kept me in line with society.  Why give up a good job at a solid company in the pursuit of a crazy dream?  What’s more, society tends to fear change and uncertainty and ostracize those who dare challenge the status quo.  To many, the thought of venturing off on one’s own is pure madness.

But without change there cannot be progress.  Who will move the world if not me?

“If you want to do it, do it. Starting a startup is not the great mystery it seems from outside. It’s not something you have to know about ‘business’ to do. Build something users love, and spend less than you make. How hard is that?”

— Paul Graham

In some ways, the economic collapse was the best thing that could have happened for me.   It made my job search difficult to the point of impossibility.  In hindsight, I don’t know why I was looking for a job at an established company instead of venturing out on my own.  Clearly, my heart wasn’t in the hunt.  The challenge was worsened by my desire to switch into a more business-oriented role and away from my technical roots.  I had good discussions with a few companies and interviews with some others, but they seemed loath to help me make that transition.  A few went as far as to offer me technical roles developing software, but such capitulation would be, in my mind, career suicide.  Another job as a software engineer for somebody else would nullify my entire graduate education and permanently cement me in my pigeonhole.  I would rather abandon high-tech entirely than write software in a cube for somebody else.  Oh, and I don’t think I’m a very good programmer.

“You‘ve got all these cops thinking you‘re a lawyer. And you got all these lawyers thinking you‘re some kind of cop. You‘ve got everybody fooled, don’t you?“

— from the film “Michael Clayton”

Writing software for myself is entirely different.  Despite my not being particularly good at it, developing software for my own ends is deeply satisfying.  I love the act of creation.  I love the instant gratification.  I love the communion between me and my machine.

Thus, my startup is a software startup.  Of my many interests — hockey, photography, baking, etc. — software is the one most amenable to company-building.  Who cares if the prototype code is crap?  If it works well enough to get me to the next stage, where I might be able to hire a competent coder to replace my hacker self, then the mission has been accomplished.

Nesota LLC world headquarters

My intent is to give this my all.  When I turn 30 in three years, I want to be either rich or penniless.  The outcome doesn’t matter so much to me as long as it’s not the mushy middle; that would be indicative of a failure.  I want to know that I gave it my full effort.  I don’t want to half-ass it and spend the next decade wondering what could have been.

I’m not rich.  I’m not famous.  I have limited capital, a car with 204k miles on it, and a two-year-old computer.

But I have ambition.  I’m going for it.

(cross-posted at Northstartup)