Part Time Lover

I snorkelled at a post to the LinkedIn Maine Entrepreneurs group the other day. It argued that "part-time" entrepreneurs, those who build the venture 'on the side' aren't serious, won't attract the attention or capital that they need, and ultimately won't succeed.

Tough love. And good advice. For any one who falls into the following categories:
- a kept man or women
- an independently wealthy man or women
- any entrepreneur on round 2+, having successfully exited from a preceeding venture

For the rest of us, there is cash flow to deal with.

Last week, I ran into an entrepreneur who's new venture is in the "women" space and so we often connect and collaborate. I had heard that she had accepted a full time position and inquired how that was going. "Its a job," she replied. "I hope that I will be able to devote myself full time to [insert top secret venture name] in December." We commiserated about the concern (gossip?) people have expressed -- is the venture over and done with? Is it in trouble?

I also heard from another friend, that her serial-entrepreneur-husband (he has two start-ups in the works) had just accepted a full time position with a company in Massachusetts, recognizing that his start-ups are at least 1-3 years down the pike.

The Stefanski household maintains a professional service arm, Bazaar Strategies, which specializes in the innovation and product/business development space. Two of Scott's start-ups (including the current one) have come through Bazaar Strategies. It's a nice complement. His side of the business also enables him to work with people who lend human and social capital to the new venture. Again, a nice complement. That said, meeting new people, he will often run into a singular challenge: "What do I pitch?" Will he be taken seriously if he's doing contract work while launching a new venture? It's a common problem that many of my venturing friends talk about.

But I have to wonder, is this really a problem?

In a recent blog post, Seth Godin describes the perfect problem. It's the one you can't solve because their are too many "requirements." Knock down any of these requirements and you have a solution. (It's like Jack Traven's "shoot the hostage" scenario in SPEED... oy, late night television is just not the same when the Sox are on the West Coast.")Entrepreneurs do worry about whether investor's will take them seriously if they are only part-time. But I wonder, is this an intractable problem or do they worry because self-help gurus, like the guy in the LinkedIn group, tell them to worry. Do they worry about it because there are life coaches out there espousing the value of "freeing yourself to explore who you really want to be in the world."

The real entrepreneur knows that there is a lonnnnnggggg early life cycle to the start up. Activities are slow; there is research, prototyping, testing, and iterative revisions. There is also a whole lot of waiting, and I don't seem harm or fowl in filling down time with activities that will keep the lights on.

The time will come when its all or nothing, and at that point, the entrepreneur will dive in head first.