Summary: dude gives a demo in front of potential investors hoping that the app won't break.<p>Except, wrapped in several layers of self-aggrandizing drama. An awful lot of hat for very little cattle.
His life is not on the line. He will have the opportunity to take more risks in the future. When he tries out armed robbery, I'll start to believe he's putting his life on the line.
This is why I record screencasts for anything that could possibly go wrong in a live presentation. This also frees you from having to remember exactly everything you wanted to do in which order. You only need to remember what you're narrating.
Boy reading that piece really brought me back to my own struggles. Truth is you probably have a 75% chance of failure.<p>It is surprising to me that many years after the fact that you only remember the highs and not the lows.
Why is everybody falling over the choice of words instead of reading the intent ? Clearly putting your life on the line is meant metaphorically, and a 50% chance to fail is probably generous.<p>Give the guy a break, he's gone the distance, put his money where his mouth is and his future is riding on this, on top of that he's open about it.<p>Kudos from me, if half the armchair entrepreneur-wannabes in the world would be doing what he's doing it would be a good thing. You really shouldn't discount the emotional roller coaster that a start-up is.<p>Idle words indeed.
Sorry, perhaps I am doing things wrong, but when I give demos to customers or potential investors it's always with ~1 day old trunk.<p>Do people really just show screenshots or screencasts?
Tough crowd :O I thought it was a really interesting insight into the 'softer' side of starting up, the stress and personal investment of a founder in his company. I know how stressful live demos are even to a fairly sympathetic audience who are going to give you another chance if things go horribly wrong; I could really identify with his description of it knowing how much was riding on it going well.<p>Good luck to him.
I would be very interested in a data point of a successful startup headed by a non-technical founder whose principal role is to harangue and berate and exalt his tech team. Oh, and to make Excel spreadsheets
This headline is false.<p>Flipping a coin has a 50% chance to fail, because there's little you can do to affect that probability.<p>There's a lot you can do to affect the probability of success in a start-up. In fact, <i>everything</i> you do affects that probability.<p>This is like comparing video poker to a slot machine. On one, you have an opportunity for input. On the other, you don't. So they're not the same thing.