Founders Learn One Day at a Time Like Everybody Else
Posted by Tim Berry on October 16th, 2012
I like this a lot. The executive summary:
Dropbox Co-Founder Drew Houston believes false mythologies about tech company founders do a disservice to aspiring entrepreneurs. While many people think all tech founders start with world conquering visions, says Houston, the reality is that founders learn one day at a time just like everyone else.
This less-than-two-minute video comes from Stanford’s Ecorner, its online entrepreneurship center, which is a great resource.
If you don’t see the video embedded here, you can click here to see it on the original source.
Written by Tim Berry
Tim Berry
Tim is the founder of Palo Alto Software and bplans.com, the co-founder of Borland International, and the official business planning coach at Entrepreneur.com. He has been called the "Obi-wan Kenobe of business planning" and "The Father of Business Planning." He is a serial author of books and software on business planning.
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Hello,
My name is Richard, I own a restoration company. In February 2011 I
opened the doors with $48.00 dollars to my name and three months behind on my
bills. With my brother in trail I hired a legal advisor from Shelbyville to
advise me how to set up my company. I had this dynamic marketing program and
told him what I wanted to do and he advised me accordingly. My company opened
the doors and we took off running! In one year’s time we were doing over
100,000.00 in revenue a month and gaining momentum, I had never been happier in
my life. His job then entailed working on collections and working on customers
whom had experienced issues with their insurance companies. It appeared he was
doing a great job. As we grew further I hired a General Manager and a service
manager. With 61 employees in tow at it’s prime we were moving in the right
direction! I wanted to provide good paying jobs in a community that didn’t have
them. So after speaking with council I started a storm response team! We help
countless people by volunteering in Heneryville and Holden Indiana. We were not
only providing jobs but serving the community! We rebuilt a lot of homes by this
point. Well due to the hot summer we were falling behind my council told me no
worries and he was working on all of this supplemental money that is owed to us.
About the first week of August I got the bank statement and realized that the
first time in our 19 month company history we didn’t grow! I started an
investigation with a friend of mine who II promoted to GM at that time and
details started to unfold and they were ugly. We discovered that the council I
hired was not licensed to practice law in Indiana. We immediately started to
find a replacement. We hired a firm out of Crawfordsville whom started looking
into this and found out not only did I hire a fake but he was a felon! Please
remember I hired him at the very beginning of my company. He went to prison in
the 90’s for doing this same thing to someone else. During the investigation we
learned there were several other companies that had been scammed by him and
quite a few individuals. His Indiana Bar card he gave me was that of a deputy
Attorney General. Since this investigation started 8 weeks ago we experienced
some other difficulties with sub-contractors and service manager whom did some
jobs incorrectly and these are the people he “screened” for us. They took off
with 15,000.00 worth of tools and still wanted paid. We had the other
sub-contractor walk off a job. We had to scramble to get those customers under
control but in the mean time we had all of these customers who were starting to
get angry. Our office staff was not answering the phones during this. I was
instructed to use this “floor plan system” by our old council but as fast as he
knew we had trouble he was quick to try to retract that and act like it was all
my fault. Also during this investigation we discovered he embezzled over
30,000.00 from us and 105,000.00 from a apartment complex who is suing him. In
the mean time my customers are sitting mad and un serviced, when we found out he
failed to collect 250,000.00 for the company on jobs that were finished and
happy. We have customers stating we fraud them and I never had cruel intent.
Every down payment on every job we took we had the intentions to build them, we
were running this “floor plan business system” he developed . We have no money
and may get slammed by the media, because of all of this. My new Accountant is
trying to make since of all of this, Old council was in charge of taxes too and
he didn’t do them after he charged us to do them. The new lawyer has to deal
with all of these collection issues and suing these crooks as dealing with the
attorney general as well. I am a 35 year old man with 6 kids whom depend on me.
I need some help so I reach out to you today. If you want to learn more about
my storey E-mail me back moggyrich@aol.com . Will you help me find
help for my customers and my company so we can make this right we are good for
the money it’s all in our collections and that is money owed by insurance
companies not individuals. If you can’t help me will you point me in the right
direction for some help. This was all about creating jobs here in
Indiana
Thanks so much to giving us this information
Actually I am writing my essay project and getting important points from different blogs and forums and This is my pleasure to being here on this blog..