Technosailor.com

As the song goes, it don’t pay my bills. So I signed on with a startup that does. Hopefully, I can do both. But talk about two different worlds . . . Hardware, not software. Distinctly un-social. Government, not commercial. Business, not consumer. And funded, not — well, self-funded.

A great side-effect of entrepreneurs’ optimism in tough times is creativity. At our OpenCoffee last week, discussions got lively when talk turned to bootstrapping — not just self-funding, but all sorts of alternatives for producing live-giving capital and conserving what you do have. Time to put on your thinking caps.

Random-sampling the mix of entrepreneurs who made it to OpenCoffeeDC earlier this week, the wretched economy has deterred um, let’s see — no one. Gotta love that entrepreneurial spirit!

Are all your team members equally pulling their weight? It comes up all the time — I’ve had the issue myself — and it was common enough for a few startup CEOs to throw together an ad hoc session at BarCampDC2 last weekend. Of course, it never starts out that way — but then, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. How to make sure things stay balanced, and equitable?

My pitch was turned down for, among other things, ‘We are unsure about your ability to monetize the site.’ Heck, join the club! Who’s sure about their ability to monetize anything? Google wasn’t. Facebook still isn’t. But if you’re diligent — and reasonably astute — you work on it, you work every angle, you try things, and you figure it out.

There are two sides to every story, and two unenviable roles to a firing. While I don’t expect newly aroused sympathies to change anything, awareness of each other’s perspective can help make the process a little less painful. That is, if you believe yanking off a band-aid is less painful than pulling it off slowly . . .