It irks me that our government copped out of ditching a bunch of crap business by claiming they “were too big to fail.” Bull crap.
Honestly I think the administration should have forced Ford (the only solvent US car maker) to buy GM and Chrysler. Ford would have gotten a great deal and would be poised to totally drive American car manufacturing for the next decade at least (until the likes of Tesla or GEM caught up). I’ve been a GM supported all my life, but that doesn’t mean I believe they “can’t” be allowed to fail. In real life (at least what I thought was real life), if you make bad decisions continuously, you can/will fail. Then you own up the the mistakes and regroup. This is as opposed to unreal life, where we currently reside, where you can drive your company down the tubes, get a huge government bailout and then claim a profit.
That’s why I love the idea and process of launching web-based applications. As a full-time employee and a work at home dad (I have a 8 year old wiener dog) I have the freedom to invest my spare time (what little there may be) into… well, whatever.
I have a business registered in Vermont. We’re just getting started, there are two of us as partners. But we have revenue. In a sense we made something ($) out of nothing. Our skills applied created a monthly cash flow that covers, among other things, the cost of this blog and enough for some good business related books and perhaps a breakfast/lunch at our favorite spot in Burlington when I’m in town.
Luckily it’s addicting. I’m not satisfied with a few bucks a month and I believe I have the skills and connections to get that boosted (and hopefully high enough one day to be my full-time). My partner has the same expectations. Of course, it’s great that we have the luxury of spare time and other income to float us (don’t get me wrong).
The best part though, is that we’re too small to fail. We’ve developed and deployed 1 web app already and are working on an additional while we cultivate the first project. The total cost to do this? About 100 bucks a month hosting, 50 bucks a year in domain registration fees and 125 dollars in business registration fees. Are the apps high risk? Of course, our time and effort is worth a lot (especially when we’re not paying ourselves), but the cost of keeping going is so low that we can chase whatever projects we want to. When one fails completely, it just frees up room on the server and time in the schedule. It’s nice to know that a part of our business could fail and we can keep on trucking. We just need 1 stock in our portfolio to do well. In the meantime I’ll keep advancing each. Stay tuned.