tonyhaile.com
Each passing week proclaims it ever more clearly, we are in the shit. We’ve borrowed far more than we earn, securitized our borrowing a dozen ways so that each bad loan has incalculable effects (Warren Buffett called these derivatives ‘financial weapons of mass destruction’) and the stimulus plans seem to merely beget more stimulus plans. In the start-up world we are told to hunker down, cut everything to the bone and just try to survive until the market comes good again and we can once more spread our wings and fly towards an acquisition by (insert here). Those who have peeked out from underneath the tables have been batted down by ‘the powerpoint of death’ and other missives of doom.
We’re in the shit, and asking our most entrepreneurial minds to sit this one out. We’re in the shit, and the part of our economy best able to spur growth, create new jobs and get us out of this mess seem to be indulging in a fascinated self-castration at a time when courage, creation and competition are most needed. We’re in the shit, and crying out for the government to take bold steps, invest and rebuild the economy and yet shy away from doing the same thing ourselves.
We call ourselves entrepreneurs, let’s start acting like one. We should not be sitting around waiting for the economy to get better, there is no valley in the mountains in which we can cavort while the motor of the world grinds down. It is not enough to be willing to take risks when times are good, when a war is going badly the competent general does not hunker down and wait for it to get better, he realizes that he is the agent of change and that while the risk is greater, so is the prize. We are the agents of change in this economy, we can choose to wait it out, turning to each other and wailing ‘why doesn’t somebody do something?’ or we can act and watch as the world turns to us.
Let a thousand entrepreneurial flowers bloom in this deserted economy; no VC money? Ben and Jerry’s was started on the capital from two maxed-out credit cards. Poor market? Fix it yourself or find another one. My career has taken me from round-the world yacht-racing to international security to polar expeditions to web 2.0 and you’d be surprised how much your skills are transferable.
We’re in the shit and we are simply too damn important to sit this one out or do anything less than our most courageous, outrageous efforts. Now more than ever, what we do means more to the world than our own egomaniacal desires for greatness, this is us taking a strike to the cup and still standing at the plate spitting blood, bat raised and looking for space in the outfield. No more fear, no more caution, it’s time to step up.
