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Dreaming a Difficult Dream

This book was born out of passion, history, and, yes, failure (or so I thought at the time). After the one-two punch of the spring 2000 tech-stock slide and the September 11, 2001, attacks, my brother and I finally agreed to suspend operations of the technology-based product design firm we had launched five years prior. This venture had been dying a slow death in perennial start-up mode due to lack of working capital (among a host of other factors).

I thought I had entered that project with my eyes wide open. After all, I had worked on Capitol Hill dealing with business development and federal procurement issues. I had worked for a federal commission on entrepreneurship. I had been surrounded by and strongly influenced by entrepreneurs throughout my life—had even researched them as a genealogist in my own family tree. And I had built a small-scale, modestly profitable business when I was in college, selling T-shirts, hats, and such to my fellow collegians and eventually customers in various locales in Chicago and other markets along the Eastern Seaboard.

Like most entrepreneurs, I had ignored the statistics and assumed that I would be the one to defy the odds. What I didn’t realize then is that the deck was stacked against me despite the various traits and resources I brought to the table. In fact, they just were not enough. I didn’t understand what the odds were, or how to play them. I read innumerable how-to books about business plans, but none of them taught me how to prepare for the rough-and-tumble entrepreneurial world.