When Good Start-Ups Go Bad

With soaring IPOs and boatloads of venture capital to be had for sharp entrepreneurs, there are tons of ideas, websites, and applications that make it, and make it big. But there are many other individuals and companies that don’t make it. We fall into the latter category. Although our ideas were exciting and unique, our passion was undeniable, and we had the ambition to truly change the world, our beloved ideas sadly did not come to fruition. We were young and inexperienced, but we had a professional experience that was unlike any other, which many people that knew us couldn’t even believe.

Our journey in living the tech start-up life began in Orange County, CA, specifically in Yorba Linda. With only a handful of people, a few refurbished iMacs, and a tiny office outfitted with bright retina-burning red carpet, we met in an unusual but similar way to help forge a new company under a young but charismatic owner. While we had internal projects that remained on the back burner, we paid the bills by developing and marketing a handful of websites for mainly small businesses that helped us bide the time until we could focus solely on out passion projects…and make it big.

After only a few months, the notion of actually building something all our own seemed to become more than just wishful thinking. Growing weary of our lackluster clients, our then trusted sage and mentor seemingly made the contacts and relationships that could help us gain the resources, and the cash, to transform our mission and enable us to pursue the application that had been stashed aside for far too long.

Before long, our surroundings transformed from the air conditioning-less confines of shared office space in Yorba Linda, to the trendy and lavish setting of a beach front villa in Newport Beach. Within a very short time, big venture capital dollars, Lamborghinis, and beach houses, seemed quite commonplace as these things filled both our fantasies and our reality as we set out to build a paradigm shifting start-up.

But what we didn’t know was what exactly was going on beneath the surface. While working on development, refining functionality, creating demos, ironing out patents, and even hiring new staff to help thrust us forward, it became very clear very fast that things were not quite as they seemed. The glamour and excitement was soon exchanged for suspicion, anxiety, and increasing concerns over strange people that were suddenly brought into the mix to advise, direct, and even dictate the direction of a company that seemed at one point to be perfect.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Lets start from the beginning….

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The full How Not To story will continue to unfold soon.

Tags: development, introduction, lamborghinis, start-up
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm and is filed under Overviews.
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