What's an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur is someone who dreams faint, weak dreams... takes that spark, that combination of lines of thought... and uses his minds and hand to try to shepherd that into reality.

But if only it were that simple...

These ideas start as such hazy dreams, and the young entrepreneur starts with resources so limited. He starts so ignorant, so overmatched, so naive, so "behind schedule," so... so out-gunned and facing the impossible...

The only thing that keeps him going is he's too stupid and naive to realize how much is in front of him, the complete depths of his ignorance, just how irrationally exuberant he is...

If he's charismatic, he gets some encouragement, but it's rarely the right kind. It's all... well, it's hard to blame other people. Artists and writers and inventors, and fellow entrepreneurs, kind of sort of get the young entrepreneur trying to build something. The process of trying to turn something that doesn't exist into... something that does...

That's before getting into the discouragement. There will be lots of that. And once you beat the discouragement, you've got a Pyrrhic victory on your hands. Because it never stops, you just stop seeking it out and instead fashion your world from different-minded people, but then it becomes quite hard to get a perspective. You need the critical feedback to learn and get stronger and get better, but the vast majority of it is delivered with 90% skpeticism/cynicism and 10% gold. If you can swallow the cynic's cyanide -- and survive -- you can mine out the gold at the same time.

A few people are pure encouraging skilled, of course. They're saints. Do everything you can for them.

But the process is only really truly possible because the young entrepreneur doesn't realize just how much battering he'll take, just how high the mountain actually is, just how tricky it is to traverse the the next chasm, just how hard the gale winds can blow, and how much colder it feels when the winds are blowing hard. And then some necessary gear breaks, ropes snap, and it starts raining on the same day --

--and do you let go?

Most do, most likely.

A few don't, and keep climbing, even through the nights, the winds, the cold, the breaking. The worst, perhaps, is seeing reality clearly, fully and truly realizing the depths of your ignorance and faulty judgment, how overoptimistic your assumptions were.

That weight, that weight of reality, can so easily crush the nascent sparks of ideas, those dreams and blind faith that are the foundation of all those new things which come from dreamspace and into our hands.

That anvil, the anvil of realizing your ignorance and hubris... you're actually close once you've got that weight crushing you. Now, for the first time, you truly see what gear and skills you're missing. And it looks and feels brutal, and do you keep going?

Most don't. The weight of reality, the light shined on their broken assumptions, it's too much for them.

But if you persist, and persist, and persist, and persist, and bleed from persisting, and then -- from nothing -- from nothing, from nothing -- something. And it's worth it.