I’m not sure if it’s nature or nurture, but either way, the savvy gambler will bet that I’m going to run my own company at some point. I grew up in an entrepreneurial house. I share a Y-chromosome with a guy who built up a company and made it work with the (un)usual combination of moxie and dedication and wit that makes any business work. And, he did so with two small children. No small feat.
I’ve always planned on starting my own company. I’ve been a fan of Paul Graham’s writing ever since I discovered it. I live in Silicon Valley, and the startup vibe is in the air. I work as a web developer, and I’m good at what I do. I am very interested in the business of software, and have a lot of ideas about how things could be done in new and better ways. It’s not so much “if”, but “how” and “when”.
I’ve worked at Yahoo for 2.5 years now, already about 6 months longer than I’d initially expected to. Compared with working at a small company, it has many advantages. I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of several different projects, and Yahoo can afford to pay quite a bit more than my former employer ever could. I’ve been able to talk to and work with some of the most gifted hackers I could ever hope for. When I got the job, it was really a dream come true, and I’m still proud to be one of the cogs in this engine. It’s been even more satisfying than I’d thought it would be.
But there are drawbacks as well. In a company of Yahoo’s size, bureaucracy creeps in. Decisions are sometimes made very far from the code, and even further from the users. Despite Jerry’s and Ari’s best intentions—and sternest directives—when they talk about Open Initiatives, the “not invented here” syndrome can cause big problems. I don’t think I coined the term, but I’ve taken to referring to the malaise as the “purple cloud”, a stifling and noxious gas that obscures reason and reduces visibility. No doubt about it: that part of the job sucks.
On an almost daily basis, I’m tempted to quit and strike out on my own. Yahoo is an unusually good employer. But despite the perks, as long as I work at Yahoo, I don’t work for Isaac. I might love the company, love what we’re doing, love the opportunities it affords, but there is a definite lack of control and lack of ownership that leaves me unsatisfied sometimes. Being a manager wouldn’t solve the problem; it would make it much much worse. At least as a hacker, I fully own the code I write. If I can’t be on the top, I’d rather be as close to the code as possible. (Best would be both at once, of course.)
So Why Not Leave?
I’ve been reading a lot of articles recently with titles like Why you should quit your job and start a company
and Why you should keep your day job and work on your startup at night
. I know my hacking rhythm pretty well by this point.
What I’ve gathered from these resources and my own introspection is:
- It’s incredibly hard to focus on a startup and also have a separate full-time job.
- It’s even harder to focus on a startup and not pay rent or eat.
- If I spend less than 50 hours a week working, I’ll go crazy.
- If I spend more than 30 hours a week working on something I don’t love, I’ll go crazy.
- If I’m working on something I love, and I’m not working on it all the time, I’ll go crazy.
Going crazy is not an option. This isn’t the fun crazy with mania and interesting delusions; more like the super-depressed, hate-my-life, stop-communicating-with-other-humans kind of crazy. I’ve been there before. Life’s too short for that.
The “8+2″ workday wouldn’t work for me. I’ve tried it. I hated it, with a burning passion. I’ve always had side projects, but they remain on the side (like this blog.) I go through phases of being very interested and working hard on them, and completely ignore them at other times. If I had to focus on them enough to turn them into something that users would pay money for, it would have to turn into a full-time gig. My ventures into paying side-projects were tremendous failures for that reason.
Even more importantly, I can’t work just 8 hours a day. Either you ride the biorhythm, with its highs and lows, and capitalize on every bit of go-time that your brain gives you, or you crank out boring hours for your handful of dimes. “Healthy work-life balance” is for bank tellers. An artist doesn’t stop being an artist when he goes home.
I love what I do at Yahoo, and I care enough about what we create that I want to focus all my energy on creating value for users. It’s good practice. But as long as I work at this job, I won’t have enough left over at the end of the day to seriously invest in anything else. Some people can find a middle ground there; I’ve learned that I can’t, and I’m ok with that.
I also really hate worrying about bills. One joy of working for Yahoo is that I get paid enough that I don’t know exactly how much a cup of coffee costs. In poorer times in my life, I was acutely aware of every nickel increase in the cost of a pack of cigarettes. That sucks. Living economically is just good sense; deciding whether your last $10 should be spent on gas or dinner seriously gets in the way of enjoying life.
Having My Cake…
Here’s my plan: keep working at Yahoo for the next 2-3 years or so. Pare down my expenses as much as possible during that time, and sock away as much money as I can. When I have enough saved to live for at least a year without a job, I’ll quit my job and work on whatever idea seems the most promising at that time.
You see, the idea is the cheapest part. Ideas are so plentiful once you learn how to cultivate them, they may as well be falling from the sky. And my ideas have tended to be at least good enough, even if they’re not exactly earth-shattering. In the last year, I’ve seen two startups execute on ideas I’d had, and they seem to be having some success, which I find extremely comforting. I’m not trying to claim that I could have had the same success, but clearly, “finding an idea” isn’t a limiting factor.
So, assuming that my idea will be there when I’m ready to work on it, I’m saving up to buy myself a year off to work on it, whatever it ends up being. I’ve considered getting a part-time job when the date rolls around, just to bring in enough of a baseline income to pay a few bills without sapping my creativity too much. In a way, it’s a bit like creating an angel investor, one who believes in me 100% and is 100% committed to my success like no one else ever could be.
I realize that this plan is a bit risky. The risk is laziness. A dream without execution has a funny way of staying a dream forever. But I’ve made plans like this in the past, and have managed to be ready when the time came to act. That’s how I got to California, after all.
The real challenge is that I’m really not sure exactly what a year costs. I can sit down and crunch numbers, but everything seems way off. I don’t have nearly enough hard data about my lifestyle, and even less about what it could be. Depending on how I spin my estimates, the range ends up being about ±50% or so, which is useless.
I know that I can live cheaper than I am, but I’m not sure which things ought to be cut, and which things are worth the cost. Maybe coffee is worth $1.46, but not $1.55, when balanced against the PITA of brewing it myself and the joy I get from drinking it, multiplied by the number of cups of coffee I buy. I’m not sure. I do know that, while nicotine is a pleasure I deeply enjoy, there’s really no way to justify the physical and financial cost, and withdrawal will be a serious distraction. So, I’ve been wearing a patch—and breathing easier—since June 1, 2008.
A wise man once said, Never optimize before you profile.
Then he said it again and again, because no one seems to listen. When it comes to optimization, our intuitions and guesswork are almost always wrong, and only hard data can be trusted. For the last few months, I’ve been tracking my expenses using mint.com and trying to just “act naturally”. Over the next 6 months, I hope to collect enough information about my habits to make wise adjustments.
The 6 months after that will be spent living-as-if, and trying to strike a workable balance. Considering that I make more than double the national household average, and don’t have any kids, I should be able to save enough within 2 years to be able to coast for at least a year, if I just make a concerted effort to stop pissing away so much of it, even at SFBay prices.
Advice Welcome
This sort of plan flies in the face of the white-knuckle hardcore hacker work ethic that seems so prevalent in the startup culture of Silicon Valley. In a way, this is just a rationalization for wimping out. Why put it off until my 30s when I could take that leap of faith now? The way I see it, if a bus is coming along later, why run?
It strikes me as foolish and irresponsible to throw away the opportunity that Yahoo gives me just because I have a distaste for being an employee. (The fact that I have a non-trivial pile of stocks vesting at the end of next year speaks to the wisdom of procrastination, as well.)
I don’t suspect that Foo Hack really draws in the financial planner crowd, but if anyone has any suggestions or experience that might help in the temporary-retirement project, I’d love to hear it. Is this crazy? Am I going about this all wrong? Have you ever done anything like this?
27 Comments
I don’t have much experience, but I’m a source of plentiful book-learnin’. Based on what I’ve read, getting investments should be fairly easy for an experienced hacker with a good idea. And when you’re drawing up a business plan, you include a salary for yourself. So it’s not like you should expect to not make any money for the first year, in terms of personal income. Even if your company takes a net loss (often expected in the first year or two of a business), that can still be a year of getting paid a reasonable wage.
It’s not that I’m afraid of being unable to get investment. In fact, I’m reasonable sure that I could. It’s that I’m a greedy control freak and shudder at the thought of giving up ANY amount of creative control to someone who isn’t creating. I’d much rather take an investment of sweat than dollars. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think that I’m unusual in that regard.
I may end up looking for capital at some point. But it’s not something that I’d look forward to. If I have my own financial safety net, I can make a lot more progress before selling a piece of it. That also means that the piece will likely fetch a better price, so I won’t have to sell as much of it. But better to just do something that doesn’t have a lot of overhead and makes more than it costs.
In my view, leaving Yahoo for a startup isn’t a “get rich quick” scheme. It’s a “get out from under bureaucracy and hack full time” scheme.
It’s a numbers game. The more times you step up to the plate, the more home runs you will hit. I would try to find a way to build something quick and dirty, get user feedback, and adjust accordingly. If the idea doesn’t catch on, build something else in a month.
If you use this mentality, it’s not a matter of ‘if’. It’s a matter of when and how. The more ideas you try, the higher your odds of success. Good luck.
@dan
Exactly my thinking, and a great point. Thanks.
In one year, I can try to bang out 1 public-facing site a month. If it can’t be brought from idea to execution in 30 days, it’s not fleshed out enough, or I clearly don’t care enough about it. With 10 ideas, at least one of them has a higher likelihood of being worthwhile.
This is *exactly* what I planned when I left school. Cool! My plan was to work for 5 years at a job I at least LIKED- put away enough to live for 1-2 years without doing anything at all- and then work on whatever startup idea I figured would be best at the time. Why did I choose 5 years? Honestly, it was because most companies vest employees in their retirement plan of choice after 5 years.
Fast forward to 5 years later (last June 15th) and I’m ready! Money saved, credit card balances at 0, no debt, no obligations! I’ve even started to work on some of the code for my idea. The only thing I didn’t count on was the housing market… so now I just have to hang around my current job until my place sells. anybody want to buy a condo in Chicago?
seriously though- from where I’m sitting, it’s a great plan. Give yourself the opportunity and ability to do something amazing, and chances are you will! Not to mention, if you are at least managing your money successfully, and not going in to debt- you’re doing vastly better than many Americans already.
Thanks Isaac Schlueter, this is exactly how I have been thinking for the last 10 years. I did in fact set out on my own just as you did it for 6 months and it didn’t work for me. Ever since I was 16 or 17, I wanted to set out on my own. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were highly successful tech entrepreneurs and a lot of their success is reproducible and well documented. In fact, it almost seem that most entrepreneurs walk the same path. From Gates to Warren Buffet.
But after college and almost a decade of work experience, I have determined that I am incapable of becoming a founder of a startup. I might work with for a really company but I probably won’t be the sole founder. The problem with me, I am too geek and always looking at interesting technical problems but not really creating anything that a person might pay for or be interested in. You might have a similar problem? I am interested in it and really want to do it, but I am not THAT motivated for it and maybe not wired to be an entrepreneur. For example, I would really like to be like Hugh Hefner, but…it looks like I am not.
* I am too geek and also I never had the energy for the other aspects of creating a startup product. There is marketing and business plans and actually coming in contact with potential customers. I almost believe that you have to customers ready to buy your product before even having a product.
* If I do a startup, I wouldn’t mind having a product and consulting as well. Possibly consulting with a big company. Becoming a partner with that company. Lets say a big company like Oracle needs some kind of Widget Web Application. As a lone consultant, I come in and say that I have this Widget Web Application that Oracle can host in house. It is open source. Pay me, Mr Consultant to tweak it out for you. In this respect, you act like a consultant and kind of like a MicroISV.
* Leverage Open Source. I don’t think startups are taking advantage of having applications where all the source is available. Some are, but some aren’t and some aren’t doing it the right way. Imagine all of the software applications that a typical company may pay for and I bet most of that software is proprietary. You come in and pick X application and just open source it and charge for support services or something similar.
On the time issue, yea it is hard or maybe impossible to work a full time job and then try to come up with a product. If you are like me. You want to do a good job at your regular job but ALSO create a viable product. It may be difficult to half commit to either one.
Thank you for writing what you did.
It’s always nice to know someone is thinking the same way.
Dear Isaac,
While reading your post i couldn’t help but to feel identified with your ideas, everything u said happened to me with the minor difference that i have just quit a job which allowed me to not worry about how much a cup of coffee costs. I also saved enough money to live comfortably for 12 or 18 months. Here i am, thinking how to develop my ideas, so far its been very interesting, i found free time for the first time in years and i dont think is laziness but is taking me far longer to develop anything than before, i also think procrastinating is an art, a risky one but definitely an art.
The only negative side is the fact that i often put pressure on my shoulders in terms of time and projects cause i sometimes feel i waste time too easily, but it is something i also enjoy, the new feeling of having a bit of free time. Self discipline is the key, i have created a routine.
1.- Wake up as early as healthy possible and go to the gym
2.- Back to my office/flat, start with the usual, emails, news, etc.
3.- Work until 2pm and cook, always relatively healthy.
4.- Avoid the computer for the next hour or two, watch TV, read, or even sleep, what im trying to do is to avoid spending the whole day in front of my computer, and the afternoon is when i use my free time, cause like many other’s in the thinking industry i cant go to bed early, im remarkably more efficient working at night.
Im in the middle of my own startup and is taking me bloody ages, but im not complaining, im actually dedicating loads of time to learn things i didn’t feel confident with in the past. Im basically becoming more “versatile” in terms of skills, knowing people here and there and participating in creative projects outside of my field.
I know very few people who never said they wanted to start their own stuff, but i know very few who actually did it.
I think you’re doing great mate, taking control (in a healthy way) and knowing your habits is a good way to start planing the future.
Sound great comments in there… had to retweet ‘em onto Twitter (and link back to you
Issac,
It seems like a sensible approach to me. I found this post via Hacker News and I think sometimes people get caught up in the startup hysteria of those sites and don’t think conservatively enough about how to approach it. I would say that you should give the Angel option a fair shake. We’re 2yrs into our startup having raised a chunk of money on convertible debt with a great group of passive angel investors who trusted us early. I took out a home equity line against my house to launch our company day one and then I went out and raised the rest. All I can say is once you “burn your ships” it gets easier. Not easier as in “less hard work” but you’re all in at that point and you find a way to make it work.
Anyways, best of luck when you get to the jumping off point. It sounds like you’ve thought through the risk/reward equation and are taking the necessary preparations to maximize your odds. Kudos.
sean
Hi Isaac,
I’m doing the same thing as you. I’ve been working at Amazon for 10 months now, saving a lot of money. I’ve come to realize how little I know and how clueless I was after college. I think that my chances of creating a successful company after working here for 3 years will be an order of magnitude larger than if I had tried right after college. I’ll also be in a financial position to spend 2-3 years without a salary.
Congratulations on quitting cigarettes! I’m looking forward to reading your blog and new ideas. I’ll be looking for co-founders like you in a couple of years.
-Michael
Speaking more from the financial planning side of things, you’re correct in your assumption that you’ll have no way of knowing what your expenses will be in 2-3 years. With energy and food prices fluctuating, the only thing you can really be sure of is that you’ll need money. However, if you have any long outstanding loans, such as car or student, you can calculate those in advance, as they usually have pretty well planned payment schedules. You may want to consider trying to pay these off before you leave Yahoo; faster repayment means less interest and one less bill to pay when you’re trying to start a business.
If you’re trying to build a significant wad of cash to live while you create your own business, the best thing I’ve read (and the only thing that’s half-worked for me) is to simply dump a flat amount into a savings account every paycheck. As soon as it comes in, $X goes into a separate do-not-touch-for-the-love-of-god account. This gives you the effect of actually tightening your budget (you see a lower number in your checking then you would otherwise) and leads you to make better fiscal decisions. Just don’t occasionally peek in on the account and suddenly see a new TV or car.
As for the right amount, there is no real formula for that. Pick an amount and roll with it. If you pick an amount that’s too big, you’ll definitely know it over the next few weeks. If you’re thinking ‘wow, I could have put in a little more’, start doing it. Fine-tuning the amount is half the fun. Just make sure you put in something signifigant. If you were planning on investing, I think you’re pretty much best off just sticking it in savings somewhere. Most actual investments (if you were even thinking of those) take much longer to pay off then the 2-3 year time frame you are speaking of. As long as you beat inflation (2-3% recently, but it could possibly-maybe-sorta spike), you should be okay. A high rate savings account can help you do that.
Disclaimer: I’m 23 and have only read a book or two about fiscal planning. I program banking software, but it’s for insurance.
I think you meant to say “combination of *moxie* and dedication”.
Not really related to the specific content here, but you should never letter-space lowercase letters. It is a typographical no-no because it looks awful. Stick to letter-spaced small caps or all caps.
Alternately, it’s worth remembering that once you launch a site - you might not get the formula/recipe right on the first try. You could very well spend the remainder of the first year (or even the second year) iterating on your initial idea. That’s what I’ve been doing with my startup. And I can tell you it’s a hell of a lot different from what we originally launched with.
Also - and I say this as a fellow Yahoo alum [1998-2002] - developing new websites and web products is a lot different when you don’t have the muscle or audience of a Yahoo behind your sails. It seems so obvious in retrospect, but I think I got spoiled by the fact that, at Yahoo, you could launch a product and have a near instant audience that would be envy of many a startup. Once you are forced to stand on your own two legs without that massive network behind you, you really are starting from 0 users. You have to really fight to gain traction.
A lot of people say ideas are cheap and execution is key. And that is mostly true. But I’d add this to the equation. Execution is key, but a lot of people just think the “execution” part of the equation is the coding and development. I’d argue that the bigger piece of the puzzle is the marketing and monetization. That’s the piece that has been the most challenging for me (even though my startup has finally reached a good level of profitability — about 2 years after the beginning). Of course everyone’s experience is different. I can only speak from mine.
Good luck.
re: spoiled by the purple firehose, I absolutely hear that. Before the Buzz launch, when everyone was calling it a Digg clone, we joked that Digg would probably never drive the number of unique users that we’d get in our first week. A few front-page promotions later, and publishers were bragging about how they got more traffic from Buzz than every other source put together. Being the world’s homepage has definite advantages. Of course, the downside to that is the lack of negative feedback—when everyone goes to your page by default, how do you know when you did something right?
Then there’s also the huge network benefit that every Yahoo property enjoys. It would be tough, if not impossible, to find a larger and higher quality pool of hackers than Yahoo’s internal mailing lists, and the in-house technology stack does solve a lot of common problems. Everyone loves OpenID now, but Yahoo sites have had one better for years; everyone already has an ID, and chances are, they’re already logged in.
I absolutely do include marketing in the “execution is expensive” statement. Time building something is an important part as well, of course, but it’s the part that I can wrap my head around much more easily.
>> I realize that this plan is a bit risky. The risk is laziness.
Yeah, but…
>> I’ve considered getting a part-time job when the date rolls around
This will help you to overcome inertia. It will show you ho fast time is running.
Still…
You have an interesting plan. I started my own company, and it never worked out the way I wanted. I burned through my year with fanciful ideas, and not enough ruthless reduction of scope. I am still at it, but my company is now me contracting for whatever I can find. I enjoy the freedom, and contracting gives you periods of time to work on your dream project.
Here are my humble suggestions:
1) Do not spend more than 4 months in development, make sure you have something useful (no matter how small) early on. After four months, I got lost in the glorious wilderness of possibilities and came out broke and no product to show for it. You need to make sure your business idea is grounded in reality. The longer you spend away from the customer, the more likely you will get lost. You seem to know that already.
2) Get at least one partner: You need the partners to make the 4month time-limit feasible. This evens out the peaks and valleys of contracting, or increases your development speed. Even your dream project will have 90% boring development, and working together will make it go by faster. I miss working at a company with multiple developers: The many can decimate the large-and-mostly-boring tasks, giving each individual a constantly changing set of problems, removing the pain of monotony. Imagine having to do 2 man-years of boring work yourself: I can tell you from experience; the awesome pay will not seem worth it.
3) Get an employee/contractor: If you do not have enough partners, you will need employees. Estimating the cost of an employee is easier than estimating your expenses. You will have ultimate control of the vision, and you will be able to achieve the 4 month delivery schedule.
Finally, the 4 month number, is arbitrary. You know how big your project is, and how quickly the first version can be ready. Make a plan and stick to it. When you find you are not sticking to plan, start contracting: At least your partners or employees can continue work while you recharge the bank account.
Firstly, think of your startup as a side-project. Save some cash, and toy with it on and off for a few months.
If you suddenly get inspired, and think it could go somewhere, then ride the wave of passion! Take 2-3 weeks off of work, and put 200 hours into it. If you’re inspired, it won’t feel like you’re working at all…
at the end of that, you’ll probably have a decent alpha project. Might be enough to boost your confidence that you could make a living at it… if you’re luck, you’ll inspire others to think the same way.
Isaac, thanks for the post. I can relate to exactly what you are talking about. I am 26, graduated with a Masters degree about 3.5 years ago and work for respectable large company as a Software Engineer making a decent buck. I have wanted to go on my own for similar reasons. I need to really LOVE my work and the control freak that I am, I can only even get close to doing that when I work for myself.
I am, however, married, and also risk-averse somewhat. My wife is even more risk averse and freaks out at the thought of me quitting my well-paying job. So I started my little company part-time working the 8+2/3/4/5 formula. It takes an enormous amount of discipline to pull that off, over the long run, I’ve been doing it for over a year now but without all that much discipline. Hence, I am living through the difficulties of it, and at present, having a really hard time focusing at my day job, but I can’t quit for other reasons (not money, or lack of confident, etc. etc. - it’s immigration/visa related).
Here’s my advice. If you are like me, you will have a really hard time giving it 2-3 more years before starting up on your own. It’s like living in misery (even though you have all the money and the security blah blah). 2-3 years is too long. Too many things can change in that time that come between you and your dream. You will regret that later or have to make even harder decisions that just quitting your job now. My gut says go for it sooner than 2 years (perhaps 6 months to a year) and do WHATEVER it takes to make that happen. Why can’t you get to a part-time job 6 months from now that pays about 50% of your current, reduce your expenses another 25%, so that covers 75% and then plan for your new company to pay the remaining 25% within 6 months. Yes, that will limit the kind of ideas you can pursue, but it will get you going faster..
Just out of interest what were the 2 startup ideas you had that are now “in the wild” ?
The first was a completely distributed commenting system for blogs and web pages, so that authors don’t have to deal with spam and other BS, and unifying the content created by commenters into an identifiable stream of data. Disqus is doing exactly that, and pretty well. (I’m planning on integrating with their system soon, actually, just haven’t gotten to it.)
Another, which isn’t quite in the wild yet, was a way to unify OpenID, OpenSocial connections, OAuth permissions, and SReg data into a single identity providing domain name for anyone, which could then be leveraged by new sites wanting to add a social dimension to their product. (For example, Last.fm is a great radio site, but the social network aspect seems contrived. Why can’t it just see the friends I already have?) Chi.mp is going to be doing this with the .mp TLD, which will be free to all on September 1. If they do it right, it could be incredibly successful over the next few years.
Some people I know do contracting work as a way to pay the bills and take time off between jobs to work on their baby. Might be a way to help bootstrap your dream if the year off isn’t enough to get it going.
@helen, Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard. Either contract for a few months here and there, or sling coffee part time to pay the bills.
Hey, Isaac. Nice post. Interesting to read it right after the Meetup @ Hackers and Founders tonight.
I’ve actually been doing that exact same thing over the past few years. I haven’t saved up enough to live sans paycheck for a year, but my wife and I have paired our bills down enough so that she doesn’t have to work, and I should be able to cut down at work next month. And, I’m finally able to work on my first project.
There is the issue of whether to build a startup or an online business. Definition: Startup–focus on getting as many eyeballs/users as possible and hope to flip or monetize later. Business–focus on getting paid.
I’m going to focus my first project (www.cuuute.com) on building something that attracts eyeballs, but that can be monetized via merchandising. I certainly wouldn’t mind flipping a site, but I’m really not willing to bet the rent money on it at this point. I’m also planning on building a sustainable lifestyle of entrepreneurship, that is, arranging my life to be able to continuously pursue startups/businesses.
Good luck to ya. Keep us posted.
A little older than you, I sometimes find myself thinking… hmm, if I have a baby, maybe I could take 6 months off and code something really cool.
Yeah, I get it, it is completely unrealistic and not the best reason to get pregnant.
I’m admitting it here just to say, I know how you feel. I don’t even really care about the start-up thing, I guess I haven’t caught valley-fever yet. It’s more about focusing on projects that are important to me, and code, lots and lots of code.
Congratulations for the smoking bit.
I’ve got similar thoughts too, about eventually striking out on my own, when the time is right. For me, though, more than money, I’m waiting until I have a great team. Or at least a great co-founder. Ideas are cheap, money is relatively easy to come by, but I think great teams are really what make or break a venture, and they’re a lot harder to come by.
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