Entrepreneurship is challenging. In the last post, I said it isn’t for wimps. I was working mainly alone, and then about a month after I hired an off-shore team to start design and development, I found two co-founders.

Then the team was eviscerated

First, the offshore development team stopped working. We interviewed other teams and a one started work, but we had lost almost two months. A few days later, the CTO had an accident and had to drop out to recuperate, so I took over as CTO. But I no longer had time for sales.

And then the CMO got hit by a personal calamity as well. He’s been only able to put a few hours a week into it since then. And then the offshore team proved to be poor, so I had to fix some of their code and find a new team to help with the rest and fix the user interface. The upshot: more long months of work.

The challenge of being a single-person team

What’s difficult for me is both managing and working. At the high level, there are so many things to manage- the code I’m working on, my developer’s code and challenges, the testing, creating sample data, the site content, the messaging, the outreach to voters, outreach to politicians, preparing for deployment, planning the next phase of coding and even working with my CMO on his deliverables.

Everything disappears when I dive into coding or working on the book or even writing a blog. Someone contacted me recently who might help with fundraising, so I’m bringing him up to speed and helping him prepare his plans, too. And there’s a set of UI (user interface) problems my developer is stuck on, so I’m trying to find someone with more expertise to help out, on a quickly vanishing budget.

It’s just what there is to do

Lots of people tell me it’s impossible. Often I feel stressed, tired, exhausted, failing, and worse. But I let it go. I tell myself it’s close. It’s just what there is to do.

It seems to me that the world needs this, a way for people to figure out what they want together, peacefully and constructively. And a way to work together to deliver it, using accountable representatives. And I seem like the only one who’s willing to take a stand and do whatever needs to be done.

And, I’m not alone. My CMO is making progress. And this new guy seems like he’ll improve our chances for funding. He can’t work for us long without funding. But if we can get some, he seems like he’ll be able to take over outreach and sales. So if I can get us to launch and get people to the site, we should have the traction we’ll need to get some attention. Probably even enough for a successful crowdfunding campaign. And that’ll be enough to fund us, or provide enough so others are willing to pitch in.

If you read this, please add your name to our announcement list. I may be able to launch this thing without too much help. But your participation will be needed. You’re the one that’ll be using PeopleCount to make our government of, by and for the people.