Selling The Next Project

My first project for my small startup Enlark is pretty far along (even if it still feels at times so unfortunately far from publishing and more usefully: revenue). It seems to be past time that I put serious thought into the next (and possibly next + 1) project and started them into some sort of real development pipeline…

Up to this point I’ve still basically assumed that I would be dipping my toes back into the world of the gainfully employed, but the job market still seems unfortunately clogged with people with more “experience” than I have, or at the very least less physical distance from city of residence to job application. The other assumption was that I might perhaps bootstrap from the current project, but I feel that bootstrapping in any reasonable term to the level of development that I’d prefer to be working at seems roughly out of the question.

This week I’ve been very seriously asking the hard questions about what it would take to push my startup to the next level, to at the very least push things to the point where I can pay salaries, get a few more employees involved and potentially try to shoot for the stars with some large, satisfying project idea. That is, I’ve been asking myself and others about the chance that I can take the experience that I’ve gathered from my first project, adding in any complementary experiences that I might need from trusted friends in my professional network, and sell it to investors.

I think that I can do it. My head is swimming with visions of business and marketing plans that need to be written, demos that need to be prepared, and speeches that need to be made. I think that I have at least one unique project idea that screams for good investment money and offers a good potential for return. I think I have a unique enough vision for the project and the overall direction of the company. I think I have enough passion that I can mine amongst my network to sell that it would be successful, and to ensure that it will be successful. I’m very much starting to think that now is the time to do this.

I know there are a lot of naysayers, and I’m sure that I will run into many more. I know that now isn’t the greatest time to be looking for investors, but I also believe that it is certainly not the worst time to be doing so, either. Some have called some or all of my current ideas crazy, and I’m trying my best to see it as just the right sort of compliment that says that perhaps I do have what it takes. For instance, I’m crazy enough to think that Louisville needs to be an important part of the DNA of my company, and I’m going to put that into the business plan.

There’s a lot of hard work ahead on this path. I think that the worst thing I could do, however, would be to stop trying. I’m debating about how open to be about my pursuit of this plan. I wonder: Would it help or hurt my cause to publish my business plan here, as I write it, open to public critique?