Climbing the Boise Tower From the Ground Floor

Starting a new business is like climbing the stairs of a skyscraper. You enter through the lobby - where everything is open, bright, and polished - and you watch as people wearing business suits and carrying briefcases get on elevators and go to the top floors. You can see that there’s a camaraderie here, and they shake hands and smile when they meet. Everything is friendly and personable and the lobby is attractive. It’s not hard to imagine yourself on the elevators, too - everything is appealing.

And then you actually start your business, and then you realize that the elevators are out of order for people on the way up from the ground floor for the first time; you need an office at the top already to get on. You open the door to the stairway only to find that it’s bare and made of concrete. The stairways are a cold, tiring climb with an unstable handrail.

In the elevators, everyone is energetic and fresh, with plenty of breath to talk to each other during the ride up, but you quickly discover that - at least on the stairs - the climb tends to tire people out, and no one has time to talk. Dialog is something that gets in the way.

Not everyone makes it up the steps. Another article here on TechBoise mentioned that Idaho is the #1 state for start-ups, but far from the top when it comes to making sure those start-ups survive. That means we have a really nice lobby; the question is whether or not we’re maintaining our stairs.

My perspectives on entrepreneurship here in Boise are likely to be different than most of the other contributers, because I imagine I’m closer to the front door of the lobby than most. I’m not quite on the marble flooring anymore, nor on the bottom step, but it wasn’t long ago that I was at the base of the staircase, my hand on the railing, peering upward and trying to judge exactly how far I had to go. Which means I’ll be short on antidotes from what I’ve experienc-ed in favor of what I’m experienc-ing. My perspectives come from the coal pits; I’ll approach with dirty hands.

Case and point: I’m often embarrassed to admit how little my company is. If you’ve ever attended any form of conference as the head of a start-up company, you’ll probably understand where I’m coming from. Surrounded by people that are taking you seriously, you never want to do anything that might make them question that assessment, including pointing out that your company has no full time employees and that you, unlike most of the other people staying in hotels, are camping out in the local youth hostel for the duration of the conference.

There’s a lot of pressure to push out your chest and appear as big as possible; I’m battling that urge as I write this right now. Novel Projects Inc. has the name recognition of a much larger company, and has been covered by news agencies like ABC, NPR, and CityNews International. We were into our project less than three days before appearing on the front page of the Sydney Herald Tribune and being interviewed by the BBC national radio in England - and still, to this day, no one knows what we even do, yet.

My point is, people tend to assume I’m approaching this project with more resources than I really am. Plenty of talent in the people I work with, yes. Plenty of passion, agreed. A good idea, and the skills to make it happen, absolutely. But none of that would matter if the development were happening in any of the traditional technology centers; Boise is ideally suited for companies focusing on web based development, where the primary expense is finding talent to make the code reality. Here in Boise, where cost of living is low, my small company of 5 core programmers and 10 distributed programmers can focus on actually creating a product and launching on time, not spend 6 months finding funding to support our existence in the interim.

This background may or may not be interesting to you; it’s possible that you’ll much prefer reading about the experiences of some of the other, more established participants of TechBoise. But for those of you that are interested in the experiences just out of the lobby here in Boise, I’ll try not to puff up my chest too much when I contribute. I’ll try not to dodge the details, like the fact that the majority of my work gets done in a coffee shop instead of my office, or that I get there on my bike instead of the car, unless the weather forces me to drive. I won’t try to wash the coal from my hands before writing.

Because let’s face it: Even when I get to climb off the stairs and use the elevator instead, I’ll probably be carrying a backpack instead of a briefcase, and I doubt I’ll ever wear a tie.

Share This