Are prospective investors killing your vision or fueling your fire?
Yesterday, I had an amazing call with a guy with thirty years experience in the recruiting market. For years, he had a vision of a service doing exactly the kind of things we plan to do with Path 101--not necessarily on the helping people figure out what they want to do side, but on the data-centric, getting to know candidates better side. We saw completely eye to eye on how badly this market needs to do more than figure out eighty different ways to smash a resume and a job post together, or mindlessly connect people without adding intelligence to the process. What he also believed in, which we do strongly, was that it needed to be a service people opt-in to--something that provides value to the user every step of the way, encouraging them to participate more and submit more information about themselves.
What was amazing was that this guy went the distance in terms of describing the power of the vision--referring to it as "one of those four or five big stories..."--while at the same time, he realized that we needed to take small steps to get there, but that directionally we were in the right place. At one point, the grokking was so intense, we had to pull back and say, "Hey, we need to pull back and let this sink in... let's talk next week."
While I absolutely believe Path 101 can be one of those companies, there's never been a purpose to describe it as such to anyone like that, particularly investors. In fact, going through the fundraising process actually forces you into quite the opposite mode of thinking. Your grand vision starts slowly dying a death by a thousand cuts. They start nitpicking on features they dislike, or question how long it will take before you drive revenues, or they want to know how are you going to get people to come to the site. (Which is the most ridiculous question of all time, because every single company has the same answer--SEO, social media tools, PR, or some kind of partnership...and maybe some traffic purchasing... what other traffic is there? Doesn't everyone say the same thing?)
Eventually, you find yourself thinking smaller--that if you can't find anyone to believe your big world-changing vision, you try to convince people of small things--how you just want to get to the next product step, how you can pull down some low hanging fruit revenue, etc. God forbid you should look out further than your next financing in your plan--well don't bother because who's going to believe you, right?
Meanwhile, I was at a panel discussion with four VC's and some of them were talking about "Web 2.0" deals and how they need to do extra diligence on the mindset of the entrepreneur because they need to make sure they're in it to build a big company and don't want the quick flip. Well, how many game changing companies out there had a clear path to the world changing vision at the point of their angel round?
Perhaps the reason why so many Web 2.0 companies are small ideas and quick flips is because we've never had so much transparency into the VC mindset as we have now, and what entrepreneurs are hearing isn't "Think big", but "What can you show me now?" Well, big takes time, and small can be built on Ruby-on-Rails this weekend... and don't expect small to resist a $30 million sale to a media company. Thus far, no new potential investor has flat out asked me how Path 101 changes the world, and only one has even come close to turning the conversation into how big this gets.
del.icio.us, for example, was a company where lots of people scratched their heads and said, "Bookmarking? I don't get it," while at the same time, others, like those of us at Union Square Ventures, thought that people-powered search and discovery was a potential game changer and maybe even a Google-killer.
The key is finding that one person who believes in that vision like you do--even if you haven't previously been #2 at Paypal or built Skype or whatever. It's hard to do that as part of this process. I told this guy yesterday that while I totally believed in this vision, as CEO, I also had to deal with the harsh reality that the well runs dry in January, and so no one's changing any worlds without some more cash. Walking in the door and saying, "I know we're in Alpha and rolling out our product at the moment, but here's how this changes the world", unfortunately, isn't usually the path to solving that immediate need.
I wonder if your expected value increases if you grab your pick ax and go find that one person who believes in the big vision, versus thinking small and incremental and showing what you can do tomorrow so someone will fund you today. Companies would certainly behave very differently depending on what kind of feedback they get from their supporters, and so I wonder how much the early exit/flip Web 2.0 small idea mentality is a product not of entrepreneurs but of the investment community itself.
UPDATE:
Of course, I really don't want to just come off like I'm complaining. If you know me, you know I always look for actionable next steps anytime I see an issue. For me, what this whole experience has me doing is thinking about ways I can better convey the vision and end goal to the folks who need to see what that first step on the path looks like. Sometimes, though, its just nice to get unbridled support on the vision rather than just spend 99% of your time defending the product plan.
Real apps for real people with real problems
"So we are thrilled to be an investor in a company that has been organized since its inception around the key insight that we believe will drive the next several years of innovation on the web – the need to solve real problems in the real world for real people." - Brad Burnham on USV's Investment in Meetup
If only there were other companies solving real problems for real people.
The other side of Paul Graham's Coin: Ideas on the kind of VC we'd like to get funded by
Paul Graham just posted some ideas on what kind of startups he'd like to fund on the YCombinator blog. I suppose if you're already working in these areas, that's great news for you, but to be honest, if you're not passionate about one of these things already, I never believed in the idea of just methodically picking picking a sector to start something in. Fabrice seems to be doing a bangup job at it, though, so I could be totally wrong (although his passion seems to be the methodology and the process itself, though).
Anyway,this isn't the first time one of these lists has popped up before--and I'm sure it sends a lot of entrepreneurs scrambling. In order to provide balance in The Force, I thought it might be better to tell all the VCs some ideas about what kind of partner I'd like to fund Path 101. Let the VC's scramble around!
So here goes:
1) We're looking for a partner who is really passionate about helping people find their callings--someone who is looked at by others as a great mentor and actively contributes their career wisdom to others. If we're talking about our career advice tool and you have to ask, "Why would anyone answer someone else's career questions?" that means you don't actually provide that advice yourself when you get random e-mails from your school's alumni or people from your blog, etc. We want someone who knows what it was like to not know what you wanted to do and feels like we can really make a big impact by helping people with their career.
2) We want someone who really believes in backing people. Our product will take many public iterations before it ever feels "complete" and there are still many unanswered questions left that we will only be able to address over time. That means, at the end of the day, you've got a team and a market. We're sure the market of "people who aren't sure what to do with their careers" is pretty huge, so that leaves you with team as the real bet--and so we need to feel like our team has the confidence and support of our investors.
3) Someone with access to domain knowledge in our market. It will be some time before we build the recruiting inroads to our userbase, but it would be extraordinarily useful to be able to regularly pick the brain of someone who knows the space or can open up the right doors here. That's true for any startup--having a resource to go to in order to help grease the biz dev or acquisition wheels is seriously value add.
4) We want a user--someone who participates in the social web to the point where we say, "and this is how it plugs into people's blogs" they'll get it because they blog or know how they work, not just because "blog" is a buzzword.
5) Someone fun! I need to be able to pick on you via Twitter. If we can't laugh about something, hit up a ballgame, or just kick back and genuinely enjoy each other's company, it's going to make things a heck of a lot harder. We have a fun team (in a geeky sort of way) and we get along with each other really well. Our backers are going to be joining that team and need to be able to get along with us.
6) A partner who can get their whole firm on board. Obviously some level of this has to be attained to get a deal done, but sometimes partners change and other times, different partners or junior folks have something to contribute. I'd like to be able to walk into my VC's office and have just about anyone there be interested in talking to me--and not have to feel like I'm waiting for just one person.
7) Someone principled and ethical. We're in this because we want to make an impact on people's lives--because the difference in your life between hating what you do and really finding where you fit is huge. We also think it can be successful, but that's not going to be from taking advantage of others or squeezing every last dime. I want to feel like we're in good hands with a trustworthy partner and that's what I think I can offer in return.
In return, a VC will get a team that is extremely dedicated and passionate about solving a big mainstream problem with creative, appropriate solutions, that works really hard, and that they can trust in return.
Anything else I should be looking for?
Sign us up, VC Mike: The Burn/Risk Ratio
Mike Hirshland nails how I feel about the timing of Path 101 (except for the market part--there are more people trying to figure out what to do with their careers than you can shake a stick at):
"For the immediate future, what makes sense is to iterate and experiment. During this phase, product, market and adoption risk remains high. The idea is to learn as much as possible about all three of these, and remove a big chunk of these risks, but to burn as little capital as possible during this phase. In the experimentation phase, we want to learn a ton but spend a little.
Once we think we have learned what product will get adoption in the market, and how we will make money from this product/market match (which nearly always takes a few more iteration cycles than originally thought), we then should kick into execution mode, in order to get real live proof points that the model actually works in practice. This is the time to staff up with the team necessary to go to market.
But until then, no need for the bus dev and sales guys that had been in the plan."
Fun with data: Personality Test Dropout Rate
One of my favorite things about actually having a live site up at Path 101 is having user data to play with.
Since we started broadcasting the availability of our personality test, we now have some neat data and feedback on it--like the fact that some people think it's too long. That begs the question of wanting better data or more completed users... and whether or not there are some people who just won't do anything longer than a minute anyway. I'm sure we could shave a few questions here and there, and provide some better motivation to strike a balance, but here's what we've got so far:
So basically, if we can get someone to the midpoint of the test, they're going to finish. I don't now if that's normal for these kinds of tests, but that's about what I would expect. At the end, about 52% percent of the people who started on Page 1 actually finish it. That's pretty good for a 90 question, 25 minute test.
One thought might be to move some of the "filling buckets" to the front of the test. People seem to really like those and mixing up the questions better might break up the monotony of the test.
Perhaps some teasers, too... like telling them we've found some industry matches for them, but they have to finish to see them or something.
Any other ideas?
What about letting people save it midway? Will you lose people who would have otherwise finished it? Will people really come back? Certainly that might drive registrations. Time for testing!!
My Path 101 Personality Test Results
There are certainly a lot of places out on the web where you can take a personality test, but for the more serious ones (not the Superhero test), comparing results to others isn't always easy.
That's going to be our next update to the test... the ability to compare your results with other people.
For now, though, people have been sending me screenshots of their Path 101 personality test results and asking me what I got on mine, so I figured I'd share:
Interesting that I'm empathetic, but kind of emotionless. "I understand your problems, but I just don't care about them." :)
What did you get on your test?
Haven't taken it yet? What are you waiting for? A Beta? :)
Don't call it a launch... It's an Alpha. WAY different. :)
A lot of people ask me about how Path 101 is doing. Before today, I've basically said, "Yeah, we're building and making a lot of progress, but we have a ton of work left to do."
Today, I can proudly say, "Yeah, we're building and making a lot of progress, but we have a ton of work left to do, but if you really want to go break something, check out our site. You can now take our personality test and explore a small subset of our public resume data."
I'm very excited that a part of what we're offering stands enough where it makes sense to send people to it. We can also use your help with it, too!
The quiz works based off of other people's data. When you take it, we'll match your personality to others in the system and tell you what kinds of careers they're in. The more people we have, the better and more specific the recommendations.
So, if all 2600 of you could go over to Path 101 and take a quiz, and save it to an account, I'd really appreciate it. Feel free to pass to a handful of people in a diverse set of careers. Explain to them that they're part of a test group, and that the data will be much better with a critical mass of people. We'll be pinging everyone who took the test when we've hit that mark and recommendations make more sense.
I want to give a HUGE shout out to our great team. Alex, Jen, and Hilary have been pushing a ton of code--especially since it's really only been a couple of months since the whole team has been on board. We'll continue to make more progress each day, releasing more features and making the ones we put out there better. If you haven't already, you should subscribe to the Path 101 blog to track our progress.
Risk and the Raise
Back in October, Alex and I were two guys and a Powerpoint.
We raised $350k partially based on that Powerpoint, but *I think* it was more based on the strength of our relationships and the fact that we were working in a big, lucrative space begging for disruption. The investment was meant to recruit additional developers, carry us to a product, and give us some running room after to iterate.
We're on the verge of accomplishing the first half of that goal. We hired two great developers and we're literally a couple of days from rolling out some of our product in an early Alpha version. (No, no, it's not a "launch". It will probably suck and break on day one, but you've got to start somewhere, right?)
Some entrepreneur friends were surprised and maybe even thought it was unfair that we were able to raise before having at least a demo or something up. Certainly this is the kind of thing that VCs look for, but angels can be a different story.
Thinking about risk and value creation in relation to fundraising is interesting to me, because its on the forefront of my mind right now. Since we're about to roll some product out, we have a very clear idea of what the product will look like and where it's going. Of course, it needs to iterate based on user response/uptake, but that goes without saying. What's very clear to me, though, is that the iteration and eventual inflection point for the service really depends on additional resources--a kick-ass user experience person and an operational/biz dev person. These would clearly be our first hires after any kind of a financing, because the product not only depends on seamlessly integrating several complimentary career applications, but also on syndicating our services out to other communities and groups.
So the big question is, why wait? (Especially if we've identified prospects for these roles, which we have.)
Right now, there's two scenarios:
1) Launch, iterate with existing team, catch lots of falling knives and try and power our way forward to some arbitrary milestone that brings the term sheets pouring in, not that we or the VC's are even 100% sure what that is. Then, spend time trying to fill out team.
2) Try and raise a couple million sooner rather than later, since we can very definitely say "This is the product and the near future of the product you are investing in." We make our hires and hit the ground running, and make a much bigger impact in shorter order.
Option #1 plus a nice hockey stick might bring a higher valuation... but is that really what we should be optimizing for? Outside of raising ridiculous amounts of money at ridiculous valuations, have you ever heard an entrepreneur attribute their ultimate success to a million or so here and there on interim valuations? On the VC side, have you ever heard a VC say, "The success of our fund has really depended on waiting another month or so to see more traction on deals and teams we liked"?
The worst thing that could happen is that we come out, inspire potential partners and employees, and we're unable to take advantage of them because we don't have the resources. Raising money takes time, focus... Raising at the moment your product gets really good and people finally get it is probably the worst thing you can do, because then you won't have your ducks in a row for when opportunities knock. The trick is finding support from folks who see where you are going with something and believe that you have the passion and ability to get it there, even before its a sure thing.
Going to California: ERE Expo in San Diego until Wednesday, Bay Area Thursday to Monday
I'm headed out to the ERE Expo in San Diego--I got a very exciting invitation to be a part of their startup panel along with Benjamin Yoskovitz (Standout Jobs), Clint Heiden (VisualCV), and Dan Arkind (JobScore). What's so cool about our panel is that we all represent different aspects of the job process...
You will be able to discover a career on Path 101, present yourself well with a Visual CV, engage with a company and apply through Standout Jobs and then hopefully make your way through the company's recruiting process, which might be managed by JobScore. Nice!
Since I was out there anyway, it was startup cashflow-friendly to swing by the Bay Area and stay with friends. Given the success of our first "Entrepreneurship Listening Tour" we decided to get in touch with a bunch of experienced people to get some feedback and to get on the Bay Area VC radar for later this year.
We're pretty booked during our days, but we'd love to catch up with and meet a lot of people. On Thursday afternoon, we'll be co-working out of Citizen Space, and then heading out later to 21st Amendment. Come work with us (or eat/drink with us)! Tell us you're coming out that night here!
If there's anyone you really think we should meet--smart VC's, entrepreneurs, developers, please let us know. E-mail us at us@path101.com or follow us on Twitter (@ceonyc and @alexlines).
Are you following the Path 101 blog?
Because if you are, you saw the first drafts of the look and feel of our real front end design.
And some ideas around our logo.
And, if that doesn't entertain you enough, the world's most boring web TV: Our live webcam.
Blogged with Flock
The technical aspects of the Path 101 build (or, "Yeah... um... what Alex said")
"Our architecture is also based on a reliable template - lightweight caching reverse proxys in front, proxying to the heavier app servers, which in turn are driven by the databases. We will aim for a shared-nothing architecture - decouple everything, push the state out to the client, compress, minify, and cache the static content, eventually pushing it out to a CDN."Painting the bike shed - machine text
And people thought I was snarky... wait until you read his...
Blogged with Flock
Thoughts on Presenting at the MIT VC Conference Showcase
I'm sitting in the MIT VC Conference right now, listening to Diane Greene of VMWare, thinking about the conference, presenting last night, and the Boston scene.
First off, the showcase was really great. I should have blogged it here, but if you were following my Twitter messages, you heard that I livecasted the booth using UStream.tv. I have to say, I was really amazed at UStream. I plugged my camera in (first without drivers, which was my bad) and then the Flash linked up with my camera. One click and I was broadcasting live to the web. The coolest part was that I could embed the video player and the chat box anywhere I wanted.
I'd never really checked out any of the Justin.tv stuff or Chris Pirillo's chats, but I got excited about this. We may employ some of this at Path 101 to further open up our anti-stealth.
Anyway... getting back to the conference itself. People had told me that there really aren't that many "community" events in Boston, and that, which Boston has the VC money, the big institutions like MIT, that the community stuff is a bit lacking. While I met a lot of great people here last night, I was really surprised there wasn't even more people. I think of it as the equivalent to the ITP show and that gets packed every year. In fact, there seems to be more people at the actual conference today, which you had to pay to get in. How come? Certainly it wasn't the fault of the organizers. They picked a great spot and people knew about the conference. Why weren't more entrepreneurs and VCs at the Showcase? Students? Or just people from the community? I feel like it's the kind of thing more people should have been at... like some swarm from a usergroup or something. There were a lot of great companies there. If anyone is involved with any great Boston-area tech community groups, let me know! I'll repost them!
When I first got there, I have to admit, I was a bit intimidated. I'm afraid my arts and crafts skills aren't what they used to be when I was in kindergarten, and I miscaculated the size of the boards compared to the size of my printouts. I printed out twice as many slides about what we did and who we were and they didn't make the board.
Plus, other people had much more impressive displays.... clearly, they spent a lot more money at Kinko's than I did. I was sort of afraid that I wasn't quite ready for primetime, but once things got going, it was really great. People were really excited about what we were doing, and I got to meet some people in person that I'd only known virtually, like Alexa DuPont and Hilary Mason.
There were some visitors from companies in the employment space who we might be able to work with in the future, too.
Most importantly, though... were the conversations with students. I had some great conversations with MBA students from interesting backgrounds trying to figure out what they wanted to do who really took the concept.
So what did we show anyway? Well, we're in development right now and right in the middle of working on design. I didn't really want to have our contract UX person spend resources on demoware that wouldn't move us forward, so I spent some late nights recently pushing my poor graphic design skills to the limit to come up with screenshots. So, if you promise not to poke too much fun, and pay more attention to what's going on in these pages than the fonts, colors, placement, clutter, you can see the screenshots here on the Path 101 blog here.
Blogged with Flock
Updated presentation for Path 101
I've been trying to come up with an over presentation that I could just leave on the Path 101 site and forget about--so people who randomly stumbled in could get a better sense of what we were up to. I tried Google Docs, but I really wasn't happy that I couldn't do some kind of animation and walkthrough. Then again, I really don't like adding my voice to these things, even though people seem to like it. So I created an animated presentation on Powerpoint, and used Jing (along with its 5 min limit), to capture it. It exports a Flash SWF, which is now sitting on screencast. I have a few issues with the result, but I don't think it's that bad.
- It might be a little too fast. I'm not sure, because I've seen the presentation a million times. I prob should have combined the team slides into one and I'm sure there's one other slide I can can.
- I really, really wanted to embed it smaller somewhere on the site. I can't for the life of me figure out how to make the Flash smaller. I can make the embed smaller, that's easy, but to squeeze the actual Flash into a smaller embed... no idea.
Here's what I wound up with... any suggestions? Converting to video would have solved that, but I couldn't find a good conversion tool that converted at a good resolution. UPDATE: I used Slideshare at the suggestion of others and it came out MUCH BETTER!! - If I convert it to video, perhaps I'll give in and add a voice track... but it takes a long time to speak through.. and I want to keep it at 5.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: path101, presentations, flash, ppt
I guess if you're being anti-stealth, you can't win 'em all
Perhaps I'm being too defensive here, but I can't help but feel the need to respond to a recent post I sawon InsideChatter. I first came upon InsideChatter when Donna ripped on Nick O'Neill's post on LinkedIn vs. Facebook.
Aren't most blogs indistinguishable and unreliable? I mean, I guess mine's pretty special because I like kayaking (j/k) but other than that, it's no better or worse than anything else out there. There aren't very many great blogs out there, except maybe danah, Scott Adams, or Marc Andreessen. Eric's and Fred's blogs are pretty good, too... but I'd be careful saying that other people's blogs are indistinguishable. I think we're all lucky to have any readers at all, but I digress.
What she failed to see was that amid all the Facebook ra-ra! from Nick, which I actually disagreed with, because I do think there's a point to a network for each of my different selves, was a really good point... If Facebook can present several faces of you to different people, then it's a real challenge to any social network out there, not just LinkedIn. Dismissing that point out of hand may prove to be the death knell for many networks.
Today, she wrote about Path 101, which is to be expected of course. I mean, come on, did we honestly expect we wouldn't get negative feedback to putting ourselves out there so early? I would have written a response in the comments to her post about us, but she doesn't allow comments.
First, Donna did a nice job of catching my slip up in saying that it was "top 10" within the post. Nice job.. I started out with ten, but didn't really feel like all ten were strong, so I shed a few, and forgot to re-edit. I fixed that. Thanks!
I think if you check the overview, you'll see that there isn't much of our business that has anything to do with LinkedIn. All we were trying to do is not add in features that already exist elsewhere and cause users to sign up for yet another social network. Connecting professionals isn't our business. That's theirs. We just figured it makes sense to be discovering careers and connecting to professionals in an integrated way, that's all...a nice feature. If we just have to create links to say, "Go here and create a LinkedIn account while you're discovering careers on our site, you'll thank us for it", we'll do that, but it seems silly.
Path 101 on its “status,” as of October 11: “NO assets, NO revenues, a two day old empty checking account…and now, back to actually building this service.”"
Just to update, we'll have money in our checking account by the end of the week, from Fred Wilson (who leaked his own involvement before we were even ready!) and others. As for what else we can do today, that's not what this post was about, mostly because the LinkedIn API isn't ready today either. If we're building the service TODAY, does it make sense to speak up when we're done, or when we actually have time to integrate with their proposed API based on our proposed vision? This is something that happens in the startup world all the time. Someone plans on building something and they talk to others in the same space to get a sense of how they could work together in the future. It's pretty commonplace.
This post also seems to imply that if you're friends or family with someone, they don't belong in your LinkedIn network.
Yo, did you say my family is not professional?? Oh, snap! :) Actually, I got my first job in the Waterhouse Securities mailroom through my older (by 17 years) brother, who was their Regional Vice President of the whole 30+ office Midwest branch at the time... and his network would probably be highly accretive to LinkedIn. Perhaps if there was an easier way for his techie little brother to show him the ropes on it, they'd benefit.
But you're the expert on LinkedIn, right? You and your.. um...wait... 14 connections??? Are you serious? I was assuming I'd get ripped apart by someone who is even a more passionate user of the service than I am. (See my "Getting Started with LinkedIn" post.) Don't get me wrong, I love a good back and forth about what that service needs or doesn't need, but I was assuming it would come from someone who uses it a little more.
Ok, so maybe it was better off that there are no comments on InsideChatter, because I had more to say and it wouldn't have fit.
We did get some good positive comments, too. Its nice to know that others seem to be behind what we're doing:
Comments from Fred's post
I would agree that blogging during the start-up phase is an excellent idea. It let's a new company establish credibility before the product is ready, bounce ideas of potential customers and let's other stakeholders participate in the growth of the organization. Nicely done!" - Voices.com CEO "it sounds pretty cool what they are doing" - Aruni
Comments on our post
"Congratulations. Brilliant! Simply brilliant! Always expected big things of you, Charlie. Looks like sooner rather than later. Also, terrific (and generous) idea to blog start up. Should be a great help to budding entrepreneurs of all stripes. Best of luck to you and your partner." - Marta Mooney (Professor at Fordham's Graduate School of Business for 30+ years)
Thanks to all who've been really supportive and even those who haven't! I'll definitely be adding Donna's blog to my blogroll to get her feedback in the future... because just listening to praise is never a good idea.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: linkedinpath101
More Path 101 Uber Anti-Stealth
Two bits of anti-stealth today... now that we're out of our apartments for the first full week and living within the friendly confines of Return Path, we're feeling pretty psyched about our ideas. We'd love to share them with you, and so we're holding an open product feedback and brainstorming session this Thursday night at CRESA's offices in midtown. It will take place at 6:30 and probably run until 8:30. Details and link to RSVP here.
Also, we diced to open up our Monday morning meeting notes to the public, so you can further track our profess. You can see how we're diving up the work, our progress, etc.
Risk is a Function of Perception and Approach
A lot of people think starting your own company is a risky proposition. Sounds like it, right? Oooh... could "blow up". Sounds dangerous. Images of shrapnel.
Maybe I'm naive and oblivious... but I'm really not that worried, like, at all.
I'm working on Path 101 fulltime and the only income I get now is from my adjunct teaching at Fordham, which is sort of like my checking account's equivalent of flapping its arms as it falls off a cliff. Yet, somehow, I know it's all going to work out. I'm confident we'll get our angel round raised... people are lining up now... but on the chance we don't get all of it, we'll make do with what we have. We'll take on some consulting if we have to. It's not ideal, but there's a fallback plan, and frankly, the fallback plans aren't so bad.
Maybe I'll need to start liquidating to fund this. I already know... first it's the 401k, than the apartment, and then the car. Yes, the car is the last to go. Not ideal, but at least I've faced the reality of the situation. I can deal with it.
And if this whole thing doesn't work out... if we can't get something compelling built or can't grow the user base or can't monetize, and we have to close up shop. Then what? I'll be upset, no doubt, and disappointed, but... I'll survive to die another day. I'll just get a job somewhere. I believe I'm employable and have no fear that I'll wind up homeless on the street.
So what's really the big risk? I mean, even in the worst case scenario, I'll learn something... I'll learn a lot, actually. It will build character and I'll meet a lot of great people along the way... and build a great relationship with Alex, too (or kill each other... either way).
Frankly, if you think about what I could gain or lose by taking this on vs. not taking it on, I think I've got a hell of a lot more to lose by not doing it.