Screw You and Your Opportunity Costs Too
I love entrepreneurs, it's a fact. I spend most of my time and energy in pursuit of entrepreneurial efforts. As most any entrepreneur knows, getting your business off of the ground can be a grueling, intense process that leaves you sitting in bed at night worrying about the future.
One of the greatest challenges, in this regard, is funding your company and keeping it afloat long enough to see what happens. There have been a countless number of techiques developed to aid the bootstrapping business person. I've seen and implemented tons of them for myself, but this story just made me smile.
Meador, who is head of operations at ClearContext, and Deva Hazarika, the chief executive officer, have been playing poker in lieu of collecting paychecks for the past year while working to get their three-person company off the ground. After logging 50 or more hours a week at the office, each one spends another 10 to 15 hours, usually on weekends and evenings, at their favorite poker sites--mainly Partypoker.com, Ultimatebet.com and Pokerstars.
What's this have to do with opportunity costs? A lot actually. First, a definition: Opportunity costs are "The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action." Easy enough, right?
If you get a snooty MBA into your ranks, watch out because they'll be happy to remind you just how much they're sacrificing to work with you. Personally, I think everyone's sacrificing something when you come to the table, so it's really not worth mentioning. Or put another way, if you are already thinking about just how large the gap is, you might want to reconsider participating at all.
The other emotion, that I often see bundled with Opportunity Cost, is safety. Most people have worked a job and grown accustomed to the reliability of a paycheck. We're hesitant to take the leap. This can be seen with the leagues of consultants that enter from the edges only to jump ship when they've accrued a large, steady enough flow of projects. Starting your business is categorically more scary since it's usually a money pit with a blurry end in sight.
My advice, make sure you deal with the two separately and you're 100% on board on both fronts before venturing.