Current Status Of Entrepreneurial Experiments (Archaeopteryx Goes To Y Combinator? And Don't Read This If You Have Epilepsy)

As ongoing readers may have noticed, I've run into a bit of a snag with my entrepreneurial experiments. The snag is twofold: cash flow, and writer's block. First, my recent video on weight loss tanked, making very little money; next, my attempt at a class on AI and machine learning failed right after. Over the past few days, I've been talking about creating and releasing a new video on how to handle office politics, but when I sat down to work on it, I found myself completely out of ideas. Pushing myself to work on it anyway, I somehow ended up with a fascinating presentation about postmodern art, comic books, anthropology, comparative religion, and Boba Fett, which I do hope to release here on my blog, but which I haven't figured out any way to monetize. (I also haven't been able to figure out how I even got from politics to postmodernism in the first place, but that's another story.)



SO. I've signed up for a straightforward contract locally, which looks like a terrible defeat, if this is the end of my entrepreneurial experiments, or which looks like a relatively painless snag, if this is the middle of my entrepreneurial experiments. For obvious reasons, I'm choosing to take the long view. At this contract, it appears I'll be writing JavaScript for a fashion e-commerce site in downtown Los Angeles, not far from the fashion district. The company appears to be staffed with both the standard assortment of geeks and an unusual abundance of fashionably dressed young women.


ok, maybe not this young, but finding images on ffffound can be a tiresome pain, so I went with the first one that worked

Two related announcements.

First, I'm going to do something crazy for my October entrepreneurial experiment. I'm going to submit an application to Y Combinator. I'm looking for co-conspirators. If you're interested, you should ping me privately, i.e., via e-mail. You should be somebody I know personally, with skillz and the ability to commit to a project, if one happens. You should also realize that I have several areas of philosophical disagreement with the VC world, so I'm mostly just submitting this application for the hell of it. You can download the application I've written so far right here. Keep in mind that the final submission will of course be edited and revised. Also keep in mind that the last time I recruited people for a project via my blog, I got more e-mails than I could even track. If I'm slow in responding, it won't be anything personal.



Second, I'm putting all my products on sale tomorrow afternoon. My videos on screencasting, internet marketing, programmer careers, and time management, as well as my excellent mp3s on hypnosis and visualization. Stay tuned for the sale, because the prices are going to be generous. To put it another way, this shit is going to be priced to move.



Update: I've heard from at least one epileptic who read this without any problems. Anecdotal Evidence 1, Superstitious Fears Of Pokemon Effect 0.