quinta-feira, 27 de outubro de 2011

So it is...

I have seen a very exciting lecture some months ago from a consultant devoted to Innovation from Chile that said something that has changed me forever. He told a story about a friend of him who went to US and got to meet some of the guys from MIT. He asked him: "And so man are them really that much better than us?" His friend answered: "Actually not. They are really good. But as good as them, there are many others here in Chile. But something that they have different is that, they have better dreams." It really changed my life. 

So, that's it. We're just about to launch a project that took a lot of my time in the past year, but much more than a simple project, it's something that made me dream again. And God... how much dreams are important! And trying to follow what I've learning from this story, it is a BIG dream.

If we try to put it in perspective, the big project was pretty much about: having an idea, checking if it was good enough, get a lot of rejections/misunderstandings, start to build up a plan to start up the idea, check the resources I would need to put it together, convince (a lot of ) people that it was a good idea, get a lot of rejections, raise money, need more money, (did I mention rejection?), get a lot of great people on board, get feedbacks constantly, and above all: coordinate the construction of the project. It's a portal...

And there are many things nice about this project. I got to read more about stuff related to startups, tech and other stuff which, by the way, I am passionate about. I had the chance to connect to people that are willing to do related things; I had the chance to see similar ideas coming up recently, etc. It was awesome and exhausting.

One of the readings I loved was "The art of the Start" - thanks Gustavo Debs - and he says something so real: while creating something, make sure you're doing something that will improve people's life. That is going to make something new or better for them. And that's pretty much my dreams with UnaVox.

We always struggled coordinating our opinions. That's funny because, with internet it improved a lot. There are so many more market niches now, simply because you can find more people that somehow are connected to that topic, brand, product, whatever. But... those opinions are mostly spread all over internet and our idea was basically to get it all together in one place where everyone can see and agree or disagree with it. It seems like a pretty simple idea. And as many others, took us a lot of work.

And now we're done. About to launch. And from now on everything can happen. Of course, as an entrepreneur and leader of this project, I am always hoping for the great things to happen: a lot of people will promote, people will find it really interesting, some freaking important guys will like it and tweet about it, it will become popular and someone will be writing about it. Well, and there are so many other bad paths to go... no one gets it, no one likes it, we simply won't reach the right people, people will get bored.

Independently of what is going to happen from now on, it's a huge step for my life. Mainly because it's being a project I am waiting for, for a long time already. If you're an anxious person (I bet you are! haha) you can't imagine what it is to be handling a project that supposed to be aired 6 months ago. It's also a big step because, in this period, I decided to do not have many other projects. Actually, I even sold my other website to be 100% focused on this. More than that, it's being like a background application running on my brain all the time. Now at least, this application will come to the front of my screen! :)