This section of the website is normally filled with stories of successful businesses or new, innovative products gearing up for launch. This isn't one of those stories. This is a story about how things didn't turn out as planned for a budding entrepreneur and his start-up, and how that should become seen as a good thing locally.
Greg Janusz started Chrome Monastery two years ago in Ann Arbor. He wrote out a detailed business plan about offering a video game development/operation company. He had big dreams of satisfying a profitable need in the gaming industry.
"In the gaming industry, customer support is really awful," Janusz says.
The computer programmer shopped around the idea for months, turning over rock after rock looking for the seven figures worth of funding it would take to get him started on the right foot. He soon came to the conclusion that the local venture capital community couldn't support his vision and then realized a few weeks ago that it just wasn't going to happen for now in this economy.
The idea is shelved for now, but that doesn't mean Janusz plans to tuck his tail between his legs and look for a coding job in a cubicle farm. He plans to try to start another company or remain his boss for the foreseeable future.
"It's a form of creative expression," Janusz says. "I have a lot of ideas I would like to see put into action."
In Midwestern culture, starting a new business is usually met with raised eyebrows and worried expressions. Entrepreneurs are often only given one shot to be successful, and if they are not there is significant social pressure for them to go back to what was once considered a "safe job" (like those on the production line).
That's not the social expectation on the coasts where entrepreneurship thrives. In fact, Silicon Valley habitues call it the 'punch card mentality.'
Terry Cross, one of Metro Detroit's most successful angel investors who got in on the ground floor with Google, says dropping this scarlet letter attitude is essential. He points out that Silicon Valley treats failure as a merit badge, proof that an entrepreneur has faced the darkside and gotten back up to fight again. The resumes of many successful SV entrepreneurs are filled with misfires and almost-rans.
"The whole concept of failure really needs to be reformatted and reconsidered in the public mind," Cross said in a recent Q&A with Concentrate's sister publication metromode. "If you go out and start a business today and you fail in that business you have to return and face your family with your hand out and your head down. If you fail in the Bay Area it happens everyday and doesn't mean a thing."
Janusz isn't happy with the way things turned out with Chrome Monastery, but he's not giving up on the start-up dream. As he puts it, "I'm still interested in investors." Anyone interested in respecting that merit badge can contact Ganusz at greg.janusz@chromemonastery.com.
Source: Greg Janusz, founder of Chrome Monastery and Terry Cross, serial angel investor
Writer: Jon Zemke
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