Back in November I posted that Jay-Z’s song Empire State of Mind made me want to move to New York. Truth be told, we seriously considered moving to NYC but opted for San Francisco instead for reasons I wont go into…because Grasshoper sort of sums it up hilariously.

Now I’m in the blogosphere, Now I’m in the twitterverse
Fans get so immersed, But I’m a nerd forever
I’m the new Zuckerberg, And since my website
I been cookin’ dough like a chef servin’ killa-bytes
Used to be the basement, Back at my mom’s place
Buildin’ web traffic so that we could sell an ad space
Make way for the, One man businesses
Bail outs finished with, White collar criminals
New sega genesis, Entrepreneur time
Makin big plans, To dominate the online
Yeah, I’m on YouTube, this is one man
Sharin’ google revenue, With songs on my webcam
Science is the new art, Databases day to day
Geeks spreadin’ sheet smarts, Hustle, make the data pay
I could be in Valleywag plus Geekologie

– See the rest from the creators Pantless Knights

If you’re a even just a little geeky or entrepreneurial you’ll also want to catch Grasshoperlabs.com

Over the New Year holiday, some friends and I were talking about iPhone apps while we prowled around the Mission. It seems a lot of people see the app store as brimming with opportunity…just come up with a unique idea, code it up and chuck it over the fence and poof a nice little revenue stream. Honestly, I’ve never been all that interested in iPhone apps…sure, I have my utility apps, waiting in line apps, WTF is this apps and such but to date I think I’ve only paid for 2 (ESPN Radio – WASTE of $ and Tweetie – indispensable). But when it comes to actually building something, I’ve never been interested in getting involved. What’s that cliche, “never say never“?

Gutters, Neglect and Beer

After a few too many drinks and feverishly jockeying for Gowalla check-ins at the venues we were trolling, I awoke the next morning with a wicked…umm…idea. Later that day, over more drinks and Gowalla check-ins, I mentioned to partners in crime that based on the previous days discussion and late night escapades, I had a fun idea for an iPhone app. I’m not much of a ‘creative’ person in a traditional brushes and paints sorta way but I love creative brainstorms when it comes to cooking up applications and business ideas. But coming up with a good idea isn’t as difficult as figuring out which ones to invest time and energy into, so after a few minutes of batting it around with my crew it fell into the gutter, more a victim of neglect and beer than anything else.

In the days that followed, I busied myself with jump starting the new year but one morning last week over coffee the same app idea bobbed to the surface. “What if…?” On any given day asking myself this question typically leads to mental gymnastics in order to figure out whether the idea has merit.  This idea was no different. I slid in front of my computer, disconnected the internet connection and started piecing together this iPhone app. After 35 minutes (I’m big into time boxing) I realized I had hit on something that was inherently simple to a user yet had potential to generate multiple revenue streams. Understandably, there were an infinite number of influential real world variables that could topple my pretty little model but conceptually it had some teeth to it which meant it was time to phone a friend.

Shout Outs & Phone a Friend

The more I thought about the app, the more I realized that while I thought it was a good idea, I didn’t really feel like learning iPhone development just to develop it, so instead I tweeted. At that point, I would have gladly collaborated on it with someone or given them the whole thing to run with…it was and is a solid idea but I wasn’t exactly passionate about building it from scratch. Unsurprisingly, my random tweet didn’t gain much traction, then again, I didn’t really expect it would but @BonitaSmokeShop did pass it along (check out their cigars here).

Nonetheless, after my shout out fell on deaf ears, I decided to phone a friend. First, I sense checked the idea with a couple friends that have varying non-technical-business and iPhone experiences. Their responses were similar to mine, “sounds like it would be fun”. They also took pop shots at the cobbled together revenue streams but generally liked the idea enough to strongly point out that if I were to build it, I most certainly should not give it away away for free. My second move, was to reach out to a friend that’s building an app that uses some of the same technical elements and would be able to run with it or pass it along. He was intrigued and agreed to bait a few people to get a feel for it’s potential. A day later, I had an answer…

There are two types of motorcyclists, those who have been down and those who are going down.

I heard this saying repeatedly after buying my third bike, a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Classic and I count myself fortunate for never having felt the unforgiving impact of pavement (close only counts with hand grenades and boccie ball).  Today, I wondered aloud to my partner in crime, Roz, whether being a motorcyclist is similar to being an entrepreneur. It was pretty easy to come up with all sorts of similarities; freedom, responsibility, risk, protection, speed, strategy, navigation, balance, vision, execution. Off we went to do a little research…

Stop the presses…statistically motorcyclists are NOTHING like entrepreneurs! Mainly because in 2007 over 5,000 people died in motorcycle accidents and I can’t recall the last time I heard of an entrepreneur dieing as a result of being an entrepreneur. Perhaps we had conjured up a poor comparison to begin with but after a bit of research the similarities were down right disturbing.

Statistics Leaving Bugs in My Teeth

1. Only 21 states have universal helmet laws requiring all riders to done lids
2. 31% of motorcycle fatalities are related to alcohol impairment, 27% of which were over the .08 blood alcohol content legal limit
3. $230.6 billion a year – impact on US health care system

Thinking that perhaps I was being a little too literal, I decided to see how many small businesses “go down” each year since my search for “entrepreneur+fatalities” wasn’t giving me much info. Sadly, those numbers aren’t much better;

1. Two-thirds of SMB’s survive at least two years – Translation: 33% go down
2. 44 percent survive at least four years – Translation: 56% go down
3. 31 percent survive at least seven years – Translation: 69% go down

On second thought, maybe our idea of comparing motorcyclists and entrepreneurs wasn’t as far off track as I originally thought. Granted, I couldn’t find an entrepreneur that died as a result of being an entrepreneur but entrepreneurs typically have a significant personal investment in a business, so for argument sake we could say that an entrepreneur ‘is the business’ and vice versa. The track record for motorcyclists and entrepreneurs may not align as nicely as we might have liked but we managed to draw a couple comparisons worth mentioning.

Motorcyclists & Entrepreneurs Take Heed

1. Enjoy the freedom of the ride and take responsibility for your actions
2. Accept the risk while getting as much protection as possible without limiting your ability to operate
3. Speed is crucial but fast is not always better, you have to have a strategy
4. Sharpen your navigation skills and learn to balance distractions
5. Have a vision of where you want to go and execute on it

Lingering questions: How can we reduce the increasing fatality rate of motorcyclists? Likewise, can the number of businesses/entrepreneurs going down be remedied?