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08/29/12 | Uncategorized

A Founder's Tale: The Kickstarter Kraze

Writer’s Bloq just launched a Kickstarter campaign introducing themselves to the world. (Golden quills if you support!) Here’s a piece on what the experience has been like far for the Founder.

By Nayia Moysidis (Founder, Writer’s Bloq)

Every time you support, I tear up. I know I’m not supposed to say that. Founders shouldn’t show a soft side. Because we’ve been told that showing emotion is equivalent to being weak. That admitting to feeling pain is a shade of cowardice. I disagree.

We’re not supposed to tell you that business is personal, to share the secret we all know is true: we care. If we didn’t care – obsessively so – we wouldn’t be spending every waking moment and rare sleeping moments researching and thinking and perfecting a product that’s invisible to a judgmental world.

For a long time, it’s just you and the problem. And then, it’s you, the problem, and the solution you birthed, and it’s tremendously difficult to see anything else from that point on.

During the first night of our Kickstarter campaign, I didn’t sleep. On the second night, I napped for 15 minutes. On the third, I knocked out with my day clothes on, my contacts still in, my laptop on my chest. That’s how close I am to Writer’s Bloq. Even after the 20-hour days, the 7-day weeks, with the late nights transitioning into the dawn, it’s there, on me, in me. Because it’s not work. It’s personal.

When you spend every waking and rare sleeping moments working on something, you care. You do it because you care. You feel elation at the smallest successes and desperation at the inevitable failures. This is the life of a founder. We’re manning an enormous hot air balloon, only it’s not running on hot air.

It’s running on emotion. Our balloon inflates and deflates at your touch. We’re not supposed to say it, but I will. Because if you don’t hear it, you’ll never know. You won’t know that what you do matters. That your reaction is a big deal. That you can actually make a difference.

Showing emotion is one of the hardest things in the world, and creating change is another. Those who attempt both are brave. They are taking a risk on the riskiest thing: faith. It’s the grown-up equivalent to a fairy tale.

But thinking about creating change is not the same as creating it. So next time you see something and think I should do something to help, do it.

Create a solution, spread someone else’s, contribute your time, your effort, your money, your faith to one or two or many. And next time you see a hot air balloon, you can smile, and know it’s running on you.

Editor’s note: Got a question for our guest blogger? Leave a message in the comments below.

About the guest blogger: Nayia Moysidis is the Founder of Writer’s Bloq, a literary collective that helps great writers get discovered. Nayia graduated from Columbia’s Creative Writing program in May 2011. During her years at Columbia, she played Division I soccer, explored six continents, and held positions at Film London, VISA, SportsMark, and Simon & Schuster. She has been published in Women 2.0, The Levo League, The Daily Muse, The Huffington Post and Forbes. Follow her on Twitter at @NAYIAisms.

Anne-Gail Moreland

Anne-Gail Moreland

Anne-Gail Moreland, an intern with Women 2.0, was on the StartupBus. She studies neuroscience at Mount Holyoke College, where she is trying to merge a passion for tech and the brain into a new wave of cognition-based technology

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