Being Scrappy

I'm sitting here at the Virgin America terminal at 2:01 AM writing this blog.  Virgin's only $29 flight is at 6AM and no one loves me enough to drive me 50 miles to the airport at 4:30AM.  I am definitely not spending $16/day to park my car, so a buddy of mine drove me to the airport at night.  Here I am, sitting on the same bench as a homeless looking guy and listening to another dude vacuum the whole establishment.  Now they're buffing the floors.  I'm mentioning this because I thought I was being scrappy, but it's probably just mostly pathetic..

Anyway, much has been said about entrepreneurs and being scrappy.  One of my favorites is Paul Graham's essays about being relentlessly resourceful http://paulgraham.com/relres.html.  I totally agree that scrappy entrepreneurs are usually more successful than their counterparts, since they know how to get a lot out of very little.  What I don't understand is why most people aren't scrappy.  It just seems so intuitive to fight and twist and claw to think of every possible way to survive when you're backed into a corner.  Do 'non-scrappy' entrepreneurs just bend over and take it?

Daishin didn't know photoshop, but he learned it.  He didn't know CSS either, but he learned it.  I didn't know one thing about jQuery, but I knew I had to figure it out.  I've always hated sysadmin work, but if there's no one else to configure apache, guess who has to do it?  I can't stand founders who outsource ALL their technical work to someone else and just work on the 'business'.  There are definitely some exceptions, but why spend thousands per month on outsourced development to deplete your capital and shorten your runway?  If you're in a technical startup, then act like a technician and read some tutorials and start coding.  Your 'business' vision will probably change anyway.

And what's up with people needing $9 million in revenues to be profitable?? We just hosted our first few meals as a private alpha test of our website, and we were joking that we were already profitable because everyone that came over paid $2!  When you're being scrappy and the two of you are the only developers, business people, accountants, lawyers, and marketers, being profitable can mean earning as little as $16 dollars!!

So there you have it.  GrubWithUs is cash flow positive!

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