Here in Silicon Valley, I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often, innovators with good, safe, jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.

The goal of every startup experiment is to discover how to build a sustainable business around that vision.

At IMVU, we opened up our board meetings to the whole company.

In my first start-up, I had an initial advertising budget of $5 per day total. That would buy us 100 clicks per day. At $5 per day, marketing people scoffed and said that is too small to matter. But if you think about it, to an engineer, 100 real humans everyday giving your product a try means you can really start improving.

You know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don't see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom.

The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong.

By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers.