If you ever meet someone who has started their own business, please
remember what I'm about to tell you.

Starting a business is hard.
Creating something significant from nothing is one of the hardest
things a individual will ever do. A entrepreneur is like a novelist.
Even after the book is published the author never feels its 100%
perfect. In every single page of her novel is a piece of the authors
soul and mind. A business created by a human is as much a part of that
person as a novel is to its author and it requires overcoming a lot of
self doubt and frustration to create a significant business. A
dedicated entrepreneur will take any criticism of their business
seriously, regardless of how they respond on the outside. So if you
have feedback, give it to a entrepreneur like you would give it to a
artist.

Entrepreneurs care about more than money.
A business has to make money to survive, it has to earn a profit to
live. This is fundamental and a business that does not do these things
isn't really a business. But too often people think that entrepreneurs
only care about making money and that is the furthest thing from
reality. Think of it this way, people need food to live, the more
successful you become the better the food gets. That's a great bonus
to success. But people need more than food to be satisfied. After all,
what would life be like if it was all about food? Implying to a
entrepreneur that he only cares about money is a sign of ignorance on
your part. If you really want to win them over, ask them what about
their business are they most proud of.

Entrepreneurs have dramatically different life experiences than you.
Despite growing up in a rough neighborhood I've never really been to a
war zone, I don't know what it's like to have someone trying to kill
me on a daily basis. And despite loving war movies, I would never want
to be in a real one and I have no idea how it would feel to have been
in one.

But I've had partners try to kill me in business. I've had one
particular partner offer my employees large salaries and successfully
recruit them away. I've had a employee sabotage operations. I've had
people close to me start competing businesses, I once lived in a
basement with a single window that the neighborhood dog pissed on
daily when being walked, just to save money to fund my company. The
pissing dog part isn't really about entrepreneurship, but it is about
sacrifice and a lot of suffering. Unless these things have also
happened to you, you don't really know how it feels to build a business.

The semi-entrepreneur
I've met people who call themselves entrepreneurs who are really
project managers. They make little projects that are cute and fun but
they don't actually sacrifice anything. They never fully commit. To me
this is like calling yourself a war vet simply because you own a gun.
If you want to be a entrepreneur, remember you don't know shit until
you have survived a near death experience. If you have the luck of
working with a successful entrepreneur like I did when I worked with
Martin Varsavsky, its important to remember that behind that exterior
of professionalism are the scars of war. Ask a successful entrepreneur
about their war scars, they are always great stories after the fact. A
semi-entrepreneur doesn't have any, but if they stick with it long
enough, they will.

Of course, don't take my word for it. Listen to this story from the founders of SliceHost http://37signals.com/founderstories/slicehost

Occurred in 1990 when EPMD filmed a video in the park where I played
little league baseball. I'm only in the video for a second at 2:57 but
I was dancing real hard and earned every millisecond of that airtime!
Actually, I think this was my only music video appearance. I should
have had a agent.

It's like buying new clothes for the first day of school only to have
school cancelled due to a snow storm.

It's like wearing braces forever.

It's like waiting in line for a popular club...forever.

It's like never asking the girl/guy you love out on a date.

It's like never finishing any book that you read.

It's like doing Karate, Judo, Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Jiu Jitsu and
never going beyond a white belt.

Launching is the start, without putting your product in front of
people you never progress to the points that actually matter.
Launching is the most important feature. Do it.

本日は私イジョビ・ヌウェアが7月末より連載を開始致しましたウィークリー・コラムを皆様にご紹介致します。このコラムは、「ITビジネス最前線」と題し、アメリカのテクノロジービジネスの動向やセキュリティーについて論じるもので、フジサンケイビジネスアイ紙上及びサンケイビズのウェブサイト上に毎週月曜日に掲載されています。
これまでのトピックを簡単にご紹介いたします。

第1回(7月25日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/110725/bsk1107250502000-n1.htm
「クオラ」は「グーグル」に勝てる？：実名制Q&Aサイトのクオラには、開設当初からテクノロジー界の著名人が集い、ユーザーも投資も流れ込んでいた。しかし、クオラに彼らを繋ぎとめておく魅力と収入源はあるのだろうか、分析する。

第2回(8月1日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/macro/news/110801/mcb1108010503009-n1.htm
旅人に空き部屋提供しませんか？：ネット上で部屋やスペースを貸し借りするコミュニティー制のオンライン市場エア・ビーアンドビー(Airbnb)を紹介する。ユニークな新しい旅のあり方を提案し、使い勝手の良さと透明性でアピールするサービスの魅力に迫る。

第3回(8月8日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/110808/bsk1108080500000-n1.htm
日本狙うサイバー諜報活動の脅威：世界中でハッキング攻撃が激化しているなか、日本政府及び日本企業の危機意識は十分といえるだろうか。今日本企業が狙われる理由を探る。

第4回(8月22日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/110822/bsj1108220503001-n1.htm
見えてきた グルーポンの秘密：IPOを申請したグルーポンに再び注目が集まっている。初期投資家の資金の引き揚げが目立ち、将来性や収益力に疑問が出始めている。その課題をIPO申請書類から読み解く。

第5回(8月29日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/110829/bsk1108290500000-n1.htm
機熟すジンガのIPOゲーム戦術：オンラインゲーム会社のジンガが7月にIPOを申請した。その狙いは何なのか。ジンガ・ジャパンの設立、ジンガとフェイスブックとの密接した関係など、急成長を続ける企業の勢いと課題を明らかにする。

第6回(9月5日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/macro/news/110905/mcb1109050503011-n1.htm
ドロップボックスが変えるクラウド：ドロップボックスの出現により、一般消費者にもクラウドの利用が爆発的に広がる兆しが見えてきた。複数のコンピュータ間のファイル移動・友人とのファイル共有が簡単にできるサービスの魅力とクラウドならではの注意点を紹介する。

第7回(9月19日) http://www.sankeibiz.jp/business/news/110919/bsk1109190502002-n1.htm
アップルの原動力は潤沢な資金：投資家への配当をすべきだとの声もある中、アップルは現金の抱え込みを続けている。彼らの成功戦略と資金の用途を分析し、ジョブズ後のアップルの展開を予想する。

The reality is, all governments hack. Sometimes they hack companies,
sometimes individuals but more often they hack other governments. Been
happening for a long time. China is in the news, but I guess Russia
and the USA are much more active in this space. What these articles
point out more than anything is the ease in which these targets fell
victim. All of the hacks were performed using "off the shelf" tools
that anyone with a little time and dedication could have done.

Other voices have recently started to speak up that make a much more
important point about the state of global security. What the general
public is starting to understand is something security auditors and
the security industry has known forever. Once an attacker is within
your corporate network, the game is over. Here is a article in
Business Week about how the fundamental concept of security
"protecting the network" is flawed and has miserably failed.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-08-04/hacker-armageddon-forces-symantec...

Expect a shift in the security industry because of the shifting trends
towards computing in the cloud. The start-ups of today, the Groupon's,
the Zynga's and the Twitter's of the world will be the future IBM's in
terms of size and reach and these companies are no longer rely on "the
network" infrastructure to conduct business. Everything is done in the
cloud. When your data is in the cloud, the focus of security becomes
keeping people out of your data as opposed to the network. That should
have been the focus of the security industry anyway.

But its very difficult for a security company to protect data. Often
times data protection requires changing the process of computer usage
that all users have become accustomed too. It becomes a cumbersome
interference into business as usual. The responsibility for ensuring
data protection should have been handled by Microsoft, but they failed
at that. So companies focused on trying to keep hackers away from
their Microsoft products. Its ultimately a losing battle because as
the articles have shown, it is just too easy to gain access to the
network.

And so now that the data is increasingly moving away from Microsoft
products and into cloud based services there should be a new crop of
security companies, companies like Duo Security
http://www.duosecurity.com/ that add additional password protection to
almost any web based service. Or Cloudflare
https://www.cloudflare.com/ that transparently blocks bad guys from
web services. But this is just the start.

Eventually to catch up to this new security reality security companies
like Symantec and McAfee will be forced to acquire these new crop of
cloud based security as a service providers. In the meantime I think
there is a lot of opportunity for innovative security folks to benefit
current gap in perception.

The story being sold today is that a new form of "Persistent Attacks"
by nation states is making the world insecure. See Jeff Carr;
http://jeffreycarr.blogspot.com/2011/08/with-shady-rat-mcafee-indicts-itself-...
But the truth is a little more like "It's really hard to keep hackers
off your network if they really want to get in. Microsoft and nearly
all products built on Microsoft are super easy to hack, so you are
screwed once a hacker is on your network." And another thing people
should be talking about is "We haven't really figured out how to
secure services that run in the cloud, so you are on your own for
protecting that stuff too."

Too bad China is taking the brunt of the blame for what is really a
structural problem with how companies approach security. It has the
danger of blinding people to the real problem.

"Even with this tragic event, the spirit of the Japanese really makes me want to return and live here."

Tatum only has 3 weeks scheduled to be with his wife while on leave from work "but this is an experience I will never forget, buy I'm hopeful things will work out when the airport opens again"

"as frustrating as it is, I hope not many people were hurt. I'm really impressed with the friendliness and professionalism of everyone in japan" said Hersey while searching for a Internet connection to update his family.