We were randomly emailed by one Michal Sadowski, an entrepreneur from Poland. The video he sent us is a sort of MTV-esque homage to the swirl of experiences that might happen to a startup founder were they to compress their experience into a fast-paced music video, shot in the first person. It’s pretty creative, we’ll give him that.
Not many people have managed to compress all the upsides to being a successful startup into a minute video which might be described as a somewhat less hedonistic version of a Prodigy video.
Unfortunately, that’s where the video – which is fun if you suspend disbelief for a moment – departs from reality. For in this video there clearly is no downside to startups, and nor, apparently, a hell of a lot of work.
Why did he make it? He says he wanted to “promote entrepreneurship and to inspire startup founders around the world.” Ooook….
Yes, Michal, it’s nice that it’s a “tribute to people (i.e. Gary V, DHH, Leo Laporte) and organizations/brands (i.e. Techcrunch, Inc, Entrepreneur, Startup Weekend) that gave me inspiration to become entrepreneur.” Well alright fella, we’ll take the praise.
And at least in the video’s video description he’s linked to all the presentations featured in the video. In other words, there may actually be some learning to be had behind this roller-coaster of a ride.
He admits, the video “leaves out the dark sides of being entrepreneur, but again: the main goal was to encourage people to create their own business.” A worthy cause it is not?
And ok, he admits “I was also hoping it will allow me to get “noticed” by people outside Poland.” That worked.
Sadowski claims the story of his startup – Brand24 a SaaS tool for real-time social media monitoring and analytics is “somewhat similar” to the one in the video, and that the company is booking annual revenues put to $1 million – “apart from Lamborghini part”.
Well fair enough. He succeeded in getting our attention.
But let’s make sure we have a reality check here.
The video clearly needs a health warning, because it does not include:
• Any other cofounders
• Your product crashing
• Your demo pitch going wrong
• Getting rejected by an investor and ejected by security
• NOT taking a vacation for about 2 years
• Not having enough time for hanging out with the opposite sex
• Everyone thinking you’re a douche for buying a sports car right after getting funding
• Getting sued by your investors for blowing the cash *on a car*