If You Don't Know Who Your Customer

At Imvu, The Cost Of Customer Acquisition Through Our Five-dollar-a-day Adwords Campaign Was Less Than Twenty-five Cents. Our Revenue From Those Same Customers Was More Than A Dollar.

The Biggest Start-up Successes - From Henry Ford To Bill Gates To Mark Zuckerberg - Were Pioneered By People From Solidly Middle-class Backgrounds. These Founders Were Not Wealthy When They Began. They Were Hungry For Success, But Knew They Had A Solid Support System To Fall Back On If They Failed.

There Is No Greater Country On Earth For Entrepreneurship Than America. In Every Category, From The High-tech World Of Silicon Valley, Where I Live, To University R&d Labs, To Countless Main Street Small Business Owners, Americans Are Taking Risks, Embracing New Ideas And - Most Importantly - Creating Jobs.

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.

If Your Goal Is To Make Money, Becoming An Entrepreneur Is A Sucker's Bet. Sure, Some Entrepreneurs Make A Lot Of Money, But If You Calculate The Amount Of Stress-inducing Work And Time It Takes And Multiply That By The Low Likelihood Of Success And Eventual Payoff, It Is Not A Great Way To Get Rich.