Aspergic Entrepreneur
Hello All,
My name is Ted Williams and I am a 40 year old aspergic entrepreneur. I have a penchant for starting high-tech companies, in particular working in my personal area of obsession: hypervideo. I have yet to start a *successful* high-tech company myself, and that is why I am here.
I suspect my AS has a lot to do with my lack of success to date. In the area of hypervideo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervideo) I have become what is likely one of the world's foremost authorities, and have more vision in the area then you can shake a stick at. However, success consistently eludes me.
I feel that I have some pronounced problems in certain areas. Most notable are difficulties reading between the lines and spotting hidden agendas, being far too trusting or others, and having difficulty cultivating business relationships. All of these have certainly held me back and caused me to fail in my 3 attempts to start my company.
Any and all suggestions and experiences are welcome. I know I have come to the right place to find the answers I need.
Thanks, and I look forward to talking with you all.
-Ted
Lateral Thinking
Hi Ted,
I have enjoyed reading your post and graemephillips below has hit the nail on the head, here I will go one hit further,
Gone are the days where we could call ourselves a master of all trades, new and younger social disciplines and sciences are carving their existence into all western societies, fueled by the universities and reliance on growth of specialists who are highly educated in a specific field of study, experience is the loser in the job race and key skills are no longer an added bonus but a requisite, this would leave people like you, me, and many others confused as to how this environment we knew so well changed when we but blinked for a second, outsourcing is not an option, it is increasingly becoming 'the choice', It sounds your learned areas are stimulating quite a lot of interest in the multimedia world and was wondering if you have considered marketing, or more specific a professional in market research, I have found in the past market researchers would be more than adequate to fill in the gaps of your venture and work with you through forward and future stages.
I wish all the best
Hadley
It's difficult to say why
It's difficult to say why your business is failing without business experience and a knowledge of what's going on with you, but I might be able to comment with regard to the problem of building business relationships. Some aspies struggle with delegation. Perhaps you need to employ someone who you can delegate tasks involving liaising with people outside the company for. An important skill for businesspeople is doing the things they're good at and delegating the stuff they're not.
Starting up
Hi Ted,
What kind of product/service are you thinking of, and why will people pay money for it? Have you thought about a business plan, and how much funding you would need and how to raise it?
Hypervideo looks interesting, but I suspect that it is difficult to use in many cases (for example, when scenes are actively changing rapidly - I can think of some possible neat ways around this problem, though they are not used in the example sites that I looked at...)
Where are based? In the UK?
I see that Asterpix are backed by NEA. This is quite a big name in Venture Capital and it suggests that someone sees some real value in this field as well as the need to invest potentially large sums of money.
-- Mark
Entrepreneur Forum
Ted
Please see my reply to your posting under the new Entrepreneurship forum.
Malcolm