Or you can do the human thing. Grab the water, move it next to the food, and enjoy them together. While you're at it, you can even pay someone to take the donkey to market and trade him for a case of scotch. That's multitasking!

Yeah the other founder probably needed to contribute $5000 too. If he could not, that would have been your first clue that it wouldn't work.

Product and sales first. It sounds like you spent your marketing money way too soon. Later you might have found out that your offering was not even what customers really wanted. Then you're back in the same position where you've spent everything on marketing, and have no money to make more appropriate materials.

Here's your next written business plan:

1. Build something you can show off - a product, a demonstration of your service, whatever. 2. Show it to anyone who will sit still. 3. If 2 out of 10 people are not trying to buy your stuff or hire you by the end of the demo, pick one from a,b,c below:

a) show it to different kinds of people b) revise it and show it to more people c) take whatever you've learned and can recycle (code, art) and go back to #1 above.

Yes, a thousand times yes. On a $5k budget, marketing was the last thing you should have been spending money on.

The number one thing that you have to do as a startup is sell, sell, SELL!! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8H2FIf1oH4)

... if you execute them.

I demo'd some apps I made at a local group and before I knew it they were beating the doors down. Job offers too, but I turn those down.

Are you in a metropolitan area?

Care to describe what type of apps you demo'ed? Language(s) used?

I guess the real money comes when you help marketing people find spend-happy people's mailboxes ;)

Or connect conmen with heiresses, vacuum cleaner salesmen with Persian cat owners, horny teenagers with lonely centerfold models... I can come up with these all day, now get busy!

Thanks, I had plenty of upvotes until you guys started replying.

My first time being downvoted, I think. Humor falls flat == bad. Got it. Sorry for dragging you down with me.

Is that violin music? Are those tears? Is the resale value of your product hurting you? Aww.

I guess next I should feel sorry for GM because they don't get a cut when I sell my 10 year old car. OR maybe they should disable the steering wheel if the driver changes. That way they can charge a fee to enable the car for each new user.

This studio needs to get out the duct tape and shut up its developer before any more of this crap flows out of his mouth.

We came up with the same metaphor. My post started with the glucose meter as well, and pointed out that misinterpreting blood glucose was more likely to have immediate and dire consequences.

Wow, your catharsis really comes through in your writing. If nothing else, maybe there's a memoir in all this ;) Seriously though, stay positive and stay in the habit of asking people for help when you're stuck. And don't just ask investors, 'cause their agenda might force them to say 'double or nothing' every time. Ask friends, other tech people, people who work on FOSS, old college professors, online friends. You need to develop, but you also need to spend a lot of time in front of other people. Also, make sure you're doing something you like. If the work is not rewarding, find something that is.