I recently read this great blog entry about a teacher turned self-funded entrepreneur. He named his company “Smartasses.” How cool is that??

Here are some quotes I liked:

Gwyn kept working as a teacher and then moved full time into software development in 2006. According to Gwyn, it wasn’t a tough decision to make. “I felt I’d run my course at the school I was at. I was ready for a new challenge, and to be honest, I really didn’t see it as a massive risk,” he says. “The worst that could have happened would have been that it didn’t work out and I got another teaching job. How is that risky? I saw staying in teaching as being more risky by missing my opportunity.”

It wasn’t always easy to be patient though. “The toughest thing for me is to accept that things take time, and some things are a function of time,” he says. “Especially if you are on the edge of things, you need people to catch up before you see the profitability of your great idea. You have to keep saying the same things, keep doing the same things until people believe in you. You are what you do, and if you consistently keep doing great things, you become great.”

And some business advice from the entrepreneur in the article:

Ask yourself if you’ve got the passion and commitment to actually do it. And is it really that much of a gamble?

Ask yourself what really is the minimum you need to do to start selling something, rather than fantasising about the big idea.

And, is what you want to do useful in real world?

This is good advice, and I’m glad to see that I’ve been taking it already.