I’ve personally lived in the world of start-ups now for the past 13 years.  And still, to this day, when I introduce myself to someone at a party or function and tell them that I am a serial start-up entrepreneur or that I work for a start-up company, I get this returned look from the person as if I just committed some heinous crime!  Or, on the flip side, I’ll get the “Oh you poor, poor man” expression as they reach out to offer me a helping hand.

Really?  At what point did those types of reactions become the normal response to working for a start-up company in the 2010+ era?

Start-ups, innovation, new technology, fresh ideas, trial and error, growing and changing… these things, not caffeine or coffee, are what gets my blood pumping in the morning as I get ready for work… looking forward to coming into the office to get my day started.  And I know my co-workers at Virtual Bridges and I are not alone here!

This week, there was a great article on the Boston Globe blog titled, “The Currency of Innovation,” that dives into the passion of start-ups, the trials and tribulations, and the world of innovation.

Our own CEO, Jim Curtin, was interviewed for this article.

From the innovator’s side of the coin, it’s all about passion. “You have to believe that you will change the world, that you are going to help improve society in some way,” says Jim Curtin, a veteran entrepreneur who has started several IT companies. “Believing that you can make a difference is what drives innovation.”

Curtin knows what he is talking about. He is CEO of Virtual Bridges, a desktop virtualization company based in Austin, Texas and one of ten companies selected as a finalist in the 2011 Innovation Showcase. That was an opportunity to interact with hundreds of CIOs and other potential customers who were primed to be interested in what he and the other finalists had to say.

But again, the start-up life isn’t all rainbows, flowers and unicorns; if it were, we’d all be working for one.  And then, I’d never get “those looks” from people whenever I say “start-up.”  To quote an old TV sitcom, as I so often do in life, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the facts of life.”

In the article, Jim says it best when he says:

You have to be prepared to eat rocks and dirt along the way.  This isn’t a comfortable life sometimes. There is always that phase before you can be that Malcolm Gladwell outlier—you have to put in your 10,000 hours, you have to sacrifice and pay your dues.

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything!  While I don’t enjoy the taste of rocks and dirt, go figure, I do enjoy innovating new ideas and then putting them into effect and watching them grow and develop into something amazing.

And the folks at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium are on the lookout for new innovations as well.  It was April of last year (my how time flies in the land of start-ups) that Virtual Bridges was selected and honored as an MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Innovation Showcase finalist.  And now, that nomination process has returned.  The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is again looking for new B2B technology start-ups that fit this innovative mold.  And nominations are open until March 30th, so click here to apply for this year’s Innovation Showcase.

Before you do, I also invite you to read the entire Boston.com article, “The Currency of Innovation,” to learn more and hear from both Jim Curtin, CEO of Virtual Bridges as well as David Verrill, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Business at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Co-Chair of the Innovation Showcase.  You won’t regret it.

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