A lot of questions have come my way about what I’m up to now, and why I left. I’ve heard sentiments ranging from “Are you crazy?!” to “Congratulations, I admire your guts/courage (or my favorite, sack).” All of them make sense to me.

Ultimately, it does take a little nerve to walk away from a great company, and it takes a great deal of nerve to walk away from the kind of money that I was making, could’ve been making in the near future, and probably would be making down the road. I had established myself and a reputation at ESPN and while I’m not saying being an executive was in my future, I probably could’ve set up a very comfortable situation for myself working on cool technology with the safety and resources of ESPN.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? I want to do more than just live a comfortable life in a comfortable job in a comfortable town. At some point, I imagined myself doing more, and and some point between then and now, I put “more” on hold. It sounds silly to say it now, but I wanted to be a millionaire by 30, and I dreamt of making billions and living off of a tiny percentage while operating the rest as a foundation. Imagine Bill Gates with a simpler lifestyle. That’s where I wanted to be.

So, consider this step putting “more” back on the front burner, and taking a chance to hit those goals. I’m only 31, after all, and if there’s one part of my cultural heritage I’ve mastered, it’s Indian Standard Time. Of course I’m a little late, right?

Also, I thought hard about ESPN vs. a startup. There are a lot of differences, most should be obvious, but I enjoy the startup atmosphere, and I enjoy a couple of other things. The first is the possibility of failure, which didn’t really exist at ESPN. I believe that cliche that we learn more from failure than we do from success. I’m not talking about poor execution but about being wrong about what customers want. While ESPN might’ve been wrong on that front occaisionally, they are never wrong about what advertisers want. So even an unpopular feature (*cough*Monday Night Surround*cough*) can be a “success” if you look at it from a business standpoint.

The second thing a startup brings is a singular focus on a (singular) product. Hard to have at ESPN, where my team was worried about Rugby, Soccer, and Arena Football in addition to MLB, NFL, NBA, etc. Again, it makes sense in a lot of ways, and this is easier to fix than most things, but it is part and parcel of being there, especially if you want to be a leader in that organization.

Finally, Heidi and I are in the right spot to do this. We don’t have children, yet, we both are working, and we have a house we bought using my Boston salary as the budget (several promotions and raises ago). We were good about saving the last few years as we were able to pull of buying a new roof and chimneys and having our wedding without going into debt at all. A year later and we’ve saved up enough to take this shot.

As for what I’m doing, I want to help build startups. I realized a while ago that while I do have a good head for product development, I’m really, really good at applying technology to solve product problems. I’m also pretty good with open source technologies, well versed in most of the latest technologies of the day, and building on the cheap, all of the other things that startups more than large companies focus on.

The trick is going to be figuring out how to consult with startups (and how to make money at it). I’d love to follow the model that my cousin built during the boom. That would be ideal, but may not be possible on the east coast as it was in 1999. We’ll see what happens. I want to keep doing the startup thing, but I don’t want to be the passionate advocate of every project I’m involved in. Sometimes, it will make sense to stay on for the long haul, if I really get the product and love the idea. Other times (and I’m guessing it’s going to be more often), I’ll just come in for a few months, help launch or help get past particular technical or growth objectives and move on.

I’ll have updates here, including if/when I’m ready to hire more staff. I’m still feeling out the space but I’m working on a project already that I’ve mentioned to some of you. I have a placeholder site for my consulting gig at FrequentMod.com. For those that have been keeping up with the name game, I’m going to simplify Modulation to Mod as it conveys the same thing without the extra syllables.