Clarity Strategic^TM

I once worked for a start-up, GreyPilgrim Inc., a maker of flexible robotic manipulators (most people might just call them "robotic arms"). The company has since gone Chapter 7 and re-emerged from the ashes as something else. But this company was the one that gave me the start-up bug, so I'd like to say a few words about where that bug comes from.

(Hear out the whole explanation) Our office/lab/shop was in a small garage occupied by a house-painter in Lower Merion, PA. Surrounded by half-full cans of latex, ladders and spotted old blankets, we made magic happen. But my first day, having to use the restroom was anything but magic. No restroom. They gave me a paint bucket and said, "we usually use this." So I went out back, did my business, came back, and they handed me a trash bag and said "we line the bucket with this." So my lesson was, make sure you hear the whole explanation - and I've never forgotten that.

(The ability to do without) Starting in the dead of winter as I did, and working mostly on the computer as I did (building the first company Web site and using Excel for simple static analysis), I got cold in a hurry. I had to bring in my own space heater to get through the day. But knowing how to do without comes in handy: having to perform vibration analysis on a prototype, something NASA would do with a $250K specialty computer, well, we had to come up with a way. We used the innards of an old desktop adding machine to record the vibration response of an arm with a Sharpie attached. It worked great! And we learned that sometimes going without isn't such a hardship when you have ingenuity on your side.

(The ability to see ahead) The first prototype was made to move with a system of hand cranks. The founder would stand up on the mounting frame and crank one crank at a time, in a hurry! Doing this, he demonstrated the arm moving a firehose back and forth. But this simple picture was enough for us to see a day when a system of actuators could more that arm in multiple directions with us nowhere near its business end. And that opened up new markets we hadn't expected - but hurried to explore!

That was enough for me to be stuck on the start-up life. I'd love to hear your story, and reproduce it here.