A business story often starts with the first idea and skips over the means that made it possible to try it out. Capital, contacts, time and support can remain in the background, although without them the effort would not look the same.
That does not diminish the work of the person who built something. It allows us to understand their experience more correctly. Advice that implies income to fall back on may not suit a person who is already supporting a family.
Before adopting someone else's formula, we should ask what conditions existed and what risk was really possible. Thus the story becomes a source of useful questions, instead of a yardstick against which everyone with a different beginning seems insufficiently determined.
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