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What are your first thoughts when you click on this post? Did Jacob pass out on his keyboard? Did he just give up trying to be creative? Did Rick Perry break in to his blog and this is his attempt to spell the word cat? The answer is that the title of this post is a pretty accurate reflection of how I feel at this moment. Restless does not even begin to describe me right now.

Today is the one year anniversary of the first momentous protest in Tarhir Square during the Egyptian revolution. One year ago, I was sitting in my room in my father's house back in Colorado sketching out the initial designs of the Pollis with Al Jazeera blaring from my computer. Watching the Egyptian people storm the streets to take their country back was one of the most inspiring things I have ever seen and affirmed my belief in the Pollis: the Tarhir Square protesters proved to me that humans are inherently democratic and I had constructed the Pollis to be a democratic entity. Glancing back and forth between my computer and the sketches, I became convinced that the rise of the Pollis would coincide with the rise of a democratic Egypt. One year later, the Egyptian people and myself remain disheartened by our lack of progress.

They say that getting seed funding is always the hardest part of starting a business. Everyone wants to invest in the next Facebook but no one will cut a check until the numbers say that it will be the next Facebook. Trying to find an investor willing to invest in a business that has no projectable revenue or fixed costs is like trying to find a virgin at Arizona State; I'm sure that they exist, but no one has ever met one. Today I was turned down by two more venture capitalists (VCs) as one repeated a phrase I am far too familiar with: "interesting idea, but you're too early for us." The other implored me to sell the idea to someone who "actually understood how to run a business." Below you'll see a video of me trying to recover from this painful blow to my psyche.

I have one piece of advice that I want any aspiring entrepreneur reading this to understand. Regardless of how smart you are or how good your idea is, money is king and the only way to circumvent the process of finding seed funding is to build your product on your own. The issue I have is that my knowledge of code allows me to put words on a web page and that's about it. Because of this deficiency, I knew that I had put myself in one hell of a catch-22. I needed money to build my product, but I needed a product to attract money. My naiveté lead me to waste five months reaching out to VCs who were never going to invest in some jackass who only had a political science degree to his name. Once I realized that I was never going to get funding I decided to take out a loan, strip the site down to only its core elements in order to fit my dramatically reduced budget and work from there. Had I realized this five months earlier, the Pollis would probably be live and there might actually be people reading this blog.

My current frustration is not limited to a lack of finances. We are having some major issues in development. I used elance.com to find a developer based in Jaipur, India. I wrote about them a bit back in November when we began this process and have been very happy with their work up until now. I am able to communicate with them but there is an obvious language barrier and some things have been lost in translation. Because of this, the site that they designed does not quite match up with what I described the Pollis to be. For example, there is a page to blog directly on the Pollis. Needless to say, a social networking site that forces everyone to transport their blogs main page to pollis.com is a pretty shitty idea. I spent all weekend trying not to scream at Yogesh (my point of contact) and woke up at 4:30 in the morning (3 pm local time in Jaipur) today to confirm that they were on the right track. As frustrating as this is, I cannot put all of this on Yogesh. I obviously did a poor job communicating the most pertinent points of the site and now I have to live with the consequences of my failure.

I try not to dwell on these failures too much because there is simply nothing I can do about them. I have learned my lesson and I need to move on. Successful entrepreneurs need to have short memories. If you're fretting over the last mistake you made, you're likely to make another one. As upsetting as it was to see my idea twisted into what can only be described as a turd sandwich (or perhaps you prefer a giant douche), I must realize that it is fixable and that hiccups like this are just part of this crazy journey I have embarked on.

As frustrating as my current situation is, it pales in comparison to the struggle that my sources of inspiration in Egypt are experiencing. The goal of a democratic Egypt that entailed the sacrifice of so many loved ones has yet to be realized as the military council still retains absolute power. Youth unemployment is at astronomical rates and their economy is sputtering. I have a job, a roof over my head, and I live in a country where unfettered internet access has allowed me to attempt to build an empire from the comfort of my own home. Taking a step back and looking at the big picture gives me the resolve to keep pushing through horrible days like this one. With all things considered, I couldn't ask to have a better life than the one I already have.