Steve is absolutely right that government doesn't understand the challenges facing startups.

For example, I'd put "access to affordable health care" above "access to capital" as a barrier to getting a small business or startup off the ground. 10 years ago I paid $75/month for comprehensive health care, today I pay about $1000/month for bare bones coverage. I can't even think about expanding with those costs. (For anyone wondering, this is in the NYC area).

I think it's time to stop talking startups being "Ramen profitable". My cofounder and I are stuck in our consulting day jobs until our startup becomes "health care" profitable.

Want to be a great leader? Work hard to develop extraordinary skills. Become an independent thinker and have the courage to follow your ideas. Show respect to others and never think more highly of yourself than you ought. Avoid bad habits of sloth, dissipation, dishonesty, and other qualities that would cause others to lose respect for you. Set goals that challenge you to do your best and follow diligently after them. Apply all this consistently to every part of your life, always striving to better yourself in even the smallest ways while maintaining integrity.

In my student days, I worked in restaurants. I worked with a guy who was a Mexican immigrant, who washed dishes with me for several years in a busy restaurant. He worked hard. He was always upbeat. He never complained. And he radiated a sense of joy all about him. Why? Because he was content with what he was doing while obviously striving to improve himself at the same time. He would often sing while he worked. And that was inspiring. That man might never make a mark in the broader society but I could see he would be a fine leader wherever his life circumstances took him.

These same qualities can be found in the startup world, as nicely reflected in this piece. But they are by no means limited to those who seek success in business. They are life qualities. It profits us all to follow them.

When I was a Junior at MIT in 1975, working in the Large Systems Group (the PDP-10) in Marlboro as a summer co-op student, I asked some of the DEC old-timers what would happen if I invited Ken Olsen over to my little summer sublet in Marlboro. They said, "ask him".

I figured they were playing a trick on a lowly co-op, but I figured, what the heck. So I invited him to stop by that coming Sunday afternoon. And he accepted!

The ever-gracious Ken Olson came to my place, and chatted with about a dozen fellow MIT DEC co-op students, and another perhaps dozen regular employees at the Marlboro facility. We were all awe-struck, but somehow we managed to ask him about whether he thought IBM were our competition (he didn't think so, because DEC and IBM served different markets), and what he thought of these little microcomputers, like the Altair 8800 that was about to be announced (he didn't think they were very useful, poor h/w and non-existent software). What about putting one of our PDP-10s on a board, like the recently-introduced LSI-11 did for the PDP-11? (Contact Gordon Bell and ask him about that.) And much more like that.

I distinctly remember he sat in a chair while we accolites sat on the floor at his feet.

At the time, the PDP-11 and especially the PDP-11/45 was quite the machine - unix had recently been ported to it with great success, and I had used it in several of my courses. I of course had one of those "comic book" PDP-11/45 manuals that had been well-thumbed. Would Ken autograph it for me? And of course the ever-gracious Ken Olson signed it just below his signature on the front page of the manual.

What a tremendously giving, gracious, friendly, smart, helpful man. His influence on this industry is deep and wide. He remains my role model. He'll be sorely missed.