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Notes -
Reading a recent shagbark post about how women are attracted to men who don't have bosses over 'wagies', I found myself thinking about owning a business. As as American it's obviously glorified, but I'm wondering if it's easier to own a business now than it was in the past?
Seems to my relatively uneducated mind that over time in America owning a business has in some ways gotten harder, some ways easier. Nowadays you can do the online business, make money not doing anything physical, just using your wits and social network, basically. Forms can be filled out electronically, etc etc.
On the other hand, back in the day it seems most Americans used to be business owners, especially when more rural lifestyles were more common. Folks owned farms, or a general store, and didn't really have many forms to fill out, though of course they paid (much lower) taxes.
Anyway as a somewhat half-assed tie in to the culture war - which tribe is better for business? Red tribe nominally wants to be but... they also seem to not follow through with that a lot. Blue tribe has become more kleptocratic lately. Maybe it's a tossup?
Well, I'm putting together my first attempt at entrepreneurship myself right now, so I'll let you know how it turns out. Without going into exhaustive detail, I'm making a tabletop wargame with a focus on proxies. The model's base is 25mm, the same base size of unaugmented humans in a certain popular grimdark game, and the historically insired factions will hopefully convince some historical wargamers to try converting minis. I plan to make the core rules free online with a small initial kickstarter, and probably only start making any real money with expansions and a 2nd edition.
Theres a culture war angle here in that I think that alot of tabltop gaming companies like WotC and GW are quite incompetent and will likely bleed fans over time. That's its own can of worms to be opened in another post though.
I'm at the point where I'll have to start advertising it via videos, reddit posts, etc which I absolutely despise. I love talking about it organically with friends, but theres something fake and wrong feeling about doing so to make future sales, even if its nessesary.
So far though for me its been alot of working in photo editors on my rulebook and making 2d pixel sprites for tabletop simulator testing. Oh and a small mountain of varoius spreadsheets and documents. I may move back to the US from the UK to start the company, as America seems more amenable to businesses in general.
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