This is a layperson guide* for what the guy you meet on the plane to Vegas means when he tells you “I have a startup.”

• I’m building a Chrome plugin that lists all the parks in Salt Lake City on top of all Mormon-operated blogs using a proprietary Google search algorithm
• I work full time as a product manager/blogger/evangelist/entrepreneur-in-residence/babysitter and I want an excuse to quit my job and/or get fired while saving face and/or something to talk about at my 5-year reunion
• I have a tech cofounder who’s a full time engineer at Apple/Yahoo/Etsy and I promised him 5% of my company to do all the work
• We’re not incorporated yet but the product is what’s really important
• I talked to an investor friend of a friend who really liked the idea
• Everyone thinks I work 90 hours a week but I spent a good 80% of my day yesterday on Reddit/Facebook/Chess.com
• We are pre-launch but we’ve already had a reporter at TechCrunch promise to write about us: that’s our marketing plan. That and Viral.
• Making friends/finding Salt Lake City parks is broken. So we’re fixing it with technology.
• I’m friends with lots of other founders and they say there’s a need for what we’re building.
• I have no college debt and my parents pay my rent so revenue isn’t really a concern. What we are going for is traction.
• Traction will be easy because our product is free. We will even incentivize people to use it with mobile gamification and Reddit Gold
• Acquisition will be easy because there are a lot of Salt Lake City mapping companies that would love to have our data
• Mormons are our main market and there are 24 million of them
• As soon as we Show HN our product we will all quit our jobs and go full time to double down on our traction
• Even if everything I think about my “startup” is wrong, there’s millionaire in Korea/Japan/Santa Barbara who will probably invest in us anyway

*Written from unfortunate experience