Thanks everyone who made sure I didn’t miss Brenda Laurel’s essay about Purple Moon. I had a difficult time deciding what to write about it, if anything. Because Purple Moon’s mission was near and dear to most every employee’s heart, the time spent there and the time spent tearing ourselves away was emotional. It is hard, as I am often reminding myself in business life, to not take it personally when your goal feels so noble, so pure, so capital-G Good, but, hard as you try, you are failing to make it. Even our partners, our customers, and our suppliers were rooting for us, treating us so well because they too wanted to believe in and be a part of something Good. It was hard for every little thing not to be emotional and personal, because everyone cared so much. We all felt we had a personal stake in our mission. Wouldn’t it make such a difference to believe so strongly in what you were doing every day at work? That’s what we had. But I don’t think anyone realized that the biggest risk we were taking was that we would all feel so damn horrible when it failed.

Brenda makes some interesting observations about women in business in her essay. Yes, of course, I have my ideas of which names go with her “recognizable dysfunctions”. It makes me feel better that she recognizes the management traits many of us had to contend with. Maybe we have different people in mind, but that’s OK. People vary in different circumstances. Most of us can be and have been stellar under better circumstances. As I grow wiser and reanalyze situations from a greater distance, I’ll probably learn even more lessons from Purple Moon — and all the other startups I’ve participated in.