About a year-and-a-half ago, I invested in a high-tech start-up.

At the time, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. These guys were brilliant and their idea had all of the trappings that I look for.

• They had significant barriers to entry.
• They were highly differentiated.
• Their founder and leader could sell!
• Their product had sex appeal, and,
• The founding partners were workaholics.

“I can’t believe no one else sees the value in this start-up,” I thought to myself. “And these guys haven’t exactly kept a low-profile either.” (It was true --- this business was literally started in a glass house.)

They plunged ahead --- taking a significant amount of my money with them. “So what,” I reasoned, “Compared to the payday that’s coming from this business, I’m investing chump change.”

About a year went by and instead of getting the sales results I expected, I was hearing an awful lot of excuses.

First, it was the market. So, they shifted market emphasis. Next, a key founder resigned. No big deal --- we found an even better guy to replace him.

These were all the problems of a typical start-up. And while I was concerned that we hadn’t yet made our first sale, I didn’t do some of the things I maybe should have done to ease these concerns.

Big mistake.

The start-up’s founder approached me in late 2010. He asked if I would make just one more investment. He made this well worth my while as he threw onto the pile what I then considered to be a very generous additional share of equity (I now know why).

I did the deal. But this time I structured it so that he didn’t get all the money up-front. This time, I tied it to the calendar. (Not performance or milestones, the calendar. Big freakin’ deal --- all this did was save a little of my cash flow.)

He came back to me almost every month thereafter, asking me to send the tranche payment that was due. This was another warning sign, but I was very busy and so I ignored it.

Finally, he did two things that should have resulted in a full drill-down investigation. Trouble is, I was too busy to investigate.

The two things? First, he physically relocated to another state. Next, he asked me to lean on a local institutional investor --- an investor that was hedging on a very soft commitment to put a significant chunk of new money into my guy’s hands.

Though I didn’t like it one bit, I ignored the physical move and in fact leaned on the institutional investor. Shortly after that, my guy got his money.

Well, you already know how this story ends. The damnable part was that I got the phone call not from my “business partner,” but instead from another individual who had also invested in this business. When this gentleman called me (I’ll call him “Dan”) he said, “Did you know that our CEO has quit building our business and instead is writing a book on his experiences with the technology for a third party publisher?”

I didn’t know that.

To make steel, especially really good steel, you need a furnace that burns white-hot or even hotter. But this temperature hardly even approaches the temperature on the back of my neck after hearing these words. Had this young gentleman been within ten feet of me when I heard these words, I am absolutely convinced that I would have committed some form of physical assault.

And I’m 61 years old.

I’ll give him credit. He flew back to Pittsburgh to face me. Most of what I had heard from the other investor, and as it turned out, was very true. He had packed it in and that was that.

It’s no secret that all people who have incurable cancer are in the fight of their lives. But what is less known is that the fight they are in isn’t a fight about “beating” their cancer. No, what they are instead fighting is the calendar.

You see, people with cancer, especially incurable cancers, are instead fighting to stay alive. They must stay alive until such time as a cure for that previously-incurable cancer is found.

This is different from “a respite from the disease,” it’s a “cure.”

Big difference.

It’s no different with a start-up. The idea is to somehow find a way to keep the start-up alive until such time as the right “success formula” is found.

I personally call this “tweaking.” Others may call it other things. But in all cases, it’s just a matter of surviving until you tweak your way to a business or revenue model that works.

I have tweaked my start-up company’s distribution channels. I have also tweaked the revenue model. And, I have many times tweaked the marketing and sales models.

Sometimes, I tweak all of the above, sometimes two out of three. (BTW, there are endless “tweakable” components. Players, management, facilities, equipment, suppliers … you get the picture.)

But eventually, a winning formula will reveal itself. It’s just a matter of hanging in until you find that winning formula.

This is what so frosted me about my young entrepreneur. He did not come close to exhausting every avenue. Hell, I don’t know all of the details of course, but we threw three or four “tweak” ideas at him and didn’t really get an affirmative reaction to any of them.

Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive until the cavalry shows up!

Because, and for all anyone knows, that cavalry is just over the next hill.

* Listen to Ron on The American Entrepreneur Radio Show. Ron and his colleagues can be heard on PBR stations seven days a week! Tune in M-F from 3:00 - 6:00 p.m.; Saturday from 9:00 a.m. - Noon (all on AM 1360). Ron can also be heard on Sundays from 10:00 a.m. -12:30 p.m. on FM 104.7.