Recently, while tinkering with a fork for the 29′er frame I’m working on, Paul said, “That’s awesome!  Now you’re thinking like a builder instead of a mechanic!”  I think I might have felt pride in something for the first time in awhile, and I started thinking that, “Hey, I’ve got a future in this.”

Since that moment, I’ve been keeping a large Moleskine notebook full of sketches and ideas for future bikes, and I’ve got some winners in here.  The steel stuff, I can get started on soon, but it’s going to be slow going, as I’ll be relying on Paul’s infrastructure until I can afford to get my own space set up and running.  The titanium stuff is going to have to wait until I can afford a good quality jig with a back purge system and a TIG welder.

The anticipation of getting started is killing me.  I need to figure out how to raise about $50K to do this up awesome.^*

…

So, the solutions I have are boot-strapping or finding a small business loan (in a shitty economy where credit is tight, for a business that won’t generate a lot of money initially, if ever). Or by some small miracle, finding an angel investor of some sort that’s willing to grant money in exchange for some custom frames.

If you’ve got ideas on the best way to do this, let me know in the comments for this post.

* I can probably get everything set up for less than half of that, provided that I’m willing to forego things like the expensive jig and the TIG welder and other infrastructure for the titanium.  I’ll also be buying a lot of old/used equipment in order to make this more economical.