Often when I hear someone talking about being an entrepreneur or read an article about it… I hear the word “entrepreneur” being said with the same hollow, commercialized tone that a used car lot advertises their “Sunday Funday Super Sale!.” Our world has been polluted by late night infomercials hacking get-rich-quick schemes and self-help gurus selling books with good common sense packaged as mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting wisdom.

Being an entrepreneur is a risky business, and it isn’t for everyone. It takes dedication. Passion. (The kind that gets an athlete up every morning at 5am to run 10 miles. / Not the kind of passion where he loves how he looks in his running suit.) I didn’t make the decision to be an entrepreneur because “making millions and owning my own island” sounded like a pretty good life… I can’t turn the ideas off in my head, and if I wasn’t actively trying to build them I’d go nuts.

Going out on your own as an entrepreneur is a scary journey in un-charted waters where you either reach a distant land filled with riches, or sink along the way. The problem is, people are willing to pay for advice or help in order to make the journey a little easier… and there are always sharks in the water waiting to help you out.

Entrepreneurial self tests or articles like this one kill me. You might as well replace the title of the article with “You might have a pulse if…”

A better list of questions for Entrepreneurial Self-Evaluation:

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The Origin of Brands by Al and Laura Ries, is the book I’m reading at the moment. One of the chapters I just finished talked about convergence and how all the major media companies said 5 and 10 years ago that TV would be interactive.

You’d be able to check your e-mail, host meetings, have shows and movies suggested, change the camera in focus, communicate with others watching the show, etc… Many of which are available but as a whole have failed miserably at revolutionizing the “boob tubeâ€?.

The closest we’ve come to such an interactive experience is TiVo, allowing us to record shows without requiring tapes or media, skipping commercials, and finding somewhat relevant content. Still a far leap from what the big boys said would be available in this day and age.

I think there are some obvious clues that hint as to what television will be like several years from now. The three that I see most important are YouTube, obviously, Pandora, and StumbleUpon’s Video app.

Here are a few attributes of those sites that when combined, dare I say converged, paint a pretty accurate picture of the future of television in my opinion.

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It was only a matter of time until we had enough partners to each claim a letter of YGG. Now that this treacherous trio is officially formed, we are proud to introduce Darius A Monsef IV.

You may have noticed a couple of blog entries snuck in by Darius last week. That was to help him get his feet wet and see this community from the inside out.

Back in early December, we had proclaimed our love for COLOURlovers. Who’d have thunk that its creator would ever become a part of YGG, involved in several other projects, and invite us into the world of an A-list internet wonder, all by noticing a smidgen of traffic from our site.

If you ever have the opportunity to choose a partner in your ventures, Darius would be the type you’d have sign on the dotted line without any hesitation.

He brings a plethora, yes plethora, of experience to the table in real estate, philanthropy, and online business. You don’t have a chance in hell of one-upping him when it comes to name-dropping, he knows everyone. Trust me, I’ve tried.

We think we’ve made a huge leap in the right direction with this latest version of YGG. But there’s still tons of room for innovation and Darius is the guy to help us make the next big leap.

Now that we have a platform that everyone seems to love, and a partner that we sure as hell love, our emphasis will shift to consistently creating remarkable content, improving your overall experience, and developing invaluable relationships with other young go getters.

We appreciate everyone that reads the content on YGG, participates in discussions in the forum, and has stuck with us through the thick and thin.

Hopefully we’ll be able to help other young go getters as we tune our voice and bridge the competitive gap between all the entrepreneurial resources and communities. All of which are now within reach thanks to the addition of Darius.

So please give a warm welcome to our new Portland partner. Welcome to the family Darius.

PS - You can read a bit more about him on our About Us page.

When it comes to forums, the selection has always been limited to vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, and a few clones of each.

Same for blogs. You’ve got WordPress, Typepad, Textpattern, and hosted versions like Blogger, Vox, etc…

We use WordPress and Vanilla for YGG, which each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Through the process of building the current and previous versions of this site we’ve learned a lot about communities and the apps available to create and maintain one.

I think all of them are significantly broken in some way.

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