Page 124 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

CHAPTER FIVE

Your Math Story

Charting a Path to Breakeven
and Beyond

“Numbers rule the Universe.”
—Pythagoras

Remember the tale of Icarus and his passionate flight toward the sun?
Although the story ended in tragedy, it began as an example of en-
trepreneurship at its best. Daedalus, the father, was the idea guy. He
might have watched birds fly high above the prison walls for months
before his eureka moment. He then devised a plan of escape and built
wings of wax and feathers. When the time was right, he and Icarus
launched themselves out over the sea, flapping their way to freedom.
The exhilaration of that moment must have exceeded anything felt
by passionate entrepreneurs before or since.

Underneath the courage and emotion, however, Icarus and
Daedalus’s flight was a product of basic physics. As an engineer,
Daedalus was dealing with the interplay of opposing forces: the up-
ward lift created by his wings versus the downward pull of gravity,
and the forward push of those wings against the resistant drag of in-

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