The first start-up I ever worked at was a dot-com. It was an exciting place to be, back in 1999, and, like others of my generation, I caught the start-up fever. Then I started something with friends, and found myself doing programming – strange for a liberal arts major, but I was actually pretty good at it. The first thing that any programmer writes in a new language is traditionally a little tiny program that does nothing but write “hello world” on the screen. So “hello world” seems an apt entry for this blog. The purpose of the little “hello world” program is to get the programmer familiar with the language – it’s the first step in a journey. You learn just enough to actually get the words on the screen; then you learn enough to do it elegantly; then you move on to creating something really worthwhile. Entrepreneurship has its own language and is its own journey. This blog will be about those two things, from the perspective of two industries I know well – technology and food. (You might as well do what you love!) It will be about having start-up fever and about channeling that, both in a new venture and by taking an existing business to exciting new places. It’ll be about tips and tricks. I’ll throw in some news analysis and maybe even a policy discussion, for policy that affects start-ups and small businesses. It’s a challenging time out there but also an exciting one. For America to grow we must start new companies and help the ones we have grow. That’s what I do. This is my blog’s “hello world”; the next entry will be more elegant, and, down the road, we’ll have some great content that is truly worthwhile. But, for the moment, hello, world!