xkcd did a great comic explaining the Saturn 5 rocket using only the 1,000 words people use most often. Splasho.com created a tool to help you write your own material with only the ten hundred most used words. I spent time today translating the first paragraph of my Entrepreneurs page into upgoer5 text. My result looked like this:

Is there a way to explain what a person who starts a business is like? Are there things those people are like that is always the same? When I started this class I thought it would be easy to explain what a “person who starts a business” is like on the first day of class. As I started writing notes it became clear it was not going to be so easy. I read what other people wrote, talked to people who start businesses and people who give money to people who start businesses, and looked it up on computers. I could not find an answer that people agreed on. Can people learn how to start businesses, or do some people just know to to do it from when they are a baby? Does a person who starts a business have to make up things and imagine how different the world could be all by themselves, or can that person just be good at using ideas made up by others? Does a person who starts a business have to “make another person’s pain go away,” or can he “make other people want what he makes?” And how does helping people have fun fit into that?

Some of it is a bit silly funny, but it is helpful to helps make you think about the simplest clearest way to say things.