Entrepreneurs – we should be doing all we can to be thanking these folks! They have the idea, they put in the massive effort, and they put in the cash. They are willing to take on the large risk failure (often putting their families at great risk) for an even greater reward if things work out. Sadly, for many, the "creative destruction" that capitalism uses to best maximize the utilization of scarce resources (time, labor, capital) claims them – many startups fail.
Thus, it is incumbent upon the entrepreneur to carefully examine all of the known risks, think about the what-ifs, and prepare Plan Bs, Plan Cs, and then, be prepared to throw them all away if needed; any one risk point can be the deal breaker.
And so, the backdrop is that of an entrepreneur starting an aquaculture biz in NH’s Great Bay (story here)- and the one thing that may sink that biz because he pinned his business plan – that the State of NH would always provide a particular service: water testing. The premise of the thread was "the State HAS to provide funding to continue testing of the Great Bay waters or this guy will lose his business!" as he could only sell his product if the water (and thus, his product) was judged to be safe.
Unfortunately, I can’t get to the FB thread right now (" It may be temporarily unavailable, the link you clicked on may have expired…") To summarize, however, I took the tack that if his biz was so important, he ought to be doing all he can to fund that testing himself (or in a consortium of others in a like position). After all, there is NOTHING sacred about the State doing testing – ANY reputable lab properly equipped could step in. Sure, there’s a cost for that – but in effect, his company was a "free rider" on the services that the State provided.
In this clip from this past Sunday’s "NH Outlook", the discussion popped up there as well – and NH Rep. Warren Groen did (IMHO) a great job of speaking to my points: