It’s 3 am. It’s not the first night I’ve still been up and and it won’t be the last.

I’m a mom, a professor and a documentary filmmaker, but that isn’t why I’ve been up late. I’ve had this idea. It all started just a few months ago, when I was chatting with Gina Bianchini. (Gina is the co-founder of Ning and just debuted MightyBell.) She listened as I fumbled through my idea for a startup and said something to me that was like a match, lighting a fire. “It’s not rocket science. Just make it happen.” Gina is a rock star and just utterly inspiring.

So I went home and I started haunting Github, Hackernews, Quora and Lean Startup blogs. I started posting really stupid questions and started learning. I hadn’t built a site in a few years, so I reconnected with one of my former students, Cory Watilo. (You see his name at the bottom of every posterous theme.) He took a few hours on a Saturday, teaching me this time, to bring me up to speed. Everything moved fast. I was coding, designing, developing, creating resources and voraciously learning. Then I found and began working with a great back-end developer in Brazil and we skyped to communicate and built out the site. I was planning on a June launch and was in over my head.

Then, my son was sent home with three behavior slips from school. Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that when things like that happen, you have to stop. I wasn’t paying enough attention and I felt like an utter failure as a mom. So, I turned off the computer.

Soon, my friend and lead of groups at LinkedIn, Ian McCarthy, called to check in and ask how things were going. (Anyone who has ever worked with Ian refer to him as Obi Wan. He’s Jedi.) I explained how I was feeling lost and like a failure. He told me something I’m sure he made up on the spot, but it has become my mantra. He told me, “Make the Train. Everyone is trying to jump on things before they get left behind. There’s this feeling everyone has – ‘You have to make the train! Hurry before it leaves the station!’ No, no no,” he said. “You MAKE the train. Currix IS the train. You make it and it’s going to be great and people will want to hop onboard. But stop killing yourself trying do it how everyone else is doing it. Make it your way.”

It was like the skies parted and angels began singing. So, I didn’t launch in June, or July and now it’s August and tomorrow we are beginning our alpha phase. I’ve done it differently… coding while watching my kids jump on the trampoline, taking lots of breaks to jump too. I’m going to make lots of mistakes. But, I feel like I’m making something that is going to make a difference. And those mistakes? It’s just actionable data.