Over the summer, I ended up on a panel of entrepreneurs, speaking to a group of high school students about the startup world. It’s something I do fairly regularly, and, by now, I’m ready with standard answers to most of the questions flung in my direction. If the questions don’t catch me off guard, however, the other panelists’ answers often do.

At the last event, for example, the moderator asked for our thoughts on the hardest part of starting a company.

And, after a requisite moment of brow-furrowed faux-thought, the first panelist replied: coming up with good ideas for potential products and businesses.

I almost jumped out of my chair. Coming up with ideas? The hard part? No, no, no.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Give me five minutes, and I can come up with a laundry list of products that would sell millions (try: biodegradable tattoo ink, for tattoos that disappear after five years; or, disposable six-pack coolers made using the same chemical mix found in instant-cold break-and-shake medical ice packs). Even ideas for whole businesses take only a bit longer – just enough time to sketch out the model on the back of a napkin.

But, actually making those products and businesses happen? Now that’s hard.

No matter how simple an idea seems, the execution is always an absolute mess. Which is why, like a newborn baby, a startup eats all your time and money, and leaves you completely sleep-deprived for months or years on end.

In the case of children, we’re biologically geared to love our offspring more than life itself – that’s what (usually, at least) keeps people from ditching screaming brats in a dumpster somewhere. But, when it comes to starting companies, there’s no similar inherent drive.

Sure, most people assume that money’s a good driver. But, in reality, entrepreneurs chasing cash rarely bring in the bank. The specter of IPO riches, of post-acquisition tropical trips, is simply too distant and too uncertain to motivate a team through eighty hour week after eighty hour week. To make it through the long slow slog of actually putting a company together, you have to like the operational specifics of the company. In other words, you have to like what you’re doing each and every day enough to want to come into work.

It’s a lesson I sometimes forget. Over the last few years, I’ve put together full business plans for additional companies I was considering starting. And, with each, as I began to lay out timelines for execution, I realized that, after several years of actually carrying out the plan, I’d mainly be likely to execute myself.

That’s why, despite any of its problems, I’ve loved starting Cyan. At the end of the day, even at its worst, making movies is vastly more fun than having a real job. And that’s also why, at the top of the column to the right, there’s a new company name, in italics, just below Cyan: Long Tail Releasing. It’s the first company idea I’ve had outside of Cyan in the past three years that I’m actually excited to work on, day in and day out, over the next decade of my life.

While I’ll let further details emerge over the next few months, suffice it to say Long Tail is an alternative distribution company that dovetails well with Cyan. Production and distribution companies? Harvey Weinstein, look out.