People often ask me what I actually do as CEO of a small company. In short: fundraise. First for seed capital to turn the notional company into something real. Then for more capital to keep the young company moving ahead while its expenses still outpace its income. And then, once the company turns profitable, for capital to fund expansion, to underwrite the large new projects that drive growth.

And, frankly, fundraising sucks. Not least of all because you have to ask people to give you large sums of money. But also because, even when they want to, you’re still a far, far back priority to the main concerns of their own lives.

So, in short, you wait. You wait for emails and calls and faxed contracts. And you balance a ‘squeaky wheel gets the grease’ tack with the knowledge that if you pester them too much, they’re more likely to wash their hands of the whole thing, rather than cough up cash.

Even once papers are signed, things are often no better: by then, you’re waiting for their wire to arrive, obsessively reloading the online banking site.

And, the whole time, bills pile up, along with demands for that still-not-arrived money, money that you can’t really make arrive any faster than it is. But, since you’re the middle man, the face that they see, people tell you again and again to do the impossible: to make all of this process, which moves on investor time, move instantly, on their time instead.

That said, if it’s the film business, then at least once every couple of months you get to walk down a red carpet somewhere. So it’s all worth it. It’s all worth it. Or, at least, that’s what you repeat to yourself, like a mantra, as you reload, reload, reload Chase and WaMu.com.