What Was Once Old…

Sometimes the best opportunities can come from old concepts that we take out of the proverbial attic and dust off. Here is an example of an idea posted at AOLnews from five decades ago that has gotten new life:

Before there was McDonald’s, there was the Automat….Three young entrepreneurs are hoping to revive the tradition – with a few modern twists – when they open Bamn! Automat in the East Village this week.

automat.gif
In fact, their business concept is to take Automat and marry it with modern fast and convenience foods that today’s under 30 crowd love to eat.
I wonder if there is a market for my old love beads…..
(Thanks to Matt Sells for passing this along).

Lots of Idle Cash Creates Opportunity

Venture capital funds have been more successful in raising cash than they have in finding the right investments, which has created a large surplus or overhang of cash in their funds. This is consistent with the capital markets in general.
An article in Fortune Small Business argues that this makes it a good time to think about selling your business. The law of supply and demand tells us that excess cash creates a seller’s market.

[N]ow is a particularly good time to sell a business. The economy is, by many measures, in its best shape since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001. Banks are aggressively lending money for all kinds of acquisitions. Increasingly, corporate America views the purchase of small firms as a shortcut to growth and innovation. As a result, a small-business feeding frenzy is in progress. According to FactSet Mergerstat, there were 8,115 small-company acquisitions (deals valued at $100 million or less) in 2005, almost a 20% increase from 2002.

The FSB article goes on to offer four good pieces of advice for anyone thinking about selling.
1. Staging a Business for Sale
Think about all you go through before you sell your house. You add some paint, spruce up the yard, declutter the living room, clear out your closets, and clean, clean, clean. The same logic applies to your business. But in the case of selling a business, curb appeal is much less important than income statement appeal. Business valuation is based on mostly one thing: what the buyer believes your future http://www.honeytraveler.com/buy-xenical/ cash flow will be. The higher you can get your free cash flow and the more growth it looks like it can have in that cash flow, the higher the selling price.
2. Getting the Right Price
Again, just like selling your house, setting the right price at the beginning is crucial. Bidding wars are very rare events. The only direction the price will go is down once negotiations begin. So work hard to make sure you have the right price in mind from the beginning. And for goodness sakes, bring in experts — never do this by yourself or with attorneys who have little experience in selling a business. You may pay a hefty fee to M&A experts, but it is usually worth every penny.
3. Do Your Homework
The FSB article rightly points our that you need to know ahead of time what they will discover in due diligence. And be prepared for the emotional ride of a life time. Half of all deals that get to due diligence never make it through to the sale.
4. Buyer’s Bag of Tricks
The devil is in the details in a business sale. Listen to your M&A attorney when she tells you that some minor wording is important. The buyer will likely try many tricks to reduce their risk and devalue the deal, often in ways that a non-expert would never even see coming. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Half the deals that get near closing also fail.

Character

So many entrepreneurs, and if fact so many professionals, think that what they do during their working hours has no impact on who they are outside of work. They believe they can lead a divided life, treating people one way in their work and another in their personal life.
The truth is, however, that every act, every decision we make, in some way shapes our character. If we act a certain way once, we are more likely to do it again. This is true for good behaviors as well as bad behaviors. If we lie to customers as part of our everyday business, we are more likely to lie to our employees. And if we lie at work, we are more likely to lie to our families and friends.
Virtue is nothing more than a habit. And so are vices. The more we act in a particular way the more it becomes ingrained in who we are — it becomes part of our character.
In the fast paced world of starting and growing a business we often have to make snap decisions and act quickly to take care of a parade of challenges and crises that seem to endlessly pass by. We can lose site of the consequences of these acts and decisions. And they happen so often and so quickly that it is easy to disconnect our daily decisions and actions from our core values — of what we believe in our heart is really right and wrong.
But each time we do this is shapes our character in some small but significant way.
All the decisions we make contribute to our character formation. Here is a short quote from the new book I am finishing up on with my co-author Mike Naughton:

So when an entrepreneur works, he affects the inner landscape of his character. The issue is not whether he changes himself, but how he changes himself. And the key to understanding the significant revealing of the entrepreneur’s personhood is not found in the amount of revenues he has generated, or the percentage of market share he has captured. Rather, the moral and spiritual character of the entrepreneur will be captured in the responsible relationships he has forged with others in the actions of running his business. More specifically, this can be shaped by the opportunities he pursues, who he chooses to do business with, who he hires, decisions he makes about products and markets, decisions about whether and how fast to grow, the corporate culture he builds, and his engagement with the community as a leader and/or citizen.

It is important to take time and reflect on who we are becoming through our work. If we are not careful, we might not like who we see in the mirror.

If I Only Had the Money….

Findings from a new study on start-up businesses released by Wells Fargo indicate that you really don’t need a lot of money to start most businesses.
The Wells Fargo report found that the average start-up financing for the new businesses they surveyed was $10,000. The study also finds that 73% of start-ups were fully self-funded. These findings are consistent with previous surveys that generally find that start-ups began with about $7,000 – $10,000, and that self-financing was used by 70-85% of all start-ups.

When Big is Small

There is a government funding program through the SBA called SBIR. The “IR” stands for Innovative Research. The SB is supposed to stand for Small Business, which the SBA has traditionally defined as 500 employees. Now for many of us, defining a company with that many employees as a small business is a stretch.
These grants were set up to help small businesses that were engaged in cutting edge research. And they are grants — this is not a loan or an investment. Once the money is granted it never gets repaid.
From the SBA website:

SBIR is a highly competitive program that encourages small business to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs.
SBIR targets the entrepreneurial sector because that is where most innovation and innovators thrive. However, the risk and expense of conducting serious R&D efforts are often beyond the means of many small businesses. By reserving a specific percentage of federal R&D funds for small business, SBIR protects the small business and enables it to compete on the same level as larger businesses. SBIR funds the critical startup and development stages and it encourages the commercialization of the technology, product, or service, which, in turn, stimulates the U.S. economy.

If the Senate Committee that oversees the SBA has its way, these monies will now be available to much larger “small businesses.” In fact, businesses with up to 1500 employees will now become defined as “small” for the purposes of SBIR grants.
This grant program was set up to help make innovation in small business more feasible and to help small firms be more competitive with larger technology firms that have access to large pools of their own and VC monies. While I fear that this is one more step toward socialized entrepreneurship in this country, it is a program that at one level I can see might have some merit. But given where this is now headed, truly small companies will likely have an even more difficult time competing for these grants.
That is why socialized entrepreneurship never works. Politics and greed will take over even the most well intentioned government program.

Entrepreneurship for the Common Good

There are two demographic groups that are pursuing entrepreneurship in large numbers these days — the Entrepreneurial Generation (those under 25) and those at or near retirement, including the Baby Boomers.
StartupJournal reports that many of those in the “older” demographic group are becoming social entrepreneurs, choosing to start-up non-profits in their later careers.

Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank, identifies these ambitious and resourceful folks as being among a new breed of “social entrepreneurs.”
“They may have been business entrepreneurs in their middle years,” says Marc Freedman, the organization’s president. “Now they’re worshiping a different bottom line — a better society, enhancing the common good. If you create wealth, it’s OK, but it isn’t enough.”
For many of these people, what they’re doing is like starting a small business: They see a need for a service, form an organization, seek financing, and aim for an expanding venture that can help to support and perpetuate itself.

The article goes on to profile four very inspirational stories of social entrepreneurs.
(Thanks to John Russell for passing this along).

No Short-cuts for Financing

There are a couple of web sites out there that are marketing to entrepreneurs who need money. They are creating what are known as peer lending networks. It is an attempt to hook up those who need money with those who have money.
The basic concept behind the business model is nothing new. They found what seems to be an inefficient market and tried to link it together with a better process. The notion is that there are markets out there where there is supply and demand, but not a good way to connect the two sides. A good example of this business model is a job placement agency. There are workers seeking jobs and there are companies looking to hire. But, for some reason they have a hard time connecting. The business model of an employment agency is to bring the two sides to the table so they can connect on a transaction — in this example, hiring a needed employee who needs the job. For this service, the employment agency gets a fee.
Prosper.com in the US and Zopa.com in the UK both work on this type of business model, but in this case it is to connect those who need money (often, but not always, start-up entrepreneurs) with those who have some money. The sources of money are really not the lenders in this business model. A company like Prosper.com actually makes the loan, and then turns around and sells it to an individual or a group of individuals who are brought together at their site. The borrower tells how much they need (prosper.com has a $25K max), why they need it, and what the maximum interest is they are willing to pay. It then enters a bidding process like other web sites do for hotels, airline tickets, etc., etc. Sometimes you get a hit, but if often takes several tries. From inc.com:

If a loan isn’t fully funded within the auction time frame, the borrower is free to try again. Townshend, who had an A credit rating despite $15,000 in credit card debt, struck out twice before landing a loan. Initially she offered an attractive interest rate, 12.5 percent, but asked for too much money: $25,000. On her second try, she requested $9,900, but at a less appealing rate of 11 percent. Finally, she struck the right balance, asking for $9,500 at 13 percent interest. She also made her loan description more appealing by arranging key ideas into bullet points and providing a detailed breakdown of how she planned to use the money. In three days, she received 77 bids from an array of lenders, including an engineer and a Web entrepreneur, and the loan was fully funded.

A common problem that entrepreneurs suffer from is the “If I only had the money” myth. They are sure that if they just get some money, everything will be OK. Sometimes that don’t exactly know if they really need it, or how much they need. Sometimes they really aren’t sure what they need it for. Often they have no clue how they will pay it back. But, if they just got a loan or an investment, all their problems would be solved. As the example from inc.com shows, this is no magic bullet. You still have to be realistic and have a good proposal to get money. And even with the help of sites like these, it still takes time.
The truth is that most deals are just not ready for financing, and many never will be. But, when they are, or should I say if they ever are, there is plenty of money out there these days. All that sites like these can offer is the possibility of a more efficient way to find that money.
(Thanks to Sigrid Catanzaro for passing this post idea along).

Socialized Entrepreneurship, As Only the French Can Do It

OK folks. I keep telling you that government is getting into entrepreneurship way too deep. Well here is an amazing story from the Wall Street Journal (via Government Bytes blog site — you have to be a subscriber to get the full piece from WSJ):

Formerly a 100% state-owned phone monopoly, France Telecom is trying to convert itself into a pan-European Internet and mobile-phone company. But it must navigate a technology revolution with a work force that is almost impossible to reduce by layoffs. Two-thirds of France Telecom workers have civil-servant status that guarantees them a job for life, and the rest are protected by strict French labor laws.
To encourage voluntary departures, France Telecom has subsidized a magician, backed the opening of a scuba-diving shop in Martinique and sent a promising baritone to opera school….
If the business ventures fail in the first three years, the budding entrepreneurs can return to the company. “You would not believe the number of pizzerias and other little businesses France Telecom gave birth to last year,” says Olivier Barberot, senior vice president for human resources.

So you have no risk and they promise to take you back if you fail. Now that is why I am afraid of socialized entrepreneurship!!

Taking a Short Break

I just sent an e-mail to a colleague at a small school up in Kentucky, and her bounce back said “I am out of the office for the month of August.” I guess I am not quite playing this academic gig the right way! I am only taking a week off. But, I’ll be back on Monday, August the 21st ready to go at it some more.
I have written in the past about the importance of taking some time off. Not to recharge to rejoin the battle, but because such time off it important in and of itself. Here are a few highlights from the past posts I have written about time off:
– Make sure you really get away from your work. Don’t just work on it somewhere else — like at the theme park with your kids!
– Cut the technology umbilical chord to your business. Really disconnect from all of those gadgets that keep us linked 27/7.
– Train your staff to take over when you go away.
– Engineer time for the important things beyond your business, family, friends, fun and faith, because it never “just happens.”
– Treat your vacation like a sabbatical.
– Include some time for silence.

The Anti-Capitalist Gets Some Capital

We all know the old saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
With this week’s news reported by Red Herring that Ariana Huffington’s blog just got $5 million in VC money, the new twist on that phrase should be, “Don’t feed the mouth that is about to bite your hand again!” Huffington’s blog takes me back to the 1960s with all of its anti-business, anti-capitalism vitriol.
If you don’t believe me, try this. I entered “free market” in the search engine at her site. Here is a quote from the second non-sponsor quote that came up:

Sir Keith Joseph, the father of Thatcherism whose free market principles are still followed to some extent by Tony Blair, had a form of autism that is reflected in his political philosophy, a psychiatrist believes. The former Conservative education secretary, who was Mrs Thatcher’s mentor in the 1970s and 1980s, had Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that renders sufferers unable to interpret social situations or to empathise with other people….

That’s right, the belief in free markets is the result of a mental illness. You can all play along at home. Just put in a phrase in her search engine and see what comes up, especially under the blog listings.
But what the heck. If it is a free market, I guess those investors can put money where ever they think they can make a return. Right? Oh wait — there is that nagging issue of integrity, isn’t there.