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.

Making a Move

Planning for space can be a major challenge for growing businesses. The bootstrapping in all of us tries to avoid taking on too much space which inflates overhead costs. The swashbuckling entrepreneur in all of us wants to take on lots of extra space to accommodate all of the growth that we know is in our futures. My partners and I wrestled with this several times. In our first few moves we thought we had plenty of room for growth, only to find that by the time we moved in, we had almost outgrown the space. In a couple of later moves and market expansions, we over-estimated the growth potential and had to eat the added overhead our higher rents created.
An issue that often gets lost in this internal debate is the cost and hassle of simply moving a business. The move can be disruptive to business operations and can hurt worker productivity. Depending on the type of business and the nature of the move, the logistics can become a nightmare. What is interesting, is that the same disruptions can occur even when a business rearranges the space they already have.
StartupJournal offers some advice on how to make a move as painless as possible — not pain free, but maybe not as bad as it could be for all concerned.

Office relocation — even a move to a different desk — can stir up a mix of emotions. The key to successfully moving a business, or within a business, is in how the move is presented to employees, experts say.

This is good advice. Employees need to have “ownership” over the move as much as possible. If they do, they will go a long way to making the move smooth, quick, and relatively easy.

Future of Small Business

I had the pleasure of spending the day yesterday at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, CA, participating with a diverse group of people who care deeply about small business. Our participation is part of a project they are working on to try and forecast the future of small business in the US over the next ten years. I look forward to sharing the results of this project sometime in the near future. In the interim, I would welcome your thoughts on trends that will be shaping small business and what the future of small business looks like to you.
By the way, one of the participants in this discussion was Anita Campbell, one of my favorite bloggers. She hosts Carnival of the Capitalists at one of her blogs, Selling to Small Business. It was a highlight of this trip that I finally got to meet Anita in person. We have commented on each others’ blogs, e-mailed, and talked on the phone. But, even in the world of the wired, there is still something special about meeting face-to-face, shaking hands, and having an old fashioned conversation.

Self-interest Revisited

One of the most common criticisms of free market economic policies centers around the notion of self-interest, which is at the heart of free market economic theories like those espoused by Milton Friedman. These critics offer a cynical view of self-interest, likening it to greedy, self-absorbed behavior.
So what would Milton Friedman say about this? He addressed the issue of self-interest in a recent interview with Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.

(S)elf-interest is what the individual wants. Mother Teresa, to take one example, operated on a completely self-interested basis. Self-interest does not mean narrow self-interest. Self-interest does not mean monetary self-interest. Self-interest means pursuing those things that are valuable to you but which you can also persuade others to value. Such things very often go beyond immediate material interest….If you want to see how pervasive this sort of self-interest is that I’m describing, look at the enormous amount of money contributed after Hurricane Katrina. That was a tremendous display of self-interest: The self-interest of people in that case was to help others. Self-interest, rightly understood, works for the benefit of society as a whole.

So, the entrepreneur who starts her business because she enjoys building a business that creates good jobs is acting out of self-interest. The entrepreneur who starts his business to bring to market a better way to treat a disease is acting out of self-interest. The entrepreneur who starts her business to establish a culture that is a more family-friendly place to work is acting out of self-interest.
The entrepreneurs I work with define success in terms of the common good more often than in terms of their own financial rewards. Sure, they all want to make money. But, they start their businesses for so many more reasons than just creating profits. Their self-interests are much broader than themselves.
The key to this all working properly is that these entrepreneurs must be acting from a strong moral core. Strong values and good character don’t just happen. They are developed, nurtured, and reinforced in families and communities by a strong culture that is based on common values.
However, over the past fifty years we have been abdicating what was once the domain of our shared values–our culture–to government policy, laws and regulations. What is left is a culture that is a shell of what it once was. We are moving toward a society in which government tells us what we can and should do. We are no longer responsible for our own acts. It is becoming a society that does not trust that man, acting freely, will act in a just and magnanimous manner within a strong culture that nourishes his inherent goodness.

Kind of Getting it Right?

This post comes to you from Palo Alto, California, where I am attending a forum on the future of small business.
I got to my room and started to look at today’s USA Today, which had a special section on small business. I was pleased to see that the main stream media is starting to get entrepreneurship right. The special section seemed to have a good overview of what it takes to be an entrepreneur. This was nice to read, as the media still doesn’t seem to always “get” entrepreneurship.
They highlight that entrepreneurs are after more than just money. This is a big leap, as the media seems to still be fixated on those who make the biggest fortune. They also seem to get risk-taking: “would-be entrepreneurs are calculated risk takers.” Also good to read, as they too often glamorize the extreme, and often careless risk-takers.
But, then I see that while they admit that “a college degree doesn’t hurt,” they go on to say that Bill Gate didn’t finish college. Blah, Blah, Blah. The data shows that he is the exception. Success rates go up dramatically for those who get educated in the entrepreneurial process. At this point I am beginning to worry that they are going back to their old ways.
Then they make a slip as bad as Mel Gibson’s. They run one of those hokey quizzes that has “ten questions” to see if you are “an entrepreneur.” YIKES! Just when I thought they were beginning to get it right…..
I guess that is why I keep blogging…..