Ankur
When I started my first cnpamoy, two folks from the traditional business lines were directors. They expressed a certain degree of shock when we presented them with a profit on the first year, with zero debt and only enough capital to buy four machines and a printer.They said they always believed in the kosher-3-year law that any business needs to be given three years to make a profit.Of course there are excesses in the other direction too. One such traditional businessman invested a couple crores setting up a 80 seater call center complete with machines, call equipment, internet lines etc. and got this manager to try and get him business. Because of the traditional thinking he didn't bother about the mounting losses, or with things like utilisation rates or any metrics believing that it would take three years. He had to let it go at less than book value (luckily the property appreciated enough for him to recover a little bit)A lot of people get complacent when you tell them building businesses take time. an interesting thought is to ask that all people take loans to build their businesses even if it's a personal loan and you already have the money. The idea is: the loan must only be repaid by cash flow from the business. (any intermediate payments made by you are added to the cnpamoy's loan) If in X years the cash flow has not paid off the loan, you need to get the heck out.After running a startup for seven years and not really going places, I've seen a little bit of the other side how inertia can take a toll on business.
Ankur When I started my first cnpamoy, two folks from the traditional business lines were directors. They expressed a certain degree of shock when we presented them with a profit on the first year, with zero debt and only enough capital to buy four machines and a printer.They said they always believed in the kosher-3-year law that any business needs to be given three years to make a profit.Of course there are excesses in the other direction too. One such traditional businessman invested a couple crores setting up a 80 seater call center complete with machines, call equipment, internet lines etc. and got this manager to try and get him business. Because of the traditional thinking he didn't bother about the mounting losses, or with things like utilisation rates or any metrics believing that it would take three years. He had to let it go at less than book value (luckily the property appreciated enough for him to recover a little bit)A lot of people get complacent when you tell them building businesses take time. an interesting thought is to ask that all people take loans to build their businesses even if it's a personal loan and you already have the money. The idea is: the loan must only be repaid by cash flow from the business. (any intermediate payments made by you are added to the cnpamoy's loan) If in X years the cash flow has not paid off the loan, you need to get the heck out.After running a startup for seven years and not really going places, I've seen a little bit of the other side how inertia can take a toll on business.