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Why Bootstrap Your Business ?

June 13, 2014 Leave a comment

wealthymatters These days, it’s very fashionable to have a business “funded” by an investor or venture capital firm.But this is almost always a bad idea. Bootstrapping your business is usually the better alternative.

Bootstrapping is starting and growing a business using your existing resources.

Bootstrapping doesn’t mean you’re excluded from investing any of your own cash. It also doesn’t mean that you must remain a one-person company for eternity, or that you have to settle for meager revenues and profits.It simply means growing your business using your existing resources instead of going out and raising a bunch of money from other people. It means growing organically.

If your #1 goal is to build something enormous and world-changing as quickly as possible, bootstrapping may not be a good choice. But if your primary goal is to build a profitable business that you will ultimately control, bootstrapping is almost always your best option. Here’s why:

Cash Alone Rarely Solves Problems Read more of this post

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Chinese Proverbs For Entrepreneurs

July 29, 2012 9 Comments

wealthymatters 1. “In every crisis, there is opportunity.”

Most entrepreneurial ventures arise from a solving a problem. If you are faced with a problem, craft a solution and sell that solution to others.

2. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

Entrepreneurship starts with an idea and ends with a destiny. You craft your destiny with your actions, habits and character. You make your destiny, it doesn’t make you.

3. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Aside from 20 years ago, there is no better time to start a business than today.

4. “If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want ten years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want one hundred years of prosperity, grow people.”

The goal of every entrepreneur should be to start a business and find capable people to run the business so that they don’t have to. Read more of this post

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Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-The Rare(ing) Bull

April 27, 2011 9 Comments

Rakesh Radheysham Jhunjhunwala is a famous Indian stock investor.He lives in Malabar Hills with his wife Rekha ,daughter Nishtha and twin sons Aryaman and Aryaveer and works from his office at Nariman Point in South Mumbai. He regularly appears on various business channels on television to share his ideas and opinions on the Indian markets. He is well-known in investing circles as ‘Rocky’ and among his close associates as ‘Bhaiyya’.He is considered to be India’s Warren Buffett. In 2010, Forbes rated him India’s 51st and the world’s 1062nd richest man with a net worth of $1.0 billion.He is the first dollar billionaire from India to have made his fortune primarily from the stock markets.

He considers Mr Radhakrishnan Damani as his guru (mentor) and best friend.He counts Kamal Babu, Ramesh Damani and Kamal Kabra as friends.He manages his own portfolio as a partner in his asset management firm, Rare Enterprises (Ra-Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, Re- Rekha Jhunjhunwala).“The sheer passion for markets and the ability to do what I enjoy is what inspires me,” says Jhunjhunwala. He has been asked to manage other people’s money, but prefers the freedom of not having to answer to anybody, and has thus turned all offers down.Rakesh does not try to beat the market as opposed to investment managers who have to answer to a lot of people, and hence look at indicators like how much alpha — or returns in excess of the general market — they are generating. “The only person that I have to answer to is my wife, and she just wants to know what the absolute returns are, not whether I am beating the market”. He expects the market to do very well as he believes that India is at the beginning of an unprecedented multi-decade bull run.Obviously he believes in putting his money where his mouth is as he owns only Indian equities.There are 7-8 stocks that make up 80% of his portfolio, and his holding period stretches from 3 years to 10. Read more of this post

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The Perfect Business

March 1, 2011 3 Comments

The best and easiest way to make money either as a businessperson or an investor is to get hold of an as near to perfect business as possible.The best businesses have the following features:

High profitability. If the business provides customers a product or service they need or want very much, and only this business can provide it, and there are few substitutes available then this firm can charge a premium price far above the costs it incurs.
High returns on capital. A business with high margins ceases to be very attractive if it is very capital intensive and requires massive amounts of capital to launch and/or remain in business. The greatest businesses require little or no money to start, can grow without major additions of capital, and do not require much maintenance cap ex.
An enormous moat. To ensure high margins and return on capital in the future it’s critical for a business to have major competitive advantages that are unlikely to dissipate over time. The key here is lack of change .Rapid change as in the hi- tech sector,benefits consumers but is very bad for investors. To quote Warren Buffett, “We see change as the enemy of investments… so we look for absence of change. We don’t like to lose money. Capitalism is pretty brutal. We look for mundane products that everyone needs…. I guarantee that Coke, Wrigley’s , and Gillette will dominate. The Internet won’t change what brands people like.”
Profitable reinvestment opportunities. The greatest businesses can reinvest their robust free cash flows back into the business at equally high rates of return on capital. Consider this: Warren Buffett has often lamented the fact that See’s Candies has never been able to expand much beyond its historical West Coast markets. It’s a fabulous company and was one of his best acquisitions ever, but the inability to reinvest its free cash flows back into growing its operations makes it an inferior business to, say, Wrigley, which has been able to grow globally over the years. Read more of this post