Sweat Equity is the Best Equity
Mark Cuban: “The best businesses in recent entrepreneurial history are those that have been started with little or no money. Dell Computer, MicroSoft, Apple, HP and tens of thousands of others started in dorm rooms, tiny offices or garages. There weren’t 100 page long business plans. In all of my businesses, I started by putting together spreadsheets of my expenses, which allowed me to calculate how much revenue I needed to break even and keep the lights on in my office and my apartment. I wrote overviews of what I was selling, why I thought the business made sense, an overview of my competition and why my product and/or service would be important to my customers, and why they should buy or use it. All of it on a piece of yellow paper or in a word processing file, and none of it cost me more than the diet soda I was drinking while I was writing it up.”
(Name Removed by Request) on November 11th, 2004 5:27 pm
I am looking to go 50/50 in a business in Colorado, Chicago or California. My roles inlcude work as a Product Manager/Marketing Business Development manager for Fiskars Brands, Inc. and I have a strong background in sourcing from China and Europe and supply chain and related technologies, retail/wholesale distribution, consumer products and building materials. I want to build a business with a couple of outstanding people who are willing to accept equity in return for sweat. I have twice gotten in on the ground floor of two start-up businesses: one with $30MM in backing (USBN/MeetChina – a click and mortar trade facilitation business/network with China and second a mobile phone accessories business called Force Ten Wireless with $200K invested. I have learned from my mistakes “lumps” and welcome your inquiries. Keywords: sweat equity, Colorado opportunities, California Opportunity, Chicago opportunity
(Name Removed by Request) on December 5th, 2005 8:33 pm
Mark Cuban sums up the importance of acting or “executing” and not just planning. I could not agree more. But I think Mark is leaving out the timing component. Mark sold off his business just before the .com bubble burst. Those of whom that were able to cash out in time…my hat is off to you. For those poor SOB’s that had to try to turn those overvalued, quirky and mis-managed b-models into real cash earning businesses I feel for you. After leaving the e-market and China storefront developer MeetChina.com I interviewed with top management at Enron e-markets group, and ATT Wireless, and Sprint PCS to help build the carriers content acquisition offerings via web portal. Those meetings led nowhere. All they were looking for was to hype their stock price ala the Wal-Street Journal (beware the pr hype). Five years later Alibaba.com (a China emarket and strorefront developer)is partly purchased for $1BN by Yahoo!, Sprint merges with Nextel and offers music and TV downloads, and ATT offers dowloadlable ringtones.
I would say that timing is a very important factor and being first is not always a guarantee of success (ala alibaba – the vendor quality initiative was borrowed from my team at MeetChina.com)
Good luck.
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