Soon after David Riedel lost his job two years ago as an equity analyst at Salomon Smith Barney in a wave of layoffs on Wall Street, his entrepreneurial juices kicked in.
He knew that more investors, in the wake of a research scandal, were looking for advice at small, independent research firms with no conflicts of interest that could taint their reports. He knew that he had valuable expertise about a part of the world that American securities firms generally did a poor job of covering. And he knew that the Internet could deliver tools that would have been unimaginable a few years earlier.
All he needed to translate that knowledge into a money-making opportunity was a tolerance for risk. So, with $200,000 in capital, he started the Riedel Research Group in May 2003 in his seventh-floor loft apartment in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood.
A little more than a year later, he has signed up six clients to pay $60,000 a year for research about companies in Southeast Asia, written by analysts he recruited there. He says he is confident he will reach his goal of 30 subscribers within a year. He also says that, given the generally lower compensation costs in Asia and the free tools offered by the Internet, his revenues already cover his overhead costs.
Mr. Riedel’s swift transition from Wall Street reject to successful business owner illustrates the power of the Internet to propel people with specialized expertise into global entrepreneurs.
via Drakeview, where John Dmohowski adds his thoughts, including this beautiful equation:
(Opportunity + Domain Expertise + Circumstance + Market) x Internet = Successful Start-up.