Young Successful Entrepreneur

Photo by Chandra

I have been working “non-stop” for 1.5 years on my startup company.  Yu-kai says we have made a little over $20,000 with Future Delivery, though I have seen very little of it.  I have made $8000 in savings last me this long, but now, I am at the brink of completely running out of money.

The previous post was about caring too much about money.  Well, not having money is WAY worse than having too much money.

It’s funny really.  After writing the “All I care about is money” post, there were a lot of people who preached on about, “If you do what you love, the money will follow.”  I’m gonna go radical here and say that that’s complete BS.  I have been working on what I love for 1.5 years and now I am running out of money.  You cannot tell me that I didn’t work hard enough; you can’t tell me that my team wasn’t strong enough.  Our team was perfect (well, we were missing a designer), and my work ethic will blow yours away.  But still, even with all of my efforts, I am completely out of cash next month.

So what to do?  No use bitching and moaning right?

Look for funding

I know looking for funding is not that easy, but work with me here.  Previously, we were looking for a valuation of $4M.  This means that for 20% of our company, an investor would pay $800,000.  Pretty decent, huh?

Well, in these tough economic times, no investor is going to give us such a pretty valuation.  So, we have the option of taking a hit with the valuation in order to get funding that will sustain the lives of our team.  We are potentially looking for $200,000 in funding for 30%-40% of our company.  It’s still not easy, but it is an option.

Money Potential: high  |  Speed to acquire money: slow (we could die before getting the funding)

Site Vitamin and ProBusiness Blogger

I have alluded to our web development and social media consulting company for a while now.  We have generated most of our revenue through Site Vitamin by developing websites for companies and promoting them online.  The problem is that everyone and their mom is a web or social media consultant.  The market just seems so saturated, and the companies so uneducated about what social media consulting is, that it is super difficult to get a high-paying client.

Our solution! We will launch ProBusiness Blogger in about 2 weeks.  I have created video tutorials that will teach companies how to utilize social media themselves without having to hire an outside consultant.  The service will be $100 a month for companies.  PBB clients will also receive 10% off all Site Vitamin services and a 1-hour consultantion with an SV consultant every month.  Pretty sweet deal, huh!

Money Potential: medium  |  Speed to acquire money: medium (just gotta convert clients)

Work for Prism Ventures

I met Peter Lee, VC at Prism Ventures, Fall of 08 and was super impressed.  Just go to his bio page on Prism Ventures and you will be impressed as well!  I know that working at a VC firm is a super long shot.  This is the kind of job that MBA graduates get after working a couple of years as an investment banker or management consultant.  But, we’re in the personal branding year, right?

So here is my plan.  I have set up a coffee chat with Peter this coming Friday.  My goal is to demonstrate my unrivaled work ethic, my ability to get things done faster than any MBA student, my creativity, and that I’m just a fun guy to work with.  I do have a few things going against me: I lack knowledge of financial modeling, I am the founder of Future Delivery which takes up most of my time, and I don’t have an MBA.

Financial Modeling: I’m going to reach out to my big bro from DSP, Jon Ma, and ask him to give me a crash course in financial modeling.  He was a investment banker at Lehman Brothers and is now in Private Equity I believe.  He is one of the most impressive Gen Y’s I have ever met.

Founder of FD: I will convincingly say that I sleep about 5-6 hours a day, which gives me ample time to work up to 40 hours a week on Prism Ventures and 86 hours on Future Delivery.  Nothing makes me happier than being productive 

No MBA: My goal, hopefully, will be to use the financial modeling I learn from Jon Ma and apply it to the portfolio companies at Prism Ventures.  I will try to write up a report valuating 5 of their companies.  If I’m unable to get their figures, then I will look into the industry, analyze 5 companies, and develop a report on these 5 companies explaining why I recommend investing in them.  Yes, it will be a lot of work considering I only have 1 day to do it.

Lastly, my wage cannot be beat.  I will work for whatever they decide to give me.  If they just decide to give me enough for gas and lunch, then I will work for that.  I feel that working alongside Peter Lee will be well worth any time or monetary sacrifices.

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So what do you guys think of our plans?  Man, if we can survive this economic crisis, we will come out ON TOP!  I still got high hopes and energy which is more than half the battle.