Mayur Jobanputra

Have a great idea for a web application or service?  Want to learn how to have your own software/webware startup?  So do I.  I don’t have all the answers right now – its only Day 0 of 30.  Only desires, innovative ideas and dreams.  Check back daily though - if the stars align and I put in an honest effort, 30 days from now I will have my own little startup and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two.   

So why day 0 and not day 1? 

There are lot of basic things about money, dreams, and wishes you might need to understand before you can go out and become a business owner.  You should realize that primarily business ownership gives you financial power and financial control over your income.  VC-funding doesn’t automatically throw money your way. You need to also understand that a VC wants to make money, just like you do.  Making this leap in how you earn income will require you to do some introspection and learning about what it really means to own a business. My thoughts and exercises below will give you some of the “fundamentals” or foundation and baseline understanding of wealth you might not be aware of.

Open your eyes

Nearly every person who works for the “man” doesn’t understand that they can be independent and do something great.  They don’t have to work for someone.  They only do cause they don’t know any other way. They often don’t know how money is made or how people become rich.  Even fewer don’t realize that the rich and financially wealthy are among us everywhere.  They are sitting in Starbucks at 11am reading a paper without a care for a “job”.  They are going the other way in rush hour traffic. They work cause they want to. They are the “man”.  For me, the eye opener was a book: Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. 

After reading the book around 6 years ago, I realized not only that I could have all my dreams come true, but that I had to.  I was meant to and if I didn’t I would die unhappy.  The book solidified a lot of the ideas I knew as a young adult but didn’t have a grasp or baseline understanding of – how people make money.  At the time, I also realized that my Business degree give me some great skills for personal success (like organization, discipline, public speaking) only – not financial success.

Keep the End in Mind

One of the exercises I went through while reading the Rich Dad Poor Dad book was calculating how much money I needed to retire. The exercise jumpstarted a renewed initiative and desire to become a business owner (ie become the “man”).  I have written my calculation below.  Give it a try.

WARNING: Be prepared to have some rather disappointing or scary realizations about your current financial situation.  Its scary, but ABSOLUTELY necessary for any startup founder or co-founder. 

Exercise 1: Come up with answers to the following:

1. At what age do you want to retire?  Don’t have the knee-jerk reaction of 65.  That’s what we, employees, punters, minions, lemmings are trained to say.  Look at your age of retirement differently: At what age would you be happy to never “need” to work again? 
2. At what age do you think you will die?  I know, its morbid but necessary for my next exercise.
3. How much money do you want to spend during your retirement years? Ensure you separate current financial ability vs your “lottery” dreams.  Keep inflation, interest and such adjustments out of the calculation for now and use today’s dollar value and buying power.

 

Exercise 2: Time to become enlightened.  Money required in bank when you retire = (Age of death – Age of retirement) X money you plan to spend each year upon retirement X expected inflation during your retirement years

Exercise 2: Money you need to SAVE each year from now until retirement = Money required in bank when you retire / (Age of retirement – Current age)

Exercise 3: Compare the money you save today vs the money you actually need for retirement.  99% of you will see a gap.

Shoot for the Moon and Think outside the box

What if money, time, and distance wasn’t a factor in your life?  Have you ever thought outside these boundaries?  Have you ever dreamed outside your financial limitations?  Do you realize that how much you make is UP TO YOU?  Try to start thinking without boundaries.  It’s not that difficult and if you want to come up with ideas that get VC attention, you need to think outside the box.  VC’s give money to leaders and founders that think it “can be done”, not “it can’t be done”. 

This is what I want

I want to be successful.  I want to be financially independent.  I want to lead and co-lead, not follow.  I want to do something great with my life.  I want to be home and playing with my children and spend time with my wife.  I don’t want the “man” to tell me when I can take a vacation.  I want to home-school my kids.  I want to contribute to those less fortunate around the world with teaching, funding, mentorship.  I want to write a book or two.  I want to travel and see the world.  I want to work hard and be rewarded financially and spiritually for it.  I want to be rich, not just for personal gain, but to share with the world.  I want to proudly share Canadian technology like water purification with developing countries.  I want to build a financially sustainable non-profit hospital with my own money and do my tiny little part to raise the standards of world healthcare.  I want to do what Bill Gates does these days – making the world a better place.  I want to learn forever and get better all the time.  I want to work with the brightest, smartest people with drive and ambition.  I want to own a company that aspires to positive motivation for employees with profit-sharing and startup mentorship for everyone.  I want to “democratize” my own experiences so that everyone can benefit.  I want to die knowing I did something great for the world.  I want to be healthy and win a triathlon.  I want to own a red Lamborghini Countach cause its the poster I had on my wall as a kid. 

I want to do all of this right now.

My history of self-employment and business ownership

In the last year or so I have made some progress in putting together and leading a software development team.  We work part-time and take on small business web design projects and things have gone well.  We closed a half dozen projects and have money in the bank.  One of my ambitions over the past year, however, was flawed and not well thought out.  I wanted to build a world-class, dead easy to use CMS that a non-technical person can produce content easily with. The total effort required is too much of a challenge when compared with off the shelf solutions. CMS tools like Wordpress, Joomla, Windows Live Writer, etc are continually becoming easier.  The mistake I made was a desire to jump in and start developing without a good understanding of what was already available for use.

My ambitions are still fundamentally around the idea that business owners have no time and need easy to use tools to product content for their web sites. I have a few ideas for VC in that regard.  I suspect that fundamental goal is where some of my future ventures are headed towards too.

Google is making life harder for me

Just putting up a site isn’t going to cut it any more - it might have worked 5 years ago.  Offline marketing, networking, press releases might drive some initial traffic your way but that strategy is generally not financially sustainable for most of my clients.  Rather, attractive, entertaining and unique content and web applications that others like using and reading is much more powerful.  It’s more important now then it ever was given Google’s Pagerank architecture which ranks pages primarily on how often others link to them. 

For most web designers and consultants, experiences are similar and most web sites are rather lackluster.  I see it both as a challenge and an opportunity.  There is still a vast population of Technology “have-nots” and I have some ideas I intend to share with a VC that .

Lets get started

Alrighty then.  You have an idea.  You are ready to start thinking about business ownership differently and you understand that the idea needs to make money.  Come back tomorrow and I will start sharing what avenues exist for Venture Capital funding and what you need to produce to get some attention.