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Page 112 GO IT ALONE!
businesses don’t fail; they simply run out of time.” The classic start-up races against time—either to reach cash flow break-even before the company runs out of money or to make sufficient progress so that the company can convince additional investors to fund the next round of corporate development.
If you can create a business that is profitable from the start, or quickly thereafter, you have taken the greatest enemy of any start-up—time—and turned it from a foe into an ally. Once you are self-sustaining, there is, of course, an ongoing pressure to develop the business. Nonetheless, you can focus on building the business appropriately, as opposed to being constantly concerned about the very viability of the enterprise. The basic formula of limited investment, extreme outsourcing, and live customers before you give up your day job is geared toward making the business cash flow positive as quickly as possible, which is the first real step in establishing long-term viability.
Case Study: David Bests Goliath in Building a Market for Freelance Employees
One example of a go-it-alone firm that succeeded by focusing on building a cash-positive sustainable business is Emoon-lighter.com. In any story about the freelance work space in 1998, Emoonlighter.com, which was started in the basement of Inder Guglani and subsequently raised $400,000, would unquestionably have been described as David. Guru.com, which raised over $63 million dollars, would be the story’s Goliath. Ultimately, Emoonlighter.com’s disciplined approach succeeded, and in 2003 the company bought the assets of Guru.com, which exhausted its full $63 million dollars in funding. With the purchase, Emoonlighter.com adopted the moniker of the better known Guru.com, and it now operates under this name.
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GO IT ALONE! Copyright 2004 by Bruce Judson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
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