No Money, No Business

I heard this from a fellow entrepreneur friend of mine and believe it, this has been my guiding force when I started MIRC and MAD Incubator; and of course, this friend puts it succintly in just a few words. I thouhgt I should share this with you.

'No money, no business" is not referring to raising venture capital. One can start a business without much capital, like I did. This is all about getting sales. I started MAD Incubator with sales even before the company was operational. The moral of the story is "If you cannot find where the money is, then there is really no business". This should be the guiding principle.

A lot of our entrepreneurs today tend to think that they need to rely on grants or venture capital to start a business. I don't think this is the right approach. A lot of today's successful entrepreneurs started with no or little capital. Some even started with huge liabilities...like Tony Fernandes (Air Asia).

It all boils down to hard work, understanding where your revenues are coming from and how fast you can drive revenues into your business.

So, for budding entrepreneurs out there, time to think about this. If you cannot drive revenues fast, chances are, you are not going to succeed. An idea will remain an idea if it is not in business. Waiting on grants and venture capital without starting the business, is a waste of time. Chances are, you will not grow or succeed.  

Start the business, no matter how small it is. Test out your ideas, market it and see how it works. Fine tune the model and when you have collected enough data; you will be ripe for investment.