Rules For Success? – External Finance
When we created Artemis, we did it totally on our own financial resources, at least until we got going and were able to borrow what we needed commercially.
Venture capital and government funding always come with so much red tape and restrictions, that the idea gets totally strangled.
Perhaps more importantly though, is that your ideas and research may lead in a totally different direction and the external investors will probably want to keep you to the original plan.
I’ve seen both sides of external finance. In one company we had a large external shareholding and they effectively ruined the business, by trying to take the risk out of it. At least though in this case, they bought me out at a good price. But it might have been so much better for all of us.
In another case, I was the external financier and the other partners just carried on as though it was all their money. They would argue it was their idea and I should be grateful to be participating. The company went bust!
I’m not saying external finance never works and in some cases it is absolutely necessary, but if you can do without it, do so!
[Government Funding]
Rules For Success? – A Good Financial Person
Money, both getting and spending it wisely, are the two Achilles’ Heels of any business venture.
With Artemis, as soon as we could afford it, we brought our accountant, Brian, into the business full time. It was one of the most important decisions we made, as he took so much of the load we really weren’t interested in anyway. After we sold the company, Brian went on and repeated his efforts with other companies.
He also remained first friends with us all until his death a couple of months ago.
Every successful venture needs a Brian.
[The Company Joker]
Rules For Success? – A Good Bank Manager
I don’t believe they exist anymore.
Mine and the one we used for Artemis was unique. He had been on the original committee that had identified the need for LCAS, so uniquely he had a hand on our (and especially my!) technical competence.
David was a rogue too, who rose to be the Business Banking Director of Lloyds! But a rogue on the side of the angels and he became a great friend.
He’d be horrified at what has happened to banking in the past few years!
Rules For Success? – Ruthless About Costs
You can never be too ruthless about costs.
I’ve been involved in attempting to rescue several businesses, some of which had excellent technology. Often the cause of the failure was too many expensive cars in the car park of offices they counldn’t afford. But that was just the obvious signs of a company that had little or no cost control.
These days it’s so easy to build up large expense bills. But it’s also easer to cut costs in various ways.
Rules For Success? – Do Your Planning
The tools are out there, but as someone, who laid down a lot of rules in the ares of planning, costing and budgeting, it never ceases to surprise me how incompetent people are when it comes to planning engineering or technical projects. Just look at the farce of the Cambridge Busway.
Cambridge Bus Looking for the Busway
Or the Edinburgh Tram.
The Edinburgh Static Tram
[These projects give engineering a bad name!]
I was part of the team that delivered the first computerised plan to Lloyds Bank, when we were developing Artemis.
[David’s Bounce Back]
We always had a get-out plan too, so that if things went bad, we’d know how to save something.
Rules for Success? – Lawyers and Patent Agents
Like the poor, lawyers and patent agents will always be with us.
A Good Lawyer
This is my late wife. We were together for forty years and as she was a lawyer, she advised ne on how to deal with her profession.
But bear in mind often IPR lawyers and patent agents will burn more of your money than you could possibly believe. With Respimat, a third of a million went their way, although much of this was concerned with selling to a German company.
[English Law, Alternative Approach, Subsidising Patents]
Rules For Success? – The Internet
The Internet is the biggest advantage of today, when it comes to developing an idea.
I’m not a lover of things like Facebook and Twitter and think that they only have a marginal place in business.
But I’m all for blogging and would use it in two main ways.
In the first place, start a personal blog in both general areas and the are where you want to develop an idea. It gets you round the search engines and a blog is an ideal place to bring the important parts of your technology to one place.
And then when the venture goes live, use the blog as the web site, for internal discussions and even like here for presentations and useful sales and other techniques.
If WordPress can do it, then so can everybody else!
Rules For Success? – Alice’s R-Words
I’m now going to return to Alice Thomson’s quote.
The only thing that all successful people share is that they are robust, resilient and resourceful.
I will be adding some others; research, reliability and risk, regrets and remember.
Rules For Success? – Robust
The OED says this is someone with strong health and physique. I would add in mind as well.
[Coeliac, Broken Arm, Naples]
Rules For Success? – Resilient
I would define it as the ability to bounce-back from setbacks.
[Celia, George, Stroke]
The Anonymous Widower 