Lessons of Business in…The New Millennium
In the early 90's, we were told that the Internet would revolutionize business. Gone were the days of needing a physical office space to build a business worthy of changing an industry. Telecommuting was the way of the future.
Poppycock.
I'm part of a business that has no office. All of our employees and contractors work from their homes. We have a web site, we take orders, we have a dozen phone lines that route calls from house to house, and we communicate all day long via email and instant messaging. Dozens of orders are processed throughout the day and I have gone for months without seeing some of the people I work with. However, as we get ready to expand our operations into new markets, we have started telling our story to investors. When we tell them about the technology we use and how it allows us to all work from our homes without a single bit of office overhead, we get wide-eyed grins of interest. BUT, what they haven't yet come to grips with is that the majority of our success comes from the intellectual property that has been gathered to create this type on environment.
What is it worth? Not much, it appears.
You see, unless you have an office and have had to go out and purchase IKEA desks and Herman Miller chairs, fake plants, and a fridge full of stocked goodies, you don't really have anything. If you don't have a physical address and a big boardroom table, you don't have much of a company. (at least that is the general sentiment) Maybe this is what was wrong with the “dotcom boom”. In order to prove their success, many companies created a false front with just 'some man' behind the curtain. I wonder what would have happened if they had started these companies to prove their concept first, before they went off and cashed those big checks.
So, for those of you who are in the process of starting new businesses, I encourage you to not bank on receiving funding for “the next great idea”. Instead, if you've built a better mousetrap, you're gonna have to survive on your own for now. Indeed, there is money to be made from that better mousetrap – BUT, it must be able to actually catch those mice. The proof is in the results, not in the plan.
In these times, if your company is truly “lean and mean” you can only survive if you are hungry and resourceful enough to do it on your own.