evaluate the business model first before risking their money on the enterprise. I also learnt a few things that investors look for before funding a business.įor example, I realized that investors in the U.S. This prompted me to question my belief that I do not need a college degree to become a successful entrepreneur. In addition, I lacked the knowledge and skills required to run the business. Again, my lack of a marketing background meant that I could not give the investors a fairly good estimate of the market size, the level of competition, and the things that we would do differently from the competition. For the lack of a marketing background, I could not give a good account of the strategies my business would employ. From this analysis, I realized that investors lost interest in my company because my idea not fully developed to make business sense.įor instance, the financial and marketing sections of the business plan were too weak. For example, from the conversations that I had with the investors, I noticed that there were four things that they were interested in: my ability to control costs, my ability to generate enough profit to meet the returns they needed, my knowledge of financial planning and my knowledge of market operations. This is the point when I became conscious of the things that kept on failing me. I was determined to put failure on a back seat. I had to find the reasons for my failure so that I would not keep on repeating the same mistakes. I had to dig deep in order to get the solution to my failure. I had to analyze my situation and note the things that kept on failing me. In order to move forward, I had to ask why I kept on failing all the time even when I gave my best.
In addition, the investors that I approached could not give the capital that I needed because my business plan did not give clear details about some important business information. For example, the organizations that I applied grant from would not give me grants because they wanted a small business in operation and not a start-up. Although I had tried severally to raise capital for my business, nothing was working. This is the point when I realized that my framework had reached a crossroad. From my superficial analysis, my lack of business knowledge was the biggest weakness. Again, my failure to succeed was not because I was not trying hard enough I simply lacked the knowledge and skills to make my business a success. I had a good idea, but it was not thought out well. For example, it turned out that my idea was not well developed business-wise.
When I began to look back in retrospect, I found some interesting points about my business idea. As a result, I was willing to push my idea even further because I did not believe entrepreneurs should give up. At this point, I began to question the viability of my idea.ĭespite these setbacks, I rationalized my inability to get investors to believe in me as normal failure that occurs to every entrepreneur. In addition, I did not have the knowledge and skills required to successfully run the business. I did not have clear answers to these questions, and this prompted me ask questions about my paradigm. In addition, the investors would also be interested in profit generation, competition, marketing and distribution of the product. However, whenever I approached them, the investors would ask questions about the management plan and the means to be used to control costs. As a result of these frustrations, I decided to try my luck with angel investors. For example, the business section did not have a clear plan for marketing my product. In addition, the organizations offering the grants did not consider my application because my business plan was too weak and lacked concise information on several accounts. Most of the grants offered were for small businesses already in operation. As a result, I applied for small business grants but no one was willing to risk their money on a start-up. However, although I came up with the idea of starting a media company called EV1, I did not have any capital to actualize the idea. I choose to pursue my dream of starting a business. After completing high school education, I decided not to join college. As I came to realize, this was my undoing. My initial beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions informed my decision not to attend college.
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