[Business] (dark?) Angels of Business
To all the victims of the tsunami.. may your souls be at rest.
Inc.com has a story about angel investing, and how this landscape has changed. In an earlier post, I wrote about VC’s and how their expectation horizon has changed (maybe I was off the mark a bit - but Ed Sim actually commented back!! Thanks Ed..). The fact remains that VC’s and angels alike are pushing for faster exits. The company in which I work currently (in the EDA industry), is a small company of 100 employees. We are still taking investments from VC’s, but I sense a vibe of edginess as people anticipate sell-off conspiracies.
For example, the Inc.com story talks about a second time entrepreneur who is being pressured to exit in 5 years. So what does it say for a guy who wants to build a sustainable enterprise? In my country, all the biggest industrial houses (with revenues of almost a billion) - Infosys, Reliance, Bharti - were built from scratch. However, they were not sold off to, say SAP, Exxon-Mobil, Vodafone respectively. I guess its because of the inertia in our culture, and not in a bad way.
I think that is one of the biggest deterrent that international investors find in India. There is a lesser chance of scoring a hit-and-run here than it is in, say China. I belong to the generation that has seen India transition from a mostly hand-to-mouth economy to the world’s fourth largest. I believe this has taught me, atleast, to focus on sustainable enterprise, rather than make a fast buck. Bu most importantly, my field does not let me have a “positive cash flow in 12-18 months”.
Does that mean that I have no chance of getting angel investors? I think so. which is why it becomes important to find rich and smart friends. ( note to self: Ph.D. or MBA ???) I think industries which are more rigorous tech rather than nice customer-centric toys (forgive me flickr), will just see a handful of angels (hence the rich friends)