My Future Plans

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

- Henry David Thoreau

I have had this urge to startup when I first read the book Built To Last given to me by Trilogy during TU2K and I have been dreaming about it ever since. Over the next five years, the urge to start up grew stronger and the dreams became more vivid. My intention is to turn those dreams into reality.

While there is no specific reason to do it now, now is as good a time as any other. I am twenty-six and something, single and have reasonable financial security given my frugal ways and a retirement nest egg approaching one followed by seven zeroes. There are only a few things I want in life and running my own business is one of them. And its time I started doing something about it.

Financing for Startup:

I am planning to raise a corpus in the range of twenty lakhs to hundred lakhs and I have written a document that talks about the specifics of financing for my start up. If you are interested in investing in my startup, please let me know and I can email this document to you.

Ideas for Startup:

After going through the financing doc, if you are happy with the terms of investing and the expected returns, you could take a look at the start up ideas I have and evaluate the ideas before you actually invest.

Exit Plan:

While I have no intension of exiting the business, I have to be realistic about it and think of a meaningful exit plan if things don’t work out. I have given Trilogy five years of my life so it is only fair that I give myself five years of time to make something of this startup. At the end of five years if I am not satisfied with the state of the business, I will sell the business, return the money to investors and go to Stanford Graduate School of Business.

But what I would really like to do is: In the next five years, make this is start up a viable, dynamic enterprise, pass on the leadership to great entrepreneurial managers whom I trust and admire and then go to Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Request to Investors:

If you do plan to invest in my startup, and if the startup could reasonably service a need of yours, I request you to give your business to the startup. A specific example would be: if the start up is mutual fund retailing agency and you do plan to invest in mutual funds, I request you to go through the start up for your mutual fund needs. If you are not happy with the service, please let me know and we’ll fix it ASAP and if you are satisfied with the service please let others know.

Wish me luck :-) I need it!

Thanks!
RK