From the Front Lines: Focus Focus Focus

In response to my farm team blog post, Ali Asaria (CEO, well.ca) sent me an email to discuss the comings and going of his baby, well.ca.  With his permission, I’ve lifted a chunk of that email which I believe every start-up entrepreneur should probably tape above their bathroom sink so it is seen every morning:

“The lack of access to capital has forced us to build an extremely lean and efficient operation. It is insanely stressful -- we have to synchronize our paying distributors and paying payroll and I literally look at the bank account every single day. But this constraint has also forced us to scrap R&D early if it doesn't seem like it will bring revenue, it has forced us to make the most accurate financial reporting possible (because every percentage point counts), and it has honed within the entire team a culture of "do more with less". That's why becoming profitable was so important to us as a team. Lack of capital made us a better company -- it created features of our company that are now key assets. I think we would still have been a good company if we had access to lots of money -- but I think that's what good CEO's do -- they turn all situations into opportunities.”

Amen.  Here’s to one of Canada’s shining stars.

Comments

[Brian Sharwood]

Here here on Ali's comments! We understand that completely at HomeStars. I assume Ali, like us, has probably ended up with minimal SRED tax credits because the focus is on growing the business - sales and marketing comes first. We watch the bottom line as close as one can, and watch every penny - making sure we optimize every sales dollar and every marketing dollar.
That's what makes a good entrepreneur.

[Austin Hill]

Great comment by Ali that is very true. Entrepreneurs often forget the idea that "it takes pressure to create diamonds", not unlimited resources & room to grow.

One of the biggest lessons we learned at Zero-Knowledge was the high cost of having access to large amounts of capital at very low cost. We raised $47 million USD at valuations that were record breaking, but not sustainable by the business. This shifted our decision making to a 'get big quick' mentality that had us expanding in too many directions before we had established a strong core business.

It was only once we reduced our headcount by 200 people (very painfully) and were forced to focus on core business with many constraints on what we could do that we found the strategy that would shape Radialpoint (successor to ZKS). Radialpoint today continues to be Canada's fastest growing software company, very profitable and a market leader specifically because of the dot.com crash.

I'm excited to see a new generation of entrepreneurs learning these lessons early in their companies history. The great companies of Canada's tomorrow are being built today and the economic downturn is their best friend.