Диссертация (1168413), страница 34
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My point is thatwhen you need venture funding no one will give you any money until you already havea marketable product. In other words, funding comes just when you don't need it.A myth spread by business schools is that the way to start a venture is to create agreat business plan, perfect your pitch, and then present this to investors, starting withventure capitalists. If that doesn't work, you knock on the door of angel investors.But ask any entrepreneur who has called on venture capitalists and they willprobably tell you that it is almost impossible to even get calls returned. If venturecapitalists do respond and you are invited to present your idea, the process will drag onfor many months while you borrow more and survive on hope.
If you do hit the jackpot,you are required to let the investors make many of the business decisions in exchangefor an investment.To be fair, most business plans don't deserve funding. Venture capitalists receivehundreds of plans every week, and few are worth the paper they are printed on.Everyone jumps on the same new trend, or the ideas are so far out that they have nochance of success.
And great ideas aren't enough: it takes experienced management,excellent execution, and a receptive market. It's hard for even the best venturecapitalists to identify the potential successes.179So what should an entrepreneur do? What all new entrepreneurs shouldunderstand is that, even if you have a realistic business plan for a great idea that canchange the world, you need to develop it yourself until you can prove it. Focus onvalidating your idea and building it up. Raise money to get started by begging andborrowing from family and friends. And be prepared to dip into your savings and creditcards, obtain second mortgages, and perhaps look for consulting work or customeradvances.
There is no single recipe for developing your business idea yourself, but thereare some essential ingredients. Here are some pointers: Share your ideas with those whohave done it before. You can learn a lot from the experiences of seasoned entrepreneurs,and they are much more approachable than you think. If you can't find anyone who isexcited about your idea, the chances are it isn't worth being excited about.
This may betime to reflect deeply and come up with another. Speak to anyone who can help youunderstand your target customers. If you can sell your concept, some customers mayhelp you fund it or agree to be a test site or a valuable reference. Customers don'tusually know what they want, but they always know what they don't need.
Make surethat there is a real need for your product.Your idea may be grand and have the potential to change the world, but you areonly going to do this one step at a time. Look for simple solutions, test them and learnfrom the feedback. If you're starting a restaurant, work for someone else first. If you'recreating a software product, learn by doing some consulting assignments or create someutilities.
You don't have to start with the ultimate product.Focus on revenue and profitability from the start. Find creative ways to earn cashby selling tactical products, prepaid licenses or royalties. Pay employees partially instock. Look for access to free hardware or premises. And sweep the floors yourself. Inshort, use any method to avoid costs.It's going to take longer than you think. There will likely be product problems,unhappy customers, employee turnover, and lots of financial challenges. You may evenfail a number of times before you achieve your goals. By learning from each successand failure alike, you increase the odds that yon eventually make it.180Never forget the importance of business ethics and your own values.
Ethics needto be carefully sewn into the fabric of any start-up. And the only way to reach long-termsuccess is by achieving outstanding customer satisfaction.With a lot of luck and hard work you may build a successful company thatmarkets products customers really want. It is very likely that by this stage, you receivethe phone calls from venture capitalists. This is the time to think of exit strategies anddecide if you want to own a small piece of a big pie or a large piece of a small pie.Text 4I recently saw a student on a university campus wearing a T-shirt with the phrase'Future accountant'. Given the profession's traditional image problem, it must have beenironic, mustn't it?Perhaps not.
There are signs that accountancy is putting its traditional imageproblem behind it. Increasing numbers or graduates are applying to join the profession,motivated not just by the prospect of high salaries but also by a change in perception.Ironically, it is partly its association with the twenty-first century's biggest financialscandals of Enron and WorldCom that has made accountancy become, well, sexier.At the forefront of this image makeover is the specialism of forensic accounting,with its suggestion of crime scene investigators and technicians in white coats.
Inreality, a forensic accountant's work is chiefly concerned with any investigation offinancial data which will eventually be used in some form of litigation. Some of themwork for law enforcement agencies gathering evidence to support fraud and briberycharges. Others are expert witnesses who testify on either side in financial dispute cases.While it might not always be CSI Miami, forensic accountants do need to developsome special skills which relate to their roles as investigators. For instance, a forensicaccountant's work can make them crucial figures in high-profile criminal cases likeEnron, so a confident manner in court can be helpful. In addition, a systematic andanalytical mind is essential.
For example, in a fraud case, they may need to searchfinancial records thoroughly, looking tor patterns of similarities and coincidences thatmight indicate a cover-up. Imagination – not a characteristic traditionally associated181with accounting – is also part of their skill set, as they dig deeper and try to get into themind of suspected fraudsters.Although the term forensic accounting is relatively recent, the importance ofaccountants in legal matters has a long history. The most famous case in which forensicaccountancy has provided the pivotal evidence was in the conviction of Ihe notoriousChicago gangster Al Capone. While Capone's criminal activities had included protectionrackets and murder, he was finally convicted on the apparently lesser charge of taxevasion.
Elmer Irey, an official at the US Inland Revenue Service, believed thatCapone's conviction could be obtained on the basis of a Supreme Court ruling that theincome from organized criminal activity was also subject to taxation. A team ofinvestigators spent several years gathering evidence on Capone's net worth andexpenditure, sometimes working undercover as members of his criminal gang. Theyultimately succeeded in assembling the documentary evidence needed to convict him.Many believe that future demand for forensic accountancy services will only getbigger. Stories of scams and frauds emerge daily in the media, and, against thebackground of Enron and WorldCom, the problem of white-collar crime is being takenincreasingly seriously by policy-makers. The US Sarbanes-Oxley Act is just oneexample of this change in attitude.But it's not just in the area of white-collar crime that forensic accountants willfind future employment.
Terrorists require money for their activities but need to concealtheir sources of funding to avoid capture. The role of the forensic accountant will be toreveal the money trail from terrorist suspects back to their sponsors. Their importancehas recently led one senior British politician to liken forensic accountants to thefingerprint experts of previous generations.The future looks bright for accountancy, and there are enough exciting roles in theprofession to ensure that its Image is not quite what it once was.
So, in case you run intosomeone wearing a 'Future accountant' T-shirt, think before you congratulate them ontheir irony. They might just be serious.182Text 5In the name of fair trade, we are encouraged to pay more for everything fromcups of coffee and chocolate bars to cosmetics and cut flowers. For a product to becertified as fair trade, the importer selling it in the West must pay a minimum price toproducers.