On Entrepreneurship with Radu Georgescu
Radu Georgescu has founded GeCAD Software in 1992. The company provided an antivirus and security solution named RAV (Romanian AntiVirus), which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003 for an undisclosed sum, estimated between 10 – 20 million dollars.
Here is some of his advice to young entrepreneurs:
Exit
Start your company out of passion, but don’t neglect long-term strategy. Developing a family business you plan of passing on to your children and developing a company for an exit entail two different development strategies.
Entrepreneur or CEO
Don’t try do be both a manager, and a founder. Accept the idea you can’t be the best at everything. You’ll waste time trying to learn sales, marketing, book keeping, PR, development and many others, and you won’t make it. Choose the best people for every field and let them do their job (also you might want to set some targets and expectations they are supposed to meet).
You Get What You Give
Don’t be greedy. An investor getting a 1% share will give you a 1% involvement, so you gain nothing.
Learn From Failures
For all the projects launched, Radu Georgescu had a success rate of 25%. Failures are important lessons of what doing business is all about (which is different than what writing good code is all about). Accept them as part of the road to success, as they come as a bitter/sweet package.
Negotiate
Don’t reject investors right from the start. Even if you don’t plan on doing an exit soon, see what they want, how much they are willing to pay. Talking to experienced investors can help you see what your business’ weak points are and find a solution to grow stronger. Don’t jump on the first offer you get. After negotiation, you might be surprised to see that the final offer is tens to hundreds of times the initial offer.
To Focus or Not to Focus
Focusing on a single project is a good thing, but it doesn’t hurt to have several possible options to chose from. This way, when one of your projects fails, you’ll have at least one that works.
Do You Really Need Funding?
Not everyone needs investors to start a business, you may want to try and make it self-sustainable first. Before launching on the market “The Big Product”, see what you could sell to support your startup. Sell a piece of your product, sell a “Smaller Product”, don’t wait seven years to develop to develop a mind blowing technology, just to discover that no one is willing to pay for it.
Networking
You can’t grow by yourself. You need to be connected to the business environment around you. Meet as many people as you can and, if you are lucky, 0.5% of them will help you grow.
