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Culture of Secrecy
How can companies still think what they do is top secret. Note I’m not talking about intelligence, research or military organizations here. I mean general competitive businesses in a competitive marketplace. How many of the projects we’ve been sworn to keep secret really needed or benefited from that? How many top secret projects failed to…
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Entrepreneurs Should be Reading Anthill
If you are an entrepreneur of any age and any stage you should be reading Australian Anthill magazine. For 24 issues now, this bi-monthly magazine has covered entrepreneurs, angels, VC’s and the startup scene in Australia. They’ve grown readership and circulation and are entrepreneurs themselves. Business is a crazy rollercoaster ride and there is a…
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“Crazy John” Ilhan Dead at 42
Crazy John’s founder John Ilhan dead at 42. The Aussie mobile phone entrepreneur was estimated by BRW to be worth $310 million. I’m stunned at the moment, the news reports say he died of an apparent heart attack while walking this morning. Looking at his recent philanthropic efforts I think he died too soon. It…
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Private Company Valuations
An unreal valuation is a price that a strategic investor pays because they have non financial objectives. – Fred Wilson A VC via twitter That really puts the concept of the Strategic Sale succinctly. When the fit of the vendor’s business to the acquirer is so compelling, that traditional accounting based measures are not sufficient.
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Why do an MBA?
Surely that’s a dumb question to be asking myself right now. I had to answer it on the application. I’ve committed the money and time to it. I’ve even started the first course – Accounting and Financial Management. That first course is looking to be as easy as I thought. Which on one level really…
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Acquiring a private company
I’ve been negotiating the potential acquisition of a private industrial company. All the details are covered by a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t provide a case study (yet). At this point in time the deal is not going through once we asked the target what their price expectation was. The target has retained the services…
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Theory of Constraints spelling
Yeah I misspelled Theory of Constraints in my rush to post earlier. I don’t normally spell it Thoery of Contraints. I thought I’d add another point that I learned from The Goal. In business accounting Inventory is an asset, which normally means it is a good thing. However inventory must be insured, counted, protected and…
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Theory of Constraints
I got a question on my mention of Theory of Constraints (TOC) in an earlier post. As my factory production has reached capacity, my most critical goal is to introduce TOC into my production facility. I first heard of the Theory of Constraints in the book The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox.…
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Deal with the Micro Manager
A former CEO of mine was a micromanager. I knew this before I took the job as the company was a client for a couple of years. Socially, I like my boss and we’ve know each other for many years. I’d even call us friends. Given my interest in entrepreneurship, I have strong feelings against…