Food for Thought

The three most important aspects for a start up to consider are probably staffing, business model, and financing are. Bad planning and implementation in any one of them has the power to sink even the brightest of concepts. Sure, cashflow is king, we all know that, so not much to say other than plan with plenty of time to spare, double the costs and extend the time to revenue a fair bit more. Cash hardly ever comes in according to plan. Your business model is the backbone of your business. If it doesn't add up, you are going nowhere fast. Even if you have your financial structure in place with all the required contingency plans, and a fantastic business model ready for implementation, the people you sign up will determine the fate of your enterprise. Sure, we all know that skills and experience are essential aspects, and in general 'acquiring the right CVs' is (usually) a straight forward exercise where success is related to the financial strength of the s

In the old days, not so so long ago actually, wisdom passed from generation to generation. Knowledge was in low supply compared to today, and advice from the elderly was listened and valued. One of my strongest movie scene memories from my childhood is from a Wild West movie where an old and a young Cherokee Indians/native Americans were sitting by the fire and the old man said: "All the words that were ever said are still in the air". I was around 12 at the time, and probably at the right age to go into months of thinking about that line. Was he referring to spirits? Or was it about the acoustic energy not being transformed? In any case, I learnt quite a lot from trying, rather unsuccessfully, to figure that one out. The shortage of what I call high-intensity information like this scene when we were young allowed us time to go into deeper thought about what we heard, but children today cannot afford this reasoning time. They are bombarded with all kinds of information, a