Meet the Team, Follow Progress and Enjoy the Ride

This blog is about the lives of a few entrepreneurs who are aiming to establish the next trend in social networking and the concept that will make it happen. Since our venture is all about connecting people together, we want to be involved and connected to you and we want you to be involved and connected to us. We'll be sharing with you: who we are, how we got started, how we’re doing and where we’re going...we're taking you along for the ride!!

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Money and Goals


Do you know your financial goals and are you doing what it will take to have that check written with the desired amount? My wife, Ruth, and I believe we will be financially free within the next eight years, and I would go so far as to bet my life on it. We view Why Go Solo and all its potential as one of the vehicles by which we will achieve our Goals. Now, I understand we have not been able to divulge much information on our venture and how it will positively impact millions of people once presented to the world. But if you hang in there until this fall all will be revealed.

Why Go Solo is currently raising equity and that will have an impact on how soon it will take us to reach our end point. Will we reach our end point is not a question we are willing to entertain.

Ann and I met with the firm who is raising capital for this venture Friday night and we had a very interesting conversation with the CFO of the firm. My question for this firm (and any other firm that raises money for start ups) is always, “why go with us?” The capital raising firm we contracted with has been in business for over 30 years, has endless sources for money, an abundance of start up companies to choose from, and is not in the business of wasting their time on bad people and/or bad concepts.

There reply to my question: “we work with businesses where the concept can be easily understood and used by many people.” This made perfect sense because Why Go Solo fits that bill to a “T”. The CFO went on to give an example, “we would prefer raising money for a pen that looks nice and can have screen printing done to it for impact rather than raising money for a spring manufacturer that sells springs that fit in the pens. In other words, the pen can be understood by almost anybody and will be used by millions of people, and the spring can mainly be offered to pen manufacturers.

I understand that there are plenty of start ups with widget inventions that are coming to market in very specific industries, but that is not the focus of our capital raising firm or Why Go Solo. We feel that finding the right firm will get us what we need to achieve our end point. Everyone wins at that point (especially the millions of people we will be serving). Martin Saenz

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update Martin. I'm following your efforts from a distance and from your abbreviated mission statement believe you have picked a great niche.

You probably have much more experience than me, so factor that in to your thoughts on my comments.

I have been involved in three startups and did very well with two of them. The third was a disaster. The most important thing I learned in the failure was the importance of a sound exit strategy, with checks and balances and trigger points.

We could have won big with my failure, but a much larger company with many more resources chose our niche and our exit strategy could have made us whole. Our exit strategy was woefully inadequate and it was a tough lesson.

Good luck to you, and I'll be watching from afar with interest.

Trik out.

Martin Saenz said...

Appreciate your comments and I'm really interested in where you are at now. Are you still in the "game" or did you give in to corporate america? Also, what areas were the start ups in? Martin

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your interest Martin.

I'm officially out of the 'game' for now. Although I'm always looking for the next venture, I currently make my living as a freelance project manager for custom systems and software client projects. I do well with this and have a strong client base and crew of subs I use to build teams.
My start-up ventures were pre-Web2.0 and so it's easy for me to get excited about the turn things have taken.

My background is mainly software and systems.