5 Innovation and Profitability: Mirage or Reality?
Once our offer was validated and tested, we needed to find money to continue developing our business. Unlike many other start-ups, we made the decision not to raise funds immediately. Drawing on our banking experience, we preferred to rely on personal investment and organic growth generated by the sales of our product.
Instead of listening to the alluring calls of business angels, we opted for “love money,” which refers to the financial contribution from our team. This decision allowed us to maintain full control of our company and make decisions based on our own goals and strategies.
Certainly, external financing could have provided faster growth opportunities, but it would have also carried risks such as loss of control and flexibility. We chose not to succumb to this temptation, preferring to stay the course and be masters of our own destiny.
Some might argue that we made a mistake by refusing investor funds, but personally, I have never regretted this decision. Over time, I observed other start-ups that had raised funds and later had to close their doors, resulting in employee layoffs.
I preferred to take a cautious approach by ensuring the profitability of our business from the start. This decision was encouraged by one of my friends, Nagi who had achieved tremendous success over 30 years ago with his intuition about the value of voice recognition. He had built his company without ever raising funds and later sold it for millions.
Nagi encouraged me from the beginning of the start-up with wise advice, sharing some of his extensive experience: a lot of determination, great clarity, and mental strength to pursue success.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 France License