Friday, December 16, 2011

On Political and Social Entrepreneurs; You or The Market?


Today's thoughts:


  • Political campaigns are high risk entrepreneurial ventures that make America free as compared to say—China.  For the stats scoring these ventures, Nate Silver does a great job.  (FiveThirtyEight). 
  • In the Ugandan children’s education funding project I lead, I have been working on getting resources into Bugiri district.  The last mile is always the hardest.  (Social Edge).  
  • This article just struck me as "pie in the sky."  “Forget The Stock Market; Invest in Yourself” (Fast Company). 
    • There are many non-financial thinking people in business.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Many visionary thinkers have no idea what something costs, but they come up with great ideas!
    • When you work on a venture, since there is not an unlimited supply of capital, it is a good idea to have a financial person on your team to ground the venture in a profit and loss orientation, and more importantly in a positive cash flow!
    • Why this article struck me as pie in the sky is it seems very "shoot from the hip;  trust your hunches."
    • There are many people who make statements such as  "you can do better investing in yourself than in the securities markets."  While that may be true, without quantitative measurements, investing in yourself may be gambling just as much as someone going into the stock market who does not know how to do a valuation and wants to play the casino. 
    • When you make a decision to invest in yourself, just make sure you do the numbers and project your return on investment. If you can make 8-9% in a balanced portfolio net of fees, you have to be be able to do 10% return on yourself to make it worthwhile. 
    •  This has helped many entrepreneurs from using dollars as toilet paper.

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