If you’re reading this article, it’s probably because you are sitting in your cubicle thinking about starting a business – your own thing - but probably haven’t quite gotten to the “start’ part yet. First of all, that’s OK. Second of all, you can start today.
We want to get you past your own road blocks by learning about how others have actually started a business. “I’m too busy with a special project at work. I’ll start next month”. “I’d rather quit next summer and try doing my idea fulltime! It will work.” No. No. no. If you to start something, something you own, there is probably a way to start today. We made this guide to help motivate you (and help motivate ourselves) to get moving onto something you really want to work on.
The Stuff: This guide is broken down into:
1) How have people pulled this off? A case study of how Mohnish Pabrai started a very successful business while working.
2) How to take that first step (even though you’re busy at your day job and frozen in fear and procrastination).
3) First Steps Checklist.
4) Resources Checklist
How have people pulled this off? A case study of how Mohnish Pabrai started a very successful business while working.
We think the best way to learn how to do something is to learn how someone else did it first… And in this case a great person to learn from is Mohnish Pabrai. We here are big fans of his.
Currently, he is running a $500+ million dollar investment fund he built from scratch (see our Cloning Investments 101 guide), but prior to his successful entrepreneurial streak starting he was just an average office-bound employee working in IT.
In 1991 he started his IT consulting and systems integration company, TransTech, Inc. with about US$30,000 from his own 401K account and US$70,000 from credit card debt. He sold the company in 2000 to Kurt Salmon Associates for US$20 million. But how?
Mohnish gave a talk at the Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing in 2012, which intentionally or unintendedly included a 101 guide book on how he started his first business while working and subsequent investment fund. We have condensed the relevant parts (Panda Notes) for your reading pleasure.