Ok, CEOs, I wanna hear some annual wrap-up stories!
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I just closed the books for 2018, and it was shit. But it could have been 20x worse, so I'm only slightly annoyed. How about you? Proposed answer format.
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1. Your product industry.
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2. Years operating.
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3. Mode of financing: self-funded / debt / equity / professional / non-professional / etc.
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[If multiple items per-line, list most important first.]
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4. Going into 2018:
- strengths (internal competitive advantages)
- weaknesses (int. comp. disadvantages)
- opportunities (environmental competitive advantages)
- threats (env. comp. disadvantages)
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5. Going into 2019:
- S
- W
- O
- T
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6. Did you make a profit or loss? Was it worth it (opportunity cost)?
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7. 2018 achievements in tangible/intangible value.
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8. 2018 write-offs in tangible/intangible value.
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Go!
1. Productivity infrastructure - stimulants, nutrients, hospitality (really, the world's oldest profession). Manual services. Brick and mortar.
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2. Now in year-4 of ops.
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3. 12% self-funded, the rest non-professional equity investors.
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4. Going into 2018:
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- strengths (internal competitive advantages): two years of ops optimisations, semi-stable balance sheet, established consumer brand, some R&D, too small to be attacked by largest industry players, and maybe one idiot founder who will probably work till he's dead or fired, or bought out, whichever comes first (there are others).
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- weaknesses (int. comp. disadvantages): heavy internal and external compliance mandates, hovering around a liquidity gap for the last two years, maybe one idiot founder, definitely a lack of more than one idiot founder... we require more founders (though, we probably do not require more idiots). We had one interesting forcing function in 2018: no social media, no media outlets... and for a B2C red ocean business, that's been very interesting. Unreliable lines of credit.
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- opportunities (environmental competitive advantages): our product is basically recession proof, so the perpetual tactical opportunity (given the limitations already stated above) is to really just trench-fight our way through enemy lines with the hope that the enemies with flame-throwers haven't got us targeted; we're pretty good in the trenches. Regarding the forcing function, we basically knew there would have to be a clear focus on offline, direct, marketing, online search marketing, and online non-social display marketing.
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- threats (env. comp. disadvantages): broad consumer pessimism due to weak local currency, general election turmoil, a LOT of hot money coming into our sector, from the mom-and-pop level up to the global leader valued at 50B hovering around the corner, non-renewal of tenancy, terrorism from petty activists (the origin story for why we have THAT forcing function), regulators.
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5. Going into 2019:
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- S: third year of ops optimisations, further stabilised balance sheet (shrinking slower), same brand (didn't get distracted), more R&D, a few good staff have been promoted from specialised roles to generalist roles as they have acquired the skills to run multiple functions, stabilised product, consolidated visual branding, expanded retail merchandising. Three years of audited accounts means that we can now, given internal compliance, obtain lines of credit from commercial banks. Tenancy was renewed for three more years, woohoo! Google Ads have been kitted out with bots that trade prices on an hourly basis, all year long - not that it's a cash cow, but having a bunch of bots at work (while not as useful as having humans) is better than nothing.
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- W: still no fucking website - but we discovered Google's mini-site generator. Idiot founder hasn't died yet. We still have the media forcing function. Compliance concerns are still backed up all the way to the top echelons of government.
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- O: we could effective add 120% to our floorspace, which is our most limiting production input, if we can raise sufficient capital to have a draw-down ready (because the availability to transact on that expansion is... volatile).
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- T: Cloverfield has landed, and there are sea lice falling everywhere. I made a map of startups in our space around April, and in six months I had at least six more appear within a 5km radius.
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6. We're down 18+% for the year. Could have been a wipe-out. Could have been shut down. Could happen any time. But we're still here and working on the same problem, because that's the point of business, I suppose. :) Can't really go into the details of where our credit is coming from, but you can ask me elsewhere - we're borrowing at 0% interest. This turns out to be a less popular option that you'd imagine off the bat.
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7. Achievements: Of the items listed in the (2019:S) section above, I think the greatest value is in the growth in human capital. can't tell you if we'll retain all our current staff, but I can tell you that they'll all be quite productive for whomever they work for next. :) Also, the bots. I love the bots. One day I expect that our floor operations will be staffed 85% by bots. I expect to be writing them myself in the distant future (unless you can get SoftBank in here for a quick round or two, then we can get to it sooner).
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8. Write-offs: We used to run a little party atmosphere around an Uber-for-bartenders model, but we had to destroy that to survive dropping sales in February during the holiday season, whereby the remaining staff were trained up to run the entire operation as solo-ists whenever anyone is on shift. We got leaner. And it's totally on-brand, since our business is productivity infrastructure. (Also see the forcing function.)
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Right, hope to see you next year.
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