Funding & Finance

Banks are in the game of lending money, so why do we often get hit for six when seeking finance and how can you...

Life is rarely predictable. So why would business be any different? Paul Ryan and Jodie O’Keeffe square up to a meteor shower of corporate Kryptonite and figure out how to dodge commercial doom. Cyber-attack, idea theft, competitor outsourcing, cash-flow crises, disruptive innovation and fraud. Take a deep breath, assess risk, consider your options…and never turn your back on a clear blue sky.

"I TOLD YOU I WAS ILL!" It was once the apogee of commercial success. But now, many Australian business owners are challenging the notion that...

At the age of 81, Dr Bill Miller has spent much of his career inside the ever-evolving success story that is Silicon Valley. He...

Pointers for maximising value when selling your business Getting the best price when selling your company is a little like selling a property or vehicle...

James Tuckerman reviews THE GOOGLE STORY and HOW TO TURN YOUR MILLION-DOLLAR IDEA INTO A REALITY

For Anne-Marie Birkill, CEO of i.lab technology incubator, life has been rather serendipitous. Graduating with a science degree, she fell into plant biotechnology, where a short-term secondment to Brisbane transformed her into General Manager and 25 percent shareholder within two years. So began a twenty year career spanning management, consulting, lecturing and new technology incubation.

The Packer deal took everybody by surprise. It coincided perfectly with the media reform announcements, but in fact had more to do with maximising shareholder value than with media reforms.

Everyone knows that business is all about cycles. What goes down must go up, and vice versa. With my dot-com scars so recently healed, I am loathe to be trumpeting another technology boom. But things are certainly afoot.

The similarities between start-ups and film projects are even greater in the US, where venture investors are likely to install their own people into a business for a short period of time to help get it moving.

'Going Public' means different things to different people. For the entrepreneur it's the capital injection to take the business to dizzy heights. To investors...

Some companies are built to be sold. The intellectual property and business processes are bedded down and bundled into a transferable package. Find a market gap, identify potential buyers, build it, drive home the value and make the trade sale. And then, if you enjoyed the ride, do it again.

For small-to-medium sized enterprises, it takes more than just a well-rehearsed sales pitch to catch and keep the eye of a cashed-up suitor.

For small-to-medium sized enterprises, it takes more than just a well-rehearsed sales pitch to catch and keep the eye of a cashed-up suitor.

It's not news that the number of eyeballs searching for products and services online is growing rapidly. But you're possibly not aware of just how rapidly growth in internet commerce is occurring.

Microsoft. Amazon. Intel. Federal Express. Google. Due to economies of scale and network effects, these firms are likely to dominate - for decades - the global industries that they created. Australia desperately needs to create new industries as the USA has done and as all other first-world nations are struggling to do.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. More than one million of them operate in Australia, accounting for a staggering 97 percent of all private sector businesses. They employ around 3.6 million people, representing 33 percent of our workforce and 49 percent of all private sector employment.

Ambitious business builders know better than most that, in this lucky country, the only luck that sticks is self-made. Sid Subbrahmanyam considers a few locations where geography still matters in search of some elusive ingredients for success. Hold on tight!

Cash is king... and no one except Elvis is likely to disagree. So why don't we ever have enough and how can we fix cashflow problems without selling off part of our company?

While sometimes apocryphal, start-up failure rates tell a sombre story: most start-ups don't see their third anniversary. This high attrition rate has many causes, but a primary factor is poor cash flow management.