Tag: budgets

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.

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.

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.

Achieving your first sale can literally make or break a start-up. Many investors will delay committing significant funds until you can identify a customer...