The Printer Story
Last night many of you came up to me and asked about the printer that cost us a billion. Although it may have been a bit of exaggeration, it is certainly true that my company lost out on involving a great investor and had to resort to investment bank financing instead, which put different color twisters on our hands. Note: this post has been published 3 months ago as a part of my Business English series – obviously, none of you read it, hence the questions. I strongly advise you to read as many of the close to 200 posts on the site as you have time – they are extremely valuable. I only wish I had access to such information library when I started out.
So, on with the Printer Story:
‘Lean Startup’ – if you have not heard this, rather descriptive term, you should hurry to memorize it. Lean means thin – but in a good way. Lean is slim, agile, low maintenance but enduring. Lean is good (to take the liberty and re-coin Gordon Gekko”s term: Greed is good”).
In the early days of Hild Life Annuity (early, meaning we did not have much to show) we were sitting in a 20sqm office on the third floor of ING (yes, the insurance company. They had space, we asked if they are willing to rent it out to us… I bet you know some entrepreneurs who did not think of asking a downsizing bank to rent office space from them).  So, the two of us sat in the office where we met several investors who came to see us. Most of them were astonished by the spartan environment, some said nothing. One, to say the least, handed us a lecture.
My partner and I both had some major league exprerience – I had a 5 year stint at Lehman, he had a number of years at Enron and Andersen. We both knew that we wanted independence and the road to achieve that has to be paved by ourselves. No one else will do it for us. So we were ready to accept a modest office environment. However, as good workaholics, we were not ready to give up on our printing habits. After all, that is our product. At that point we did nothing but present our concept to investors and VC’s. So we convinced our major (and only) VC backer that we were in need and conviced him to buy us a printer.  It was 2004 and printers were bulky objects – ours was sitting prominently on the only unused desk in the office.
One day, our VC backer sent our way a British superangel. A really, seriously heavy weight angel investor, who ran an entire fund out of his pocket. He was heir to one of the best known family fortunes in Europe. I went to pick him up at the airport.  He looked like someone who dressed in a hurry – and in dark. Mismatching colors, worn out tennis shoes and an at least 30year old bag.
At the time I drove a Suzuki. An old Suzuki. When he got in, he looked at me with a look which I later learned to know as admiration. ‘Nice car’ he said. He asked me 40 questions on the way in. All about our startup, our market, the opportunity. For half of the chat he seemed to be near sleeping. It was annoying and entertaining. I was wondering if he knew where he was.
He definately woke up in the office. He shook hands with my partner and, without a word of small talk directed us into an hour long market and opportunity analysis. He was incredulous that an opportunity such as life annuity for real estate really existed and, proposed, a number of times, that we should go out and investigate further the opportunity before he would invest a penny.  Thinking back, he literally must have meant a penny.
He was not satisfied with anything, really. He did not like that we were full-time working on our startup and did not have a paying job. He suggested that we should work (have a dayjob) and switch over to the project after hours and in the weekend. Reduce costs and risk (and as it turned out later, impatience).  What we did, in his view, was waste of time – analyzing the obvious. We should hire an intern (for free, or on scholarship) and we should focus on what we need to do – find resources for the project to start.
After hours of brainpicking he got up – ‘I am leaving now’ he said. Not a man of niceties, to say the least. On his way to the door he looked at our printer. ‘What is THIS?’ he asked, surprised. We explained that we need a color printer for quality presentations. He sighed.
‘You don’t need a color printer. You need a printer – even a used one would work. It is not your presentation that will impress your investor but your show of discipline. And frugality implies discipline’.
So, to keep with the words of ‘Mr. Lean Investor’ – frugality is really a great measure of an entrepreneur’s character. He and I are still friends and occasionally I visit him when I am in London. He invites me into one of his restaurants (actually, it is not only the restaurant and the building he owns but rather the entire square the building was built on). We chat over lunch and at the end he lets me pick up the tab. The way to fortunes are made up of small steps, after all.
