Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Salaried position vs. your own business

The deeper I am into my MBA course, the clearer I understand for myself that starting and running a business is... well, a serious business ( I am waiting for those "doh"s..)
No, seriously, if , in perfect or near-perfect competition all you can count on is so called "normal" profit (by definition, it's enough profit to attract capital investment to your business), i.e. NO economic (that is, real in lay terms) profit, all this means to you is that you're just trying to keep your business running without slipping way into the red/bankruptcy etc.
That's it. (and, by the way, that's most small- and medium-size businesses, incl. doctor's practices). And all this comes at a great expense in terms of time/effort investments. ( and, obviously, money). It's a rat race , too, just a different kind. ( and I skip all this silliness about "being your own boss" because you are always under some sort of constraint- most of the time, financial, so it's not like you can do whatever you feel like). Becoming a near-monopolist (FedEx or UPS) has a bit of an entry barrier, like $2 bln.
So one needs to be truly passionate about it to start it and continue doing it.
On the other hand, if you have what you think is a brilliant idea (Facebook?), I would probably just go for it. Because I see it as one of the few (if not only) chances of making it big.
So... what do you think?