Thursday, April 14, 2011

Pablo Larguía - bumeran.com


Yesterday we had Pablo Larguía, founder of Bumeran and laredinnova.com that told us the experience of selling his company to a large corporation. He started his presentation with some funny jokes about my last posting. Personally I appreciated his humour and I fully respect his view about choosing VCs and raising as much money as possible. It is interesting to see how Pablo and Roberto Saint Malo have a completely different view on these two topics (Entrepreneurs VS VCs!). However I noticed that someone in class interpreted Pablo's jokes in the wrong way. For this reason I would like to introduce the following:

DISCLAIMER: please do not interpret my statements as if I dislike or disagree with the topics addressed. I believe that every class has given substantial contribution to my startup skills. I never intended to be negative in my comments.

Pablo addressed a number of new concepts we never discussed in class with zero redundancy with the previous sessions [ Pablo is that ok? :-) ]. Among the topics discussed in class I particularly liked his definition of "being an entrepreneur" and also his experience of selling bumeran.com to Terra Lycos.

Being entrepreneur means having a 500 task job.
Your company can be divided by department and for each of them there are several issues that have to be addressed and developed. Then for each single issue you can further subdivide, address and develop. In the mean time you need to be sure that each decision you make is congruent with your overall strategy and in line with what the other co-founders are doing.

Being entrepreneur means being passion driven.
Probably you cannot sustain a 500 task work load if you don't have passion for what you are doing. A startup company quickly dries up all your energy and unless you are really motivated you risk to loose the magic touch that makes your product/service different from the others.

An entrepreneur is a salesman.
You need to sell yourself and your idea to VCs when you need to raise capital. Sell your products or services to your customers and also sell your image to suppliers and business partners. Last but not least, you might need to sell your company!

Selling a company
I believe that from the entrepreneur's point of view this is always a tough decision. Why should you sell your baby? I believe there is not a single answer. Of course you might decide to cash your work and get your life back. But you might also foresee a dark period during the next years. Or you might need another injection of fresh capital that you can't find. Behind the reason of selling, it was interesting what Pablo said about his experience.
  • Carpe diem! In this business the window of opportunity is very short. VCs or acquiring companies always have multiple interests and when they come to you with an offer they don't wait too long before moving away.
  • VCs VS Entrepreneurs The battle continues... how is possible that even on selling the company VCs and entrepreneurs have different point of views? We know that VCs have a cold and rational approach and tend to care mostly to the return of their investment. But why an entrepreneur should care about the future of the company? Because it is still his baby? Because he cares about the employees? What else?
Thank you Pablo for your insights. Hopefully I did not say anything that will cause a seaquake.

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