del.icio.us
Digg
Sphere
Stumble
Technorati
Twitter
Blood Money
By David
Andrew of Southwest Windpower has written about hair-raising (or perhaps hair-falling-out) cycles of raising capital and repaying debt. This is something I and bluehouse have not yet faced in quite the same way, although we have our own tumultuous relationship to the green. While I conceived of, started, and run my business—and I make all of the daily and strategic decisions—I don’t actually own it myself. A few years ago, my father (who is an extraordinary man) announced his intention to fully fund the entrepreneurial ambitions of my siblings and myself as a way of both bringing our family together and passing his legacy down to future generations. In a series of legal and financial maneuvers, we formed a family trust that in turn funded a holding company that officially owns my business along with several others launched by my brothers and their wives.
I am often asked how lucky I feel to have fallen into such an arrangement as compared to jumping through hoops for institutional funding. The short answer is “very,” although I suspect the question is enough of a gotcha that I don’t like to talk about it much. Yes, I dodged a bullet, but it’s not as if I don’t have to account for every penny that passes through my business. Indeed, I’d almost rather explain to a bank why I need money for new signage rather than have the matter scrutinized around the Thanksgiving dinner table or at my nephew’s birthday party. If a typical business should suddenly take a turn for the worse and fail, a bank can foreclose and be done with it. Humiliating, to be sure, but in my case, should the worst happen, there is no end of the earth to which I can flee from the knowledge that I’ve harmed the livelihood of my entire extended family. My extra motivation to succeed is the thought of those Thanksgivings and birthday parties if I do not.
Still, although it’s very strange for me to be making complex business decisions with the brothers who used to kick the back of my car seat or hold their finger up to my head and play “I’m not touching you,” it’s an oddly satisfying arrangement. Business is risk—daily and often unnerving risk—and there is something both soothing and thrilling about sharing that with the people who have known me since I was born.
And, well, yes, often irritating. But right nonetheless.
Comments (0)March 12, 2007 2:07 PM
