Your financial analysis is faulty. Why are you using P/E multiple when you have anyway calculated the PV of future earnings? Even after assuming your earning forecasts are right, you have overvalued the share price by a factor of 5. Don’t try to mix relative and fundamental valuation !

And no way you can have a growth of 50% p.a. indefinitely for a business with low entry barrier. That’s just absurd. You also have not taken into account any debt which will be required.

And before someone tells me to go to friends and family, let me tell them that I already have!!

Ours is a print-on-demand publishing house. We are only two right now but, besides clients in India, we have clients from Germany, USA, UK, Canada and Tanzania. Our Google analytics software shows expressions of interest from 34 countries. Let me repeat – we are only two and are currently managing an active client list of 37. We want to scale up – be the Lulu of Asia and even attract a major chunk of Lulu’s clientele because our cost/book is cheaper. But all of it does not warrant 1m USD as investments. So why in God’s name would I ask for it?

Our website is http://cinnamonteal.dogearsetc.com

So I am doing the next best thing. Selling shares of my company. I wouldn’t do it if I were not convinced of the numbers I have put in to arrive at the price per share. Go have a look, the url is

http://www.dogearsetc.com/cinnamonteal/invest.html

Thank you,

Leonard Fernandes
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Cell: +91-98503 98530
http://books.dogearsetc.com (our online book store)
http://cinnamonteal.dogearsetc.com (our print-on-demand service)
http://thepost.dogearsetc.com (our weekly newsletter)

Also, with just only one cycle of successful Entrepreneurs in India, there may be many of them available as advisors, however, not many will still be good at advisory. Giving advise is also a skill which needs to be learnt over a period of time.

Let India has 2-3 cycles of succesful entrepreneurs, we may have more favorable advisory season in India.

In addition to all the interesting insight, few things to remember always are:

1. “A good adviser is the one, who gives the advise and finally leaves the decision over Executive team”, even lack of experience at the advisor end may lead to conflicting situations. This is when the CEO has testing times to take decisions.

2. When an adviser works closely with you, he too is almost the part of a team, thus, the chances of receiving a detached advise keeps getting lower.

3. Finding one/two unofficial advisors (the unexposed ones), who are detached with any personal interest (profits) but excited about the product may come out to be a boon during some critical decision making.

4. Not to have too many advisors as well, unless really justified.

Great point to discuss.

It is true that an advisory board definitely helps in giving a second perspective and so would some one in an executive advisory position as well.

I would like to believe however that, even without advisory executives or boards, entrepreneurs and start-ups do seek a lot of advice and inputs in an unofficial manner. There are individuals or groups whom many of us would approach in different circumstances for advice or feedback or to check if things are being done the right way.

For example, if i am having certain doubts over Intellectual property or over certain legal matters, i would definitely approach some one i know or through my contacts for advice.

However when you do start off, the contacts and connections are what are difficult to reach out and it does help to have some one who has a few connections for you to latch on to and allow for a wider circle of experienced people to connect to on various areas you might need advice or feedback.

While it is a definite plus to have an advisory board or executive, what would really help start-ups is a range of experts or teams they can bounce their queries to when they need specific feedback.

The crucial difference between the Silicon Valley and elsewhere is the number of avenues that are available to meet up with prospective mentors. These could be introductions through your professors, other entrepreneurs, accountants, solicitor, bank etc. Not to mention the numerous networking sessions.

There is also plenty of “patient” capital chasing good investments. The whole Angel scene is well established.

You are right about shyness being a part of our psyche. I think some of us are uncomfortable asking for something for clearly benefits us.