How to Start a Million Dollar Business
Hint: Take yourself out of the equation
A healthy business is scalable.
Every investor parroted the magic question on my first Startup Week in China. Tycoons, talents, and competition wanted to know how fast can we expand the business. Venture investors took the stage with grim tales of losing millions with companies that just couldn’t grow. The ominous chant was stuck in my head by the end of the week. “Scalable, scalable, is your business scalable?”
The idea we pitched at the event was attractive for international investors. Education was all the rage in 2019 in China. My team proposed an app for private 1-on-1 tutoring. The idea was to liberalize the education market by offering students the freedom to choose their educators. Our users could order a piano lesson in the same way they order food. We called it UberSchools as a running joke. (I won’t disclose the App name due to obvious legal implications.)
Enterprises, Government officials, and individual investors wanted to jump on the education train. At one public event, a Chinese government offered to finance the project with an additional 100 000 000RMB. We dismissed it as a publicity stunt. Politicians can’t resist giving wild promises when journalists are around.
