Scott Francis, a fellow Trilogy alumn who has a business process consulting business in Austin, recently wrote his thoughts on Mark Suster’s excellent post “What Should You Do With Your Crappy Little Services Business?” — you can see Scott’s post here.
Scott touches on a few good ways services firms can benefit from building products. But I wanted to particularly highlight some excellent advice he wrote in a comment for any entrepreneur building a new services practice and thinking about how to get growth capital in a field where VC’s are not typically interested:
“I found financing the most frustrating part of the growth of the business, initially. My recommendation to anyone seeking financing is to get some bank-financing with as few covenants as you can – even if it is for a pittance – 10k, 30k, etc. Just get some track record established so that when you go back a year later with a bigger business, you have an argument for your reliability as a debtor or line of credit user. We found it much easier the second time around. I imagine the next time around it will be easier still, economic conditions permitting.” — Scott Francis