I am pleased to take part in the new World Business Angels Association(WBAA).
We started this process with high expectations and feeling proud to belong to a group of people who are joining efforts to support young worldwide entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.
There is a new economic opportunity and new premises for business success. The values of entrepreneurship are quickly changing, where the companies with global ambitions are forced to search new globalization instruments.
The humanity, and with it the economic power, is constantly progressing. From the usage of the first tools, followed by farming, the industrial men, then business man and now all the attentions are turned to the “creative-man”. A variable attached to the relative strengths of the power has changed along this evolution.
However, due to the spread of the media and immediate access to information we are, for the first time, in the presence of intangible assets and so they cannot be transmitted from parents to sons. All the innovation and consequent business success is based in the capacity of creating new concepts and exploring market niches.
The emergence of countless niches results from the industry’s restructuring which is, gradually, abandoning the traditional vertical structure (in which a sole company is present in all the value chain) to adopt a horizontal structure, more specialized, opening space so that small enterprises can innovate, answering thus to the growing needs of the markets.
This new structure opens space to the emergence of small enterprises of sole ownership and self-employed workers. As a curiosity, I refer that in the USA the number of self-employed workers increased near 16% in only 3 years, reaching to 20 million workers. It is known that most of these persons base their businesses in a great innovating capacity, answering quickly and flexibly to the needs of their clients. They are businesses of creative base and highly specialized.
The main question here is if it is possible to transform some of these small businesses in global companies, capable of influencing the international markets, creating employment, value and mainly innovation.
The statistics shows us that from 3 to 5% of these dawning enterprises are able to absorb from 50 to 70% of all the new jobs. These enterprises are clearly a bet in the future, and in the well-being of our societies.
However, these enterprises need external support to manage to jump to global markets because in their core there aren’t enough financial or human resources.
Today, the internationalization of a company, which the main asset is the ideas, has to be done in a quick way and to several countries simultaneously under penalty of being plagiarized and loosing market power.
It is unthinkable to follow the expansion model in all countries. Internationalization is, now, an unexpected and simultaneous “explosion” of several markets carefully selected.
This kind of globalization needs many resources and partnerships in the countries where the company intends to expand itself. It is necessary to change the support models, so to open a bit more the window of international growth.
The new internationalization model should be based in three critical steps, given that this kind of internationalization is based in multiple contacts and in the capacity of establishing simultaneously in as many countries as it is possible:
Before start-up – great work of preparation in the sense of finding paths and partners in the countries where intended to grow.
A step ahead – make partnership agreements with companies and individuals strategically positioned in the local market, so to acquire knowledge about clients, other partnerships and distribution channels.
A decisive step – to find local financial partners able to support the business development at local level, supporting this unexpected explosion in the global growth.
Can you think in a structure better positioned to support this internationalization model, besides the international community of Business Angels?
I don’t!
Just imagine the “tornado” that 75.000 European Business Angels, and more half a million all over the world, could be in the support and facilitation of the growth of these dawning enterprises with cross border potential. Through local Business Angels structures it is possible to reach to people, all over the world, which are willing to invest smart-money in wining projects. Each Business Angels structure has to count with all the other structures spread out in the world.
Smart-money is all that these global entrepreneurs need to take a giant step.
This can be the key so that the internationalization window gets broaden, with obvious benefits to all the participants.
Let’s combine efforts so we can be in the front row of the economic growth.
Today is the opportunity to give a push on this window. The chance given by the WBAA for all of us to get togetter –smart capital and promising global entrepreneurs- is a unique Event.
I wish all members countless deals into global successful businesses.
