vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Sure you can fight trends.  Investors are looking to management to show that they have enough introspection to understand their challenges and enough boldness to address them.  If you can't inspire confidence in the future of your company to the investor community, then prepare to have your board and management replaced by people who can.
This depends very much on why A is making massive losses and how big they are in relation to B. If the group has a history of successfully launching profitable brands, and A is a new brand that has high expenses (production, marketing, etc.) but not yet generating much revenue, then despite the current losses it can be seen as a source of future profits. Or A might be established but currently undergoing an expensive remodelling that promises future success. Or B might simply be a huge cash cow that funds the losses of A out of petty cash.
I highly recommend this interview from a few years ago with their CEO:    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O-CiwT2ZTKc     It is impressive the pivot they had to do to stay a dominant toy maker/entertainment company. It seems like this core business vs innovative new business area is an issue many CEOs are struggling with now.
Corporate strategy/development is about finding ways to achieve the vision/goals of the C-suite. Corporate development usually are ex-IB people and focused on finding companies to acquire, integrate, and achieve the goals of the acquisition (synergies, returns on investment, technology/product acquisition). Corporate strategy is usually broader and could be focused on improving the brand, figuring out new uses for a product, finding new partners, or generally looking for good ideas to improve the company. Business development usually is about growing the company through finding new customers, markets, or partnerships. Instead of selling specific products or services, you're selling your company's abilities and brand. I'd say, with your engineering background, if you can swing a corporate strategy gig, you'd have the greatest opps for any VP you decide. I'd say if you want to sell or are good at selling, then business development may be compelling. If I were you, corporate finance would be the least appealing unless you are truly interested in finance."
Companies are expected to make a profit, otherwise there is no point to their existence and no motivation for investment. That profit comes back to shareholders as growth and/or dividend. If a company is doing well and has a healthy profit to turn back into investment to facilitate increased future earnings, it increases shareholder equity and share price. If a company is doing well and has a healthy profit to pay out in dividend, it makes the shares more attractive to investors which pushes the price up. Either way, shares go up. Share prices drop when companies lose money, or there are market disturbances affecting all companies (recessions), or when individual companies fail. Averaged over all companies over the long term (decades), stocks can be reasonably expected to go up.
"In general, when companies are regarded as ""hot"" growth stocks, they are expected to keep up an accelerated level of growth for a good long time. That accelerated growth justifies a high PE relative to a slow-growth stock. When companies that are supposed to grow miss expectations or (worse) lose money, the markets punish the stock severely... Particularly if the company doesn't make analysts aware of problems early on. Netflix is a great example of a company bungling a few different business problems, creating a much bigger one in the process. A poorly conceived rate hike killed the reliable cash flow of the company, and that crazy Quixter thing just confused everyone. Now nobody trusts the management. BlackBerry is another example of a high performing company that just screwed up, damaging shareholders in the process. We're living in a very challenging era today, but growth stocks are always risky by nature -- growing a company rapidly is very difficult."
Well, I'm not an expert on business history, but isn't that what they said about a number of companies that were once competing vigorously in the marketplace?  But then once they achieved dominance in their chosen industry, that's when questions started to arise about competence, creativity, etc., for those very same companies... especially when the original founder(s) relinquished their role to new leadership chosen by the board...
I work in sales so I'm not entirely sure, but there is some crossover but more in the late stage. In the beginning they would mainly look at the financials and do the modeling. Operational due diligence is only done when there are real intentions to buy a company.
if ever there was/is a business niche that was subject to fad &amp; fashion, and the ephemeral even transitory nature of people's ""tastes"", it would be the ""boutique"" segment of the restaurant industry; even the ones (or chains) that do manage to survive, often do so by dramatically changing their menus, brand &amp; character... so that a decade later they barely resemble their former selves. Sure there are also other segments of the industry that are generally ""stable"" -- but many of them tend to be slow-or-no growth as well. &gt;I believe a key contributor to the confusion is talking about the self-employed and business owners in the same breath. Someone who's self-employed basically owns a job. His income will always be directly proportional to the amount of time spent working and the company does not exist apart from himself. It covers an entire spectrum... and the lines are rather fuzzy. Yes, a lot of self-employed people (whether configured as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLC's or full ""corporations"") are by INTENT -- and probably always will be -- simply ""job replacement"" businesses. (And again, there is NOTHING wrong with that -- whether they endure for a year, 5 years, 10 years or an entire lifetime). How or why people have come to view this as somehow of less ""merit"" than someone being gainfully employed *for someone else* -- has always puzzled me. But some of those -- just as some of the ""part time"" or ""on the side"" businesses -- can take on an (unexpected, unplanned) ""life of their own"" and grow into substantial enterprises that employ hundreds and even thousands of people over multiple decades. AFTER THE FACT, the owners will often (at least publicly) claim that it was ""all part of the plan"", but in several cases where I know the founder/owner personally... I know from private conversation that THAT simply wasn't the case.
First, corporate profits can grow relative to GDP.  If companies succeed in growing revenue without paying much more to workers, then corporate profits and stock prices will grow relative to GDP.  That has been happening for the last couple decades.  If you require that we keep corporate profits vs GDP constant, then borrowing/leverage is how you do it.  Companies can expand their operations on a fixed amount of shareholder equity, and as long as they can grow their profits faster than the cost of the debt, then shareholders keep the upside.  But this also means that share prices will quickly fall if profits decline even a small amount, because the debt must still be paid off.
Some qualitative factors to consider when deciding whether to finance with equity vs debt (for a publicly traded company):    1) The case for equity: Is the stock trading high relative to what management believes is its intrinsic value? If so, raising equity may be attractive since management would be raising a lot of $$$, but the downside is you give up future earnings since you are diluting current ownership  2) The case for debt: What is the expected return for the project in which the raised capital will be utilized for? Is its expected return higher than the interest payments (in % terms)? If so raising debt would be more attractive than raising equity since current ownership would not be diluted  That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now, I'm sure there are a few more qualitative factors to consider but I think these two are the most intuitive
I was referring to insider information as a seperate means of profiting. So I assumed:  1. Fundamental analysis/picking the direction 2. Insider information 3. Gaming the market (illiquid markets)  If this is true. What makes a good market maker? Stoploss/takeprofit management and hope there are enough players in it *not* to win it (i.e. hedge positions) to take profit from?  Sounds very luck base or is there something im missing?  Thanks
The most obvious example would be a situation where a Company is growth constrained, but cash flow positive. It may have enough cash flow to service $10 million of debt, but it needs to build a new facility that will cost $20 million. There is the option to raise debt and equity or just raise equity and move quicker to getting that facility up and running.   There are also situations where debt is used to replace equity (i.e. dividend recapitalization or leveraged share redemption).
Even if there's nobody outside who needs to see it right away (investors, etc.), an honestly-written business plan is a valuable exercise. If done well (and preferably with external guidance) it forces you to think all the way through your idea and make sure your bases are covered.
Approach property management companies. I work for one with hundreds of properties and we need plumbers all the time. On the business side it simplifies your marketing and repeat business. We get potted flowers and candy from vendors all the time. Or they bring in pizza for lunch once a quarter to keep the relationship up.
This letter sets out the general purpose of the business together with the market, technical, financial and organizational studies. Items such as marketing channels, price, distribution, business model, engineering, location, organizational chart, capital structure, financial assessment, sources of funding, buy a business in florida is generally considered that a business plan is a living document, In the sense that it must be constantly updated to reflect the unforeseen that necessarily arise in the process of creation and consolidation. With your selection method, company philosophy, legal aspects, and your exit plan.
The most important thing, IMO is to love the business itself. Love what you are doing. Some people in a family business have aptitudes/attitudes better suited for somewhere else, they are just there because they want to help the family. That is a noble mindset but it may translate into sub-par work because you are not doing what you love. So love it, or at least like it a lot.
I suggest you start your own business. What kind of business? That's up to you, pick something you're interested in.  Will it be successful? Probably not, but you'll learn a whole lot. Everything from creating/developing a product/service, sales, marketing, customer support, and many other things.  Here is a podcast on how other people got started: http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this  Edit: here is another great one: https://www.indiehackers.com/
&gt; Can you learn how to evaluate operations efficiency without working at McKinsey?  Of course, but what /u/aphorist212 isn't pointing out is the connections and influence that McKinsey alums in PE shops have. You hire someone from McKinsey not because they're smart, but because they know the right people.  Why is this important in a PE shop? Well connected people can find ways to position a failing business for potential deals that will make it more successful.  One other point: you don't need to turn that failing cafe into Starbucks. You just need to turn it into a cafe.
Please don't forget survivorship bias. the same strategy and don't get lucky; we just never hear about them. Of course the most successful one is going to be the most well known, even if it's just lucky. You can never actually know.
Businesses have since quite a while ago utilized some type of a conventional chain of importance structure to work. This framework includes representatives answering to director's Business Business administrations who at that point have their own particular managers et cetera. Most representatives are acclimated to this structure. Given the quick pace and aggressive nature of the business world, organizations are exceedingly intrigued by advancements that will separate them.
Instead of giving part of their profits back as dividends, management puts it back into the company so the company can grow and produce higher profits. When these companies do well, there is high demand for them as in the long term higher profits equates to a higher share price. So if a company invests in itself to grow its profits higher and higher, one of the main reasons investors will buy the shares, is in the expectation of future capital gains. In fact just because a company pays a dividend, would you still buy it if the share price kept decreasing year after year? Lets put it this way: Company A makes record profits year after year, continually keeps beating market expectations, its share price keeps going up, but it pays no dividend instead reinvests its profits to continually grow the business. Company B pays a dividend instead of reinvesting to grow the business, it has been surprising the market on the downside for a few years now, it has had some profit warnings lately and its share price has consistently been dropping for over a year. Which company would you be interested in buying out of the two? I know I would be interested in buying Company A, and I would definitely stay away from Company B. Company A may or may not pay dividends in the future, but if Company B continues on this path it will soon run out of money to pay dividends. Most market gains are made through capital gains rather than dividends, and most people invest in the hope the shares they buy go up in price over time. Dividends can be one attractant to investors but they are not the only one.
There are many things that can make a company's share price go up or down. Generally, over the long term, the more consistently profitable a company is the more its share price will go up. However, there are times when a company may not be making any profits yet but its share price still goes up. This can be due to forecasts that the company will start making profits in the near future. Sometimes a company may report increased profits from the previous year but makes less than what the market was expecting it to make. This can cause its share price to fall, as the market is disappointed in the results. In the shorter term greed, fear and speculation can make a company's share price move irrationally. When you think the share price should be going up it suddenly falls, and Vis-versa. When interest rates are low, companies with higher dividend yields (compared to bank account interest rates) become high in demand and their shares generally go up in price. As the share price goes up the dividend yield will be reduced unless the company continues to increase the dividend it distributes to shareholders. When interest rates start to rise these companies become less favourable as they are seen as higher risk comparable to similar returns from having one's money in the safety of the bank. This can cause the share prices to fall. These are just some of the reasons that make a company's share price move up or down. As humans are an irrational bunch often ruled by emotions, sometimes the reasons share prices move in a particular direction can be quite confusing, but that is the nature of the financial markets.
I've been at it for 17 years and, in that time, seen thousands of companies skyrocket ahead of me. Are those founders smarter? No. But nor are they necessarily dishonest. In that same time I've seen tens of thousands of companies fail.   One thing I know is that being transparent and honest with my clients and employees has led to more personal satisfaction in my life: I'm a very happy person. My friends, employees, and peers respect me. I can look in the mirror and feel good about the path I've chosen.  Yeah, maybe I don't get a private jet or that sweet piece of real estate I wanted. But at the end of the day, my happiness is worth more than any trinket. Sounds like you understand that too.
Understanding your starting place makes everything clearer.  What skills do you have? What experience? What resources? What people who can help you? What's your motivation to start this specific business? Have you seen any similar businesses that you'd like to imitate?
Lyft isn't farther behind because they want to take care of their employees, they're farther behind because they've raised less money, because they were second to market. Both are running at a loss trying to grow, but Uber's got more cash so it has expanded farther. Lyft has taken the high road to build its brand and because Uber's made it easy. Uber has branched out into other service (parcel and food delivery) in order to build its brand and grow further. Both companies realize they're in a commodity industry - there is little non-price differentiation in the service provided - and they need to achieve massive scale so that they can start to turn a profit. But right now, it's Uber's game to lose, at least between the two of them. Somebody else getting a large lead in self driving cars could crush both of them pretty quickly.
"Maybe it is a matter of how long a perspective you take.  If you are focused on very close things, like only the coming quarterly results, then *anything* which did not maximize cash flow might seem suboptimal.  But what if it strengthened the long term prospects of the business?  What if it contributed to a planet that did not get destroyed, thereby maintaining a better business climate (pun intended) for the future.  Clearly survival is preferable to a business than extinction.  But we make short-term choices based on kind of old ways of looking at things.  It's not ""profitable"", even though pursing short-term cash profit may lead to ruin."
Why do companies exist? Well, the corporate charter describes why the company exists. Usually the purpose is to enrich the shareholders. The owners of a company want to make money, in other words. There are a number of ways that a shareholder can make money off a stock: As such, maintaining the stock price and dividend payouts are generally the number one concern for any company in the long term. Most of the company's business is going to be directed towards making the company more valuable for a future buyout, or more valuable in terms of what it can pay its shareholders directly. Note that the company doesn't always need to be worried about the specifics of the day-to-day moves of the stock. If it keeps the finances in line - solid profits, margins, earnings growth and the like - and can credibly tell people that it's generally a valuable business, it can usually shrug off any medium-term blips as market craziness. Some companies are more explicitly long-term about things than others (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway basically tells people that it doesn't care all that much about what happens in the short term).  Of course, companies are abstractions, and they're run by people. To make the people running the company worry about the stock price, you give them stock. Or stock options, or something like that. A major executive at a big company is likely to have a significant amount of stock. If the company does well, he does well; if it does poorly, he does poorly. Despite a few limitations, this is really a powerful incentive. If a company is losing a lot of money, or if its profits are falling so it's just losing a lot of its value as a business, the owners (stockholders) tend to get upset, and may vote in new management, or launch some sort of shareholder lawsuit. And, as previously noted, to raise funds, a company can also issue new shares to the market as a secondary offering as well (and they can issue fewer shares if the price is high - meaning that whatever the company is worth afterward, the existing owners own proportionally more of it).
All of the most successful people I know work more than they need to, and either their employers reward them properly, or their businesses flourish. I'm pursuing my finance degree, and I expect 70-80+ hour weeks, because it's more or less required to move up in a company.   I'll save my 9-5 days for after I have kids.
Agreed that luck is important, but in everything I've read about the extremely successful, it seems that careful measured analysis played just as crucial a role in their success. Something that these guys appear to be advising startups to ignore.   But again, maybe pure instinct is the only way to run the fast-paced type of business they're operating. Also that quote I cited may have just been an off-the-cuff remark, not meant to be taken literally.
Getbidon.com is the ultimate resource for growing businesses of all sizes. The fact is, in a free market economy, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. That means YOU are under pressure to perform and produce business growth.
One reason is mergers and acquisitions. The large companies that make up the S&amp;P500 continue to grow by buying smaller companies. This enables them to grow at a faster rate then just organic growth.  Another reason is that many of the large companies making up the S&amp;P500 operate on a global scale or at least not just in the USA. By doing so they access markets with higher GDP growth rates. By entering new markets they are able to grow at a faster rate than the USA GDP growth rate.
You Need A Budget may be what you're looking for. It is focused on budgeting your expenses in advance, and looking forward instead of backward. (Disclosure: I am currently doing some development work for You Need A Budget.)
Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillo. Even if you don't plan to sell, there are a lot of good lessons to learn about running a business. This book opened my eyes. I went from a 70h + work week, to what ever I want(usually around 50 with weekends off because I just enjoy working).
If i look to the future ,i see the general retail revenue growing pretty slowly, but the online retailers growing fast. Why ?   First, they grew historically around 20% per year for the last few years.  Second there's a lot of big important innovation. Amazon prime, Tablets and phones as great sales tools and comparison tools(and they're becoming common), Ebay investing heavily in logistics to enable small non u.s. companies to sell onshore without big shipping costs, Online apparel shopping improving rapidly and maybe becoming competitive with offline shopping,using social networks for shopping, interesting new models to sell merchandise online like etsy, subscription shopping and the the general rate of internet innovations.   Third, people are improving in their e-commerce capability and trust.  On the other hand , i don't see any big growth opportunity for brick and mortar retailers.So it means they'll shrink.  The problem is that retail is a low margin business. That means that losing 5-15% percent of revenue  is enough to close you , because you have a lot of fixed costs(rent, employees, financing the goods).
Alright I'll bite. You haven't defined what starting a company means. I can do that without a product technically. Let's start by defining success. Do I need to sell one thing or a billion? Profit ok or just revenue?  Now let's define what hard is. Is it lots of hours? Lots of dollars? Is it using the skills from a degree that I worked hard for?   You're making blanket statements which have no boundaries.  The amount of effort people put into starting successful companies ranges wildly. If my dad gave me a billion dollars and I started an unprofitable company then technically I've met your parameters. Easy! I guarantee that's happened more than 5 times.   Flappy birds was a successful company. Relative to uber it was easy. Relative to scratching my balls and playing Xbox all day it was hard.   Can you see why I'm mocking this conversation?