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I’ve been discussing a business opportunity with an Asian gentleman recently and we seem to keep going over and over the same ground.
Obviously I am not explaining myself clearly enough. Or is there another reason?
We have been in discussions since the 2nd of August till today, <see previous Story, “The Lunch Protocol” > and during the discussions he suggested to me that I was operating too fast and people needed time to get used to the idea of doing things.
I thought I would analyse what else could be achieved in a similar timescale…
Day 1…
On the 9th of September 1994, I caught the morning plane from Darwin to Sydney and checked in to the Regent Hotel in George Street.
I then hired a personal assistant, organised Sly and Weigall (an Australia wide legal firm) to install a 2 Meg DDS connection between all of their offices with 16 analogue dial up lines presented at each of Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra and with 32 analogue phone lines at Sydney and Melbourne.
Over the next month, I hired a magazine Editor, found offices, wrote the content for the magazine, found a printer, organised the dial up software, made 150,000 floppy disc copies had it shrink wrapped onto a card.
Flew to Hong Kong to finalise our capital raising. Took delivery of the five Netra 5 Sun servers and the 2 Netra 20′s, with the six 7 Gbyte Fujitsu hardisks, hired some IT persons, set-up a help-desk, with a 1-900 number, organised a Receptionist for the Magazine, organised furniture and computers for the growing staff. By the middle of October we had 12 people running around a little tiny 200 m2 office in Goldfields house.
On the 20th of November our “Connect to Ausnet” Floppy disk was distributed it to each of Australia’s then 5400 Newsagents by Newsagents Direct Distributors. [NDD].
Ausnet Services Access Kit
On the 22nd November, our printer delivered 10,000 copies of the magazine to NDD.
Day 85… On the 3rd of December 1994 our Sydney modem pool went live with our first paying dial-up customer connecting at a blindingly fast 14,400 bps.
By the 15th of January, 1995 we had 26,000 “paying” customers.
All up 85 days between my arrival in Sydney and Ausnet’s first paying customer.
How long have I been discussing the business opportunity with the cautious Asian business person?
90 days.
Lost cause?