“Who was that guy, papa?”
“Son, Come. I must tell you a story.”
“Once upon a time, when I was young and ambitious, I expected the world. I had ideas, tones of them but I was smitten by this one very crazy one. I turned it into a reality and started my own venture.
In order to start my great venture, I needed capital or money. So I met this suave young man who worked at a bank. He lent me great sums of money at astronomical interest rates and in his fancy pants, turned into some fancy li’l toys called CDOs. He sold these fancy toys to great many individuals with great joy. While making me burn a hole in my pocket, he told me how big a "risk" HE was taking. Funny people I tell you. These were the Investment Bankers.
Then having pumped capital into the venture, I thought we had it all in place. Until my dear colleague popped up and told me the organizational structure isn't all right. Right. So he suggested let's call in someone from whom we can solicit advice. I said okay, let's try it. So in came some handsome suave late 20 somethings, armored with black briefcases and a stern look borrowed from James Bond. Somehow I had quite the opposite impression, that there will be a few old people who had been in the industry for a long time, but heck who am I to say. So they gave me great advice for obscene amount of money, even in today's time the amount I gave away would be obscene, only to realize they gave me nothing new they hadn't dished out to their last customer. Besides, most of their plans were not even practical. They like to call themselves Management consultants.
So I thought at least now, everything seems alright. Now, my great idea will be noticed by the audience and they'll maybe remember me 10 years from now for what a great innovator I was. But my business partner noticed an aberration. No one knew about my great innovation. In came a few young sassy girls and younger fresher boys. They devised strategies to market my great product, target audience, and some other technical pfaff I cannot remember as I was pre-occupied gazing at this young female with great bosom. They charged me huge sums of money but when I asked them in depth about my product, my innovation, they drew a blank. Absolute zilch. I thought maybe they are supposed to be like that, reclusive and concentrate only on the campaigns they are designing. They called themselves Marketers.
At least now I had the satisfaction that I had done everything that a venture needed to do. After talking to all the aforementioned people, I nearly forgot all about my great idea and my level of passion nose-dived. Another colleague then told me there were rifts between employees and dissatisfaction was high, almost mirroring my own feelings. So in came a few other people, I had lost interest in how the girls were looking by now. Some of them charged me exorbitant amount of money for what they actually did, get people to work together cordially. While the others were seen working late into the night, they left at 5 pm sharp. Every day like clockwork. They called themselves Human Resource Manager.”
(2 minutes Silence)
“So what happened, papa?”
“Well, 3 months later I shut shop cause I was neck deep in losses."
"The gentleman you saw, well, that was the last person I owed any money to for the failure of my venture. 10 years it took. Ha! And I thought I could be an entrepreneur.”
"All I ever wanted was the satisfaction of innovating a great product."
“Well, not only am I a lousy entrepreneur, I think I am a lousy story teller too.”