Not All Checks Are Created Equal

June 5, 2009
Kicyru, Kigali, Rwanda

I invite you, oh SHE samurais, to come and try on a SHE shoe….you’re traveling on Bolt Buses (glorified Greyhound with wifi) to Boston and back, becoming the 21st passenger in the Matatus (African buses that seat 15) to reach home, helping yourself to networking event appetizer that is your dinner, enjoying Pabst instead of Pinot Noir. You are arguably like every other start-up venture full of passion but carrying a slim wallet. So if someone just wrote you a check for $3.1 Million for the next five years, you’d pop open the Perrier and rev up the Rover, right?

In the book of Elizabeth Scharpf likes and dislikes, signed checks are usually right up there next to orders of cilantro garnished guacamole that are “mistakenly” delivered to your table. So what is there to contemplate? Checks, or investments, are not created equal and good entrepreneurs must gauge the activities and outputs that are required of checks as they may take your strategic plan astray. How would the culture of your venture change? How would the prioritization of activities and constituents served change? And I invite you to share your tales of this very situation.

Does that mean I have to do the same with the guacamole? Nah, I’d just eat it.