Mohnish Pabrai Quotes

The first aspect of a business that you need to make it work well is money. Once the money aspect is flowing, you can freely work on other aspects.

If your business is the right business, then money will never be an issue.

I worked for twenty-some years with no capital, so I never had any liquidity. Managing my loans alone wouldn't do it, and working hard twenty-four hours a day seven days a week alone wouldn't do it. You have to be properly capitalized.

You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that's it.

I think for any small business that's bootstrapped, the overwhelming challenge initially is getting to positive cash flow.

Small businesses have told us that having cash in their pocket is one of the primary things that they need.

You don't make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you're-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don't know what's going to happen.

If you don’t balance your budget in business, you go out of business.

I'm scared about every dollar that comes into my business. I'm scared about what that means in Obamacare, in taxes. Every single thing that is happening to me is out of my control.

If you are focused on profits right out of the gate, you're gonna have the smallest profitable business that has ever been seen.

You take something like RingCentral. It doesn't need any more money or financing: it is relatively mature, recurring revenue business - not really worried - but you know, we could sell it tomorrow. We have not been in a rush to sell it. We don't care about exits as much. We care about building fundamental value.

One thing I never thought about in my big-company job? Cash flow. When your business has billions of dollars in revenue, you can make a lot of mistakes and still have a viable business. But in a startup, make a few hiring mistakes, and you can find yourself in real jeopardy fast.

The problem for new businesses isn't corporate taxes. Anyone who has actually started a new business knows you don't make enough money for years to pay any meaningful tax on it.

A small business can survive for a while without making a profit, but if its cashflow dries up, the impact is fatal.

As you start the company, you start spending spending spending ahead of revenue but then you come out of it and very quickly you should become a company that spends less than it makes. And what I mean by very quickly, is that window of time should be in that 6 to 8 year time frame. And the reason is because if you build your business model correctly it's almost unavoidable.

With the world changing fast, we needed capital for investments. There's only so much bandwidth in your own balance sheet.

I don’t believe rolling back some regulations on Wall Street will in any way help the small business.

Most small-business owners have no financial education when they started. They weren't trained to be entrepreneurs.

I've always said manage in good times so that you're ready for the bad times.

I spend most of my career as a management consultant, a businessman working with family-owned small and medium-sized businesses. The businesses that make up the core of our economy.

Every American business, from the biggest companies to small hardware companies, need money to flow through the system not only to create new jobs but to sustain existing jobs.

Tell a woman it's going to rain, and she'll get out the umbrellas. Well, in the matter of money, there's always the chance of rain ahead.

As someone who understands what's needed for entrepreneurs and start-up companies to succeed, I can tell you there is nothing more integral to their success than operating in a stable financial system.

First, you should take money and have plenty of money fueling your tank. But money becomes dangerous if you assume it's going to keep coming. Make sure you can get your burn rate to a sustainable level if you hit the brakes hard, within 90 days.

Q1 is the easiest quarter to make. If you miss your Q1, regardless of the type of revenue you have, you aren't going to make your revenue plan for the year because your budget process isn't accurate.