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Good evening. My name is Antonio López Roa.
Firstly I'd like to thank the EIE for inviting me to share this session with you.
The title given for today is "Family: what a business!"
I also have to thank the entrepreneurs for being here and hopefully participating at the end.
Today's talk came about during a chat over coffee. Someone I was talking to said to me:
"Not everyone thinks of families the way you do."
I was a bit baffled and it made me think. So I'm going to try to make you think about it today too.
I stopped to think, and thought 'it's true that not everyone thinks the same way,
I've been invited to talk about this idea by the European Institute for Entrepreneurship,
therefore with businessmen and future businessmen,
so why not try to analyse what a family is or what kind of family we can produce,
from the point of view of a businessman?'
That is, I want to start MY business: I want to start MY family. My family or our family.
Is it possible to create 'my' family by myself, as a sole business partner? Yes.
I will try to reach a conclusion as to the advantages there are to starting out alone,
compared to with more than one business partner.
Start my family or our family for what?
For my own personal gain.
My objective is therefore to reap the benefits of this company, as a founding partner.
But another objective or hope is that this business, this family, that I'm trying to start, will grow.
And that it will last. (Unless I'm a speculator and I speculate with my family; I'd get early benefits and run off.)
But the main idea, statistically speaking,
is that partners who want to start a project will set up a company that realises their goals and that survives.
They would normally expand if they get new shareholders,
sometimes they don't get anyone new,
and the business - or family - lasts as long as its partners.
I want to start my/our family or company, what is the founding act? It's an act of will.
I'm going to be less ambiguous and to talk generally about founding with two partners,
and then about whether there are benefits or limitations when founding alone.
This founding act of will is when we agree to start a business or family.
Why? According to what we want to achieve:
If our goals are hard to reach then there will be high expectations.
If we have a mediocre or poor goals, then the end result will be mediocre or poor as well.
The reason for starting a family might be (this is for each of us to decide)
personal satisfaction and improvement, in that each partner says they want to better themselves,
and they thus want better things for their partner too, as well as personal satisfaction.
In becoming partners, we can improve the business or family we have started, and help it to grow and improve by itself.
Therein lies business expansion. Families grow, they expand.
In other words, we have children.
It's one of the goals, whether right away or not.
But once we've expanded, we've had children or got new shareholders;
then we have to encourage their training and development, protect them through these stages,
and encourage them to start their new projects, family-based or otherwise.
Here at the EIE I think this is well understood.
How long do these projects last? In theory, there's no limit.