1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 5)

Ben Narasin: You build your business up to $5 million in revenue. It seems like a healthy lifestyle business to me. If you have a 40% gross margin, that means $2 million is flowing to you. If you can keep your operational expenses low, that can be a great living. Later, there are people who will buy you because they want to roll you up. They’re paying nice multiples. It’s rare for businesses that small to be paid revenue multiples, but it’s happening. There’s not just one buyer; there are multiple buyers that drives the price up. I didn’t have a billion-dollar outcome. I was the type of entrepreneur I would want to fund, but I didn’t have the scale that I wanted to fund. It’s funny.

We have a quest to understand what life means to us. My attitude is if you need me, I’m there for you. We just got to figure out how to make the time work. I do want to respect the time of my family. I’ve always kept the weekend sacred. That’s as close to work-life balance as I could get.

When my wife and I were about to have our first child, we talked about it quite a bit, because I was working with a company that was going public a couple years later. She said, “If you have to do all-nighters five days a week, just give us the weekend.” I carved out a couple of weekends for our tradeshow. During our IPO period, I worked every single day except one Sunday.

Now my kids are older. I’m happy to be available to you, but if it needs to be right away, and it’s Friday, I need you to come to me. Sometimes, we’ll meet at the airport when I’m flying in or they’re flying out. Time is definitely my friend. In one of these sessions, I looked at them and said, “You’re not really asking me about your business; you’re requesting for the meaning of life.”

For me, happiness is not about having what you want; it’s about wanting what you have. When you have satisfaction in what you’ve achieved, that’s happiness. When your desire can never be quenched because it’s so far out, that creates an enormous amount of unhappiness. It’s human nature to always want more. It’s the natural “Greed is good.” from the Wall Street movie.

Ultimately when what you’re building makes you happy; because it’s at the right equilibrium, then that’s awesome. I retired early. It wasn’t something I enjoyed; it’s boring. I mentioned I had an ice cream truck in college. I had fiscal freedom because of it. On the weekend, I might sell a couple of thousand dollars worth of ice cream bars. I was great.  

Sramana Mitra: One of the things that we try to do in 1M1M is pose that question of what is success. Success is personal. At what level do you feel whole and at peace with yourself. Define that and execute to that instead of trying to live somebody else’s life. There’s a category of people who want to build these billion-dollar business, but there are tradeoffs in that. If that’s the direction you want to go, great. But know what is involved in that. Don’t stumble into that.

Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital
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