Entries Tagged 'Business Strategy' ↓

If you want to leave your current job to start a on your own, then starting a franchise could be one option. Your decision should take into consideration various advantages and disadvantage that a franchise offers before taking steps further.

You should know whether you would like to run the franchise or not? It is possible that you want to start on your own because you do not want do your current job or any job but it does not guarantee that your liking for your own business.

Advantages of starting on your own include:

1. Greater freedom over you decisions at work. Decide your own working hours, conditions and arrangements.
2. Opportunity to run your own business.
3. Working in your own area of interest. Doing something you enjoy, like you can open a retail chain if you like selling something.

Disadvantages of starting on your own include:

1. Since you have the complete responsibility of running the business, you would sometimes have to forego the freedom that you have in a job and give priority to your business.
2. Your income is not fixed (there is uncertainty) and you only get the money that you have earned for the business. And you might have to live by cutting costs as you might not get enough money at the end of the month to cover your costs.
3. If you work from home, you might have family members asking you to commit time to them, instead of work.
4. You might have to do some work which you do not like. You might like selling but you would also have to maintain your accounts, work on the legal aspects of the business, sign some contracts etc. As you are the only person doing it, you can not neglect your responsibility towards it.
5. In a franchise business you are working independently but still working for/under someone else’s brand name. You would be bound by the rules of the franchise agreement and thus sometimes they might like you to do things that you might not agree with. So if you prefer complete autonomy, you would need to go for starting your own business and not a franchise.

So decide your options of working for buying a franchise keeping the above points in mind.

• Forma Therapeutics  has revealed that it has done a deal with Novartis, agreeing to use its chemistry platform to develop inhibitors for an undisclosed protein-protein interaction target in oncology.
• The license and option pact is worth up to $200 million in upfront fees and milestones.
• Forma only recently dropped its stealth approach to announce that it had raised $25 million to pursue new compounds that could target pathways disclosed by the Cancer Genome Atlas Project.
• Its three founding scientists have played a key role in the field at the Broad Institute.
• Reinhard Ambros, head of the Novartis Venture Funds (NVF) says: “Protein-protein interactions represent important target opportunities in the field of oncology drug discovery, but have been highly elusive to date. Novartis is very excited to be collaborating with Forma to access their biology and chemistry expertise and powerful discovery tools to unlock this challenging target class.”

This press release has more details. 

Deal Analysis:

1. The very high P/E of most biotech deals makes it difficult for a non-pharma investor to even give it a serious consideration. So in that sense, the investor pool is limited.
2. Forma Therapeutics has done a great job in securing the deal and the associated funding. As rhe capital markets dry-up, there won’t be many takers for biotech investments. And in that sense, this $25-$200 million is probably worth 5x the amount in bullish times.
3. Lets hope Forma Therapeutics uses the funding wisely and R&D that can be resold  for rapid revenue generation. Investors will not wait for 4-5 years to see results. Getting the funding is the first step… delivering on it is a bigger step. Tangible results are needed in 12-18 months. Lets see how it goes.