Wishing you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2012!!
Personally, January is my favourite month of the year in business, not just that but this year feels a little different, here at Lough Shore we’re entering 2012 with a palpable sense of anticipation. 2012 will be a formative year for the company. I just know that something momentous is going to happen!
Harking back to the Wombat days, November and December were the biggest months of the year in the New York financial software business. Indeed, very often the full year targets were only hit and exceeded in the last week of the year. Success or failure in the long run was highly dependent on driving right through to close of business on December 31st, when, it has to be said that most of the competition was at home by the fire sipping mulled wine.
One philosophy was that if the CIO was sitting on fifty POs heading into Christmas, we’d have a disproportionally large chance of getting our business closed out if we were the only vendor calling in the last week of the year. Indeed, as the global investment banking business prepared to disintegrate in December 2007 we mustered our biggest ever month for new business, in a time when 99% of POs were frozen.
January is the calm after the storm, a period of reflection following months of fighting tooth and nail all the way to the line at year end.
It is a time for totting up the scores and taking stock (and lets face it, most business people love totting up the scores!). January is for taking deep breaths, raising your head above the parapet, and setting aspirations for the business; staff reviews, carving up the bonus pool, promotions and exits. It is also the month for asking the hard questions and having hard conversations, cutting the losers, upping investment in the winners and generally resetting the direction for the business and sketching the plan for the year ahead.
Looking back to Lough Shore, my sense is that 2012 is going to be a formative year for our venture. We’re now a full year into the business proper, though we’ve been involved in the space since April 2010.
Ultimately, building an investment company is a move into a different space and a fifteen year play for us. We’ve been progressing on the assumption that it will take a lot of hard work beginning with two or three years to pull together the right team (including investors), really learn the ropes and begin to operate at a high level. Similarly, and equally important, twelve months ago the view was that it would take time to build our brand and reputation, while becoming accepted as a quality player in the industry, both at home in NI, and globally. The key of course is to progress on these fronts while keeping costs tight, ensuring longevity, and perhaps most critically “learning while doing” by closing some great landmark deals and avoiding the banana skins.
We made great progress on all these fronts through 2011, and expect the business to really crystallise in 2012. The work begins in earnest with the new year and there needs to be a lot of planning and reflection over the next few weeks.
On that note, it seems fitting to mention that the sun is out in Belfast this New Year’s morning, for what seems like the first time in months.
– Danny
January 1st 2012