Michael Hetherington describes how he has bootstrapped his business from its inception and focused on innovative, custom produced products to achieve and maintain profitability.
Like this? Let us know with a $5 donation, so we can do more
In this 5 and a half minute segment (download iPod compatible, 29MB), Michael Hetherington describes how he has made his business finance itself. RailDriver, the start of PI Engineering's train businesses, is currently its number 4 profit maker. TrainMaster, the professional division, is just starting to mature to maturity after 4 to 5 years of development and $4 to $5 million in investment. Michael expects it to pay back well.
His businesses have a history of paying back. He started PI Engineering out of graduate school with family savings. That cushion gave him the chance to develop an initial product based on his graduate work that was good but could not compete against mass-produced solutions that were starting to emerge. Michael turned the company towards more custom engineered products where he had an advantage manufacturing and has been using that model to keep his business profitable and self-funding since.
Leave a comment