Entrepreneur’s Diary

When I was trying to start my fish business, I had a very difficult time trying to raise the capital to launch the business; I needed about $500,000. The central idea of the business was to raise tilapia (no one even knew what a tilapia was back then) using indoor recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology, which was far removed from a tried-and-tested technology at that time. The problem was that just about every investment that had been made into starting fish farms had failed miserably. Investors often just laughed at you when you tried to initiate a conversation about investing in aquaculture. It even created a new term, “aqua-shyster.” It really helps to convince a potential investor of your business’s viability if you can take him or her to a working prototype of what you are trying to implement full scale. I could take investors to my research operation at Cornell University and show them a single tank setup, but I could not show them a working farm or even refer them to any existing farms in the United States that you could consider economically successful. My somewhat standard response became “If it were easy, everyone would be doing it already! “ Being a first mover has the often-dreaded result of being a failure, but the excitement of a huge upside! Eventually, I found the necessary investors, but it was not easy. I guess I did convince some of them.