Idea 498 of 500. Cluster 28: Coming home
A returnee investment fund that takes twenty small stakes in this list, run by returnees
The mechanism, from the book
The first one through pays the whole price, and everyone after walks through an open door. These are the doors.
Every idea in cluster 28 uses this mechanism.
A first step
Pick 5 ideas from this list that already have someone doing them, and ask each founder what a small investment would let them do and what share they would offer. Write the answers down. Then show that list to 10 returnees you know and ask who would commit a stated sum to a pooled fund run by returnees. Named commitments, even unsigned, tell you the fund is real.
- Who pays first
- A returnee with savings who wants to invest at home but lacks time to judge small businesses one by one, and trusts peers to choose.
- What leaves today
- Savings held by Sri Lankans abroad sit in banks abroad or in property at home, while small firms that would convert raw goods lack the capital to start.
The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.
What the book adds
And a five hundred and first, which is not mine to write: the next five hundred, because this list is the country's.
In the book
- Ch. EightWhat It Costs to Go First
The first one through pays the whole price - Ch. SeventeenOne Building
Sri Lankans abroad given precise roles: sponsor, mentor, introduce
More from cluster 28
- 496A "first year back" service: the accountant, the school, the doctor, the driver, in a monthly fee
- 497Returnee co-working houses in Colombo and Kandy, so that the first year is not spent alone
- 499The Sri Lanka House desk that meets the returning professional at the airport with a list of who wants to hire them
- 500A licence-to-practise service for returning professionals: the doctor's, nurse's, engineer's or accountant's foreign qualification recognised at home, paperwork, exams and all, for a fixed fee
Idea 498 of the 500 in the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? Every one can be started by one person, one family or one small firm.