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Order of magnitude financial figures

Again, it's too early to put down hard and fast numbers, but you've asked, and need to know just what the magnitude of this venture is going to be. My gut feeling is that the absolute bare bones Spartan scrape by high risk minimum to get started in this business is $50,000 initial capital with as little of that spent on hardware and fixtures as possible. I'd feel comfortable with $100,000, and feel that if we couldn't make it with that, then we probably couldn't make it with a million. MSL has about $50,000 in liquid assets to funnel into this venture, so I think we can plan to scrape up the kind of money to give us a reasonable shot at success. MSL's fiscal year closes on January 31, so on the 30'th we'll pass out our preliminary financial statement and let you see where MSL stands in this venture.

Once we see just what we've got, we may have to line up some additional financing. One possibility is for somebody, like me, who's got some cash and believes in this venture to grant Marin Software Partners a line of credit which it could draw on, at, say 5% above the prime. This would provide Marin Software Partners with a source of additional funds if it needed them, which it would really have to to pay my usurious (but utterly risk-justified) rates.


Editor: John Walker