I couldn’t. They only wanted equity. “Remember, we backed you when all you had was an idea.” True, I thought. “You can be sure if we put this kind of money in, we’ll do everything to see you make it and to protect our investment.” Reasonable, I thought. “Either take this offer now or just go back to the Bronx and keep struggling to make it one box at a time and forget the big-time. Howard, a million dollars is a lot of money and we’re willing to give it to you now. Be smart. Take the money.”

They had me. I really wanted to go for the big-time. I needed the money. I’d done everything I could up to this point to hold on to all the equity. I took their offer.

Did I make the right decision? Even now I’m not sure. The fact is I could have squeezed the necessary cash from my personal savings and publishing business. Although at a later point this actually became necessary, I was unwilling early on because this was still a risky business. If I put my life’s savings in and everything went kaput, my family would have been left with nothing. Today, when it looks like Dave and Peter will make a better than thirtyfold return on their investment, it’s easy to say I should have mortgaged my house and done it myself. But I’ve made plenty of money as it is, and the truth is, I’m just not that big a risk-taker. They were probably right. Without taking the equity investment I might still be living hand to mouth, peddling boxes.

Not only that, but many times our investors have helped me to see the light when I refused. Insofar as I take a small salary and am some sort of an ascetic anyhow, I had a tendency not to care that much whether we showed profits or not. All I really wanted was to keep on hiring people and keep on growing. I’ve always been ready to reinvest the profits from any established part of our business into another part that shows long-run potential. The problem is, sometimes I don’t know when to stop. Ultimately, if a business is justified, it has to be self-funding and profitable eventually. Aiming for profitability also forces the business to grow in the proper way. Our investors, who are many times more concerned with the bottom line than I, have more than once persuaded us to take drastic steps to put our new enterprises into the black. Before we went public, our outside investors never held more than 20 percent of our stock, so they had to persuade rather than force us to make these moves. I think this is the best kind of balance a company can have.

As we continued to grow, more capital was required. Eventually we sold another 10 percent of the company to various investors that our original core group brought in, until we finally reached the point that our own revenue was sufficient to fund all but our most outrageous ambitions. Along the way we’ve taken in some fascinating investors. Almost all are very rich men. I’m always afraid that if things go sour I don’t want someone like my grandmother, who couldn’t afford it, getting wiped out, just because she had faith in me.