Steps to Raising Money

There is no single best way to raise money for your new venture. What works for me may be less than effective for you. However, there are some guidelines that can be very helpful if this is your first effort in raising money. Here are a few guidelines that can make the job easier and hopefully, more effective.

First, determine how much money you want to raise. It is likely, if this is your first money raising effort, that you will be talking to angel investors or micro Venture Capital firms and sums of money less than $1,000,000. The amount of money you will need should be determined by understanding the next major milestone in the business growth process, how you believe you can get there, what you will need to reach the goal, and how long it will take to get there. For instance, if you are developing software and are currently in the "beta stage," how long will it take to have a marketable product and what will it cost to run the company until you get there, also know as the burn rate. It may take $30,000/month for 10 months or $300,000 to get that marketable product. One thing you can be sure of is that you will most likely be wrong in the time it will take but you should not be far off when it comes to your monthly expenses. Give yourself a month or two cushion in case you encounter problems and ask for $360,000, first round. Being specific gives the investors confidence that you are reasonable sure of achieving your goal and reasonably sure of reaching it in the estimated time frame.

Second, you will need a few documents that describe your business. One being the "One Line Pitch" like "The patented Grey-Spook widget is recommended by Doctors at the Madness Clinic and designed to reduce the pain of surgery by simply holding it between your teeth for 14 minutes immediately after you awaken from anesthesia." Another being the Business Summary, a paragraph that explains the business process and what your product does, like: "Grey Spook, pain relief widgets are used everywhere to reduce pain and discomfort from surgery. Patients rave about the effectiveness of this simple, yet effective tool for managing pain. The "Grey-Spook" is priced at only $25 and we estimate the market to be three billion annually. There are no known competitors." Finally, you should have a Management Summary, something like: "Robert E. Nuff, invented Grey-Spook and has had 15 years managing pain relief at Robert E. Lee hospital in Houston TX as head nurse. Tammy Toogood has 30 years manufacturing experience with the leading manufacturer of pain management devices in Galveston, TX. " These tools are intended to impart maximum knowledge in the shortest possible time.

Once you have gotten the attention of a potential investor be prepared to deliver a more detailed Executive Summary, possibly as long as 3-4 pages. This short, focused description should be carefully crafted and void of anything that resembles "fluff." It will likely be the first substantive information several investors will ever see regarding your company, so make it good. In this summary, you should include the problem you are solving, why it needs solving, how your product solves the problem in unique and intriguing ways and finally why you and your team are the best choice to "deliver the goods." End with a "hook" about the financial end-game and how your approach will distance you from any competition. Don't go overboard here, but do be aggressive. Have this summary prepared and send to any VC that requests it. Wait, however, until it is requested. Be a little hard to get, not too much so, but a little.

Lastly, build a 7-15 page Power-Point Presentation. This should be your most detailed description, yet. Understand that, on average each page (I still call them slides) will take about 3 minutes to present. So, on average a 7 pager will take 21 minutes to present and leave 9 minutes for questions in a 30 minute presentation and a 15 pager will take 45 minutes and leave 15 minutes for questions in an hour presentation. It is good to have at least 2 versions as you are often time limited and 2 versions will allow flexibility to meet most needs. Remember in preparing your pages (slides) keep the information on the slide at a minimum. Never have to say, "I know you can't see this very well." The Power-Point presentation should be practiced using key words and leveraging "attention getters." Be certain you include summary financials and how you will use them. Most good presentations are the shorter versions.

This brief, and certainly not "all inclusive" commentary is intended to give a quick overview of what investors ask for and need to make decisions about investing in your company. Follow them and increase your chances of success.

Entrepreneurs and Success Strategy - Five Steps to Good Strategy

 Strategy is a military term referring to the process of deciding the best environment, in which, your assets may be deployed to gain the maximum benefit. Obviously there is both good and bad strategy. Were that not the case there would be little demand for the book attributed to Sun Tzu, a ranking military general and strategist during the Chinese Wu dynasty in the late sixth century. It makes sense then that if one is fighting a war or engaged in business that good strategy would be a good objective.

Few need good strategy as badly as Entrepreneurs. Often success or failure depends upon the quality of strategy Entrepreneurs build to grow their businesses.

What does good and bad strategy look like, is a good question? Richard Rumelt posted a good article on the subject of strategy in the McKinsey quarterly, recently. He proposes that bad strategy has, at least 4 recognizable characteristics: Failure to face the problem, making goals strategy, bad objectives, and fluff.

Failure to face the problem

All too often leaders are more interested in surface appearance and rely upon the premise that few people read or care about the real problem, they simply want the problem fixed. So, they pen and present strategies that are surface and short-term centered. They often attempt to overwhelm those that might implement the strategy with "texture and detail," as Rumelt puts it.

Occasionally, executives will just ignore problems and try to replace them with past achievements. They may replace strategy with amazing goals and hope the problems go away, but we all know, hope is not a strategy (good or bad).

Making goals strategy

Many executives are great at setting audacious goals, goals that will "take your breath away" also hoping that the goals will take your mind off the need for strategy. One great warrior we are familiar with was George S. Patton. One of Patton's favorite quotations was from Frederick the Great: "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace." Translation: Audacity, audacity, always audacity. But George S. Patton knew audacious goals were a tactic, not a strategy. He knew that choosing where to be audacious was more important that being audacious. So do not be tempted to dazzle others with audacious goals as a substitute for good strategy.

I am sure you have had experiences where leaders attempt to overwhelm followers with goals like: If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete (paraphrased and attributed to Jack Welch) or Win one for the Kipper (attributed to Knute Rockne). Both are goals but not strategy.

Bad strategic objectives

For those who do not believe in or understand the value of strategy, one of the most frequent ways they approach the process is to make sure the objectives are fuzzy. With fuzzy or unclear objectives you can hope that getting close to the goal will get you where you wish to go, but it will not. The most frequent way bad objectives are presented is through the planning process and having too many objectives.

Instead of identifying a few of the most important goals and developing a strategy to achieve them, executives are gathering all the goals and presenting them in need of strategy. the problem that presents is not all goals are achieved with the same strategy and unless an organization clearly knows those that are most important, it is very likely that bad strategy will be employed.

Fluff

This my favorite and possibly one of the most frequently used. Fluff is simply saying something that can be said in a few simple words with more and bigger words. Using jargon to express something simple. An example given by Rumelt, and I can site none better, is the bank that expresses its strategy as customer-centric intermediation. Look beyond the fluff and you get the bank's strategy is to be a bank. The customer-centric part is jargon and intermediation is a big word for taking deposits and then lending out the money. Bad strategy is often disguised by fluff. Another place where you will often find a lot of fluff is in an organization's vision and mission. Sounds good, but does it really mean anything? If you have to ask that question, it is not good strategy.

So what, then, is necessary to craft good strategy. I believe there are 5 important steps to crafting good strategy:

1. Carefully analyze the current condition- You can't know how to get to where you want to go unless you know where your are.

2. Vision where you want to be - Have a picture of where you want to be.

3. Understand - that tomorrow is not likely to resemble today. Assuming that next year, next month, next week will be just like today is a big mistake. Accept that we live in a world where change is exponential.

4. Develop a big picture plan - Coping with a changing world requires certainty of destination but flexible plans to get there.

5. Implement tactics - engage the people, equipment and capital to reach the destination


The key to good strategy found in these 5 points: analyze, visualize, know things change, get the big picture and implement. Follow these 5 steps to good strategy and enjoy the victories.

Stephen J. Blakesley is the host of the weekly Internet radio show: Entrepreneurs R Us http://www.blogtalkradio.com/sjb340. He is an Author and Speaker, His most recent books include: Strategic Hiring, The Target-The Secret of Superior Performance an How to Make the Next Hire Your Best Hire His blog is found at http://www.entrepreneursrus.com, please visit and comment.

Thank You!



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6416141

The Five Point Job Recovery Plan

Entrepreneurs don't often do the things they do, for the money. They often do them for the passion they have or simply to prove that they can do it. Even though 500,000 new businesses starting each year (the number of startups in 2010) seems like a big number, it is actually an all time low during the recent past (2006 startups numbered 667,000).

"Why" you ask, "is this important?" Here is why; Businesses, less than five years old, have contributed all the net new jobs in the United States in the last decade. And most startup businesses have no employees. So, those that do are ever-so-much more important in our effort to dig our way out of this recession. While I would not be so bold to say that Entrepreneurism alone will return us to full employment ( 5%), it is certainly an important factor.

So, an interesting and important question might be: Why are new business startups off nearly 25 % from their all time high in 2006? And/or; What needs to be done to restore the startup level to the 2006 high and beyond? And/or; How do we go about greasing the sled for Entrepreneurs and Business Startups?

I believe that this five point strategy will go a long way to restoring the climate in this country that incentivizes not just Entrepreneurship but Successful Entrepreneurship (establishing a means of improving the 5 year success rate of startup from 30 to 50 percent).                                           


1. Most money for a startup business comes from the owner's savings which includes the equity of their home or retirement savings. Money, from home equity and/or retirement savings, has shrunk considerably since 2007, for reason I won't go into here. Considerable losses have occurred in those two areas since 2007. I suggest that we compensate for that difficulty by giving those who start businesses a TAX CREDIT up to $25,000 for money invested in a start-up business.

2. Reward those Entrepreneurs that are successful with a one-time 150% deduction for annual wages of new employees, during the first 5 years of operation.

3. Streamline and reorganize the US Patent office which now takes an average of over 3 years to approve a patent application. Begin by giving first time patent appliers a guaranteed 90 day up or down answer.

4. Reward Entrepreneurs that start businesses in the potential high-growth industries of tomorrow: health care, business services, leisure, construction, manufacturing and retail. Give all business startups, surviving the first year in those industries, a $25,000 grant to purchase needed equipment or software.

5. Provide TAX REBATES, up to $5000 a year for the first 5 years of Entrepreneurial activity involving a business with 5 employees or more, provided they can show evidence of investment in specified Entrepreneurial education.


I am calling this five point strategy, The Entrepreneurs R Us Job Recovery Strategy. If you feel this would benefit you or someone you know who is in a startup business situation or thinking of engaging in one please write us.                                    

                                                                          

Businesses Fail at an Alarming Rate

Eight of ten business fail. Eight of ten is breathtaking, to say the least. If it happens so often, why is business failure so painful? Possibly it is because most start-up businesses are a direct reflection of the founder/entrepreneur.
No one starts a business with a goal of failure. Everyone begins with visions of success. When a business fails it gobbles up all involved and takes them "down with the ship."
Perhaps, before we start a business, it would be important to consider why business fail. There are many, of course, but some of the more common are listed in the poll: 
http://polls.linkedin.com/p/94999/xxzyp  Please give us your opinion.
Thanks!

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