A Sensible Approach To Writing A Good Business Plan

Mark Jauquet clearly explain the format and contents of a good business plan should include several pars; Executive Summary, Company Description, Market Size, Technology Description, Competition, Sales/Revenue generation, Finances, and Management. It is very important to capture investors attention and interest before going into any detail about your business, which makes executive summary a very critical part of your business plan.  I guess "short and sweet" is the key to a good executive summary.  If investor like the short and sweet idea, then we can start to talk about what the company does and another most important key point- where is the money market for them.  After all, the business plan is a sales proposal for your idea.  Investor need to know how much your idea cost and how much it is worth.  No one will buy anything that does not have price or value attach to it.  In order to increase the value of your business idea and make it more appeal, the supporting point such as Technology Description, Competition and Management plays important roll here.  Investor like to know what exactly your company do and what type of technology you invent or apply.  Mark also point out that in the Management description, it is important to show investor that how enthusiastic you and your team are for the new business, and how much will you be willing to sacrifice for the success.  If a investor is welling to gamble on you, I am sure they want to know if you are willing to take risk as they are and be on the same boat with them.  The last, money talk is probably the most important fact for the success of the business plan.  Your sales and revenue prediction has direct impact of investor's decision.  No money no talk, the golden rule of the business.   

John Dimmer - Where can you get money for your business

John Dimmer came to class to talk about how to raise funding for business.  As a angle investor with finance education background and lots of banking industrious and business investing experience, John has shared many valuable knowledge with us on how to seek your funding for creating a new business.  He basically narrowed it down to 3 main resource for collecting funding, yourself or family and friend, Venture Capital and Angle investor.  It is not a surprise to hear that we should start with ourselves and people who relay to or close to us because they are the people who more than likely to really care about you and not just their own pocket.  It is also very interesting to know some difference between V C and Angle investor, and some "dark site" about them.  Of course, it is all about business, and business world can be brutal sometimes.  I am really glade that we have chance to hear the voice from real investors such as John Dimmer about what they think and how they work to invest a new created business.  Another thing I learn from John's speech and his own experience is that all investors regardless of VC, Angle investor or your rich uncle Bob, they all started from presenting their own business idea and raise their funding form other investors.  Everybody had their turned to ask for money to make them success, and eventually they become investor for others.  Maybe now is our turn to ask for the money.          

Business Funding

Where can I get money to start my business? Well, $ 5,000 from my own pocket is probably how much I can put into my investment to start.  Of course, its probably not going to last long.  Other than myself, first person who pop into my mind is my father.  My father is some what wealthy.  As long as I can convince him with my business idea, he should be able to help me out or at least "loan" me the money.  Also, since my business idea involves with software and system design, the beginning funding does not require whole lot.  However,  I will need to find at least two partners who has skills in either software developing or marketing and are welling to invest their time, knowledge and money into this newly created business together because the project idea is defiantly require a team with multiple strength to accomplish it.  Of course, my partners will have their share of the company depends on how much they can invest.  Overall, combine with my $5,000, my father's $20,000 to 30,000 and another $5,000 from each of my partners together, total will probably be around $35.000 to $45.000 more or less.  I will still owns more than 50% of the company.  This will probably be the best scenario to start for me.