Topic

business plans

A collection of 35 issues

Scoping Budget?

How serious is your prospect about your project? The one that you’ve busily sacrificed anything from your once-hectic social calendar to the long-forgotten blissful balance of your treasured personal relationship to help make happen? How about testing their true intentions by surreptitiously pressing them around project scoping funds? Late

Following 'Here's The Idea'

I’ve spent much of today honing three different types of exec summary for a business plan I’ve helped craft. Inspired to check the web for any extra pointers, I came across the NY Times’ Corner Office. In particular, a 4-page interview [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/

Funder Advice

When discussing a one-page summary of a new venture, I was party to some revealing thoughts on how to further “sell” the idea to potential investors from someone involved in monitoring just such conversations. Here’s a selection that would help shape the resultant full business plan: * Around 10 pages

Funder Project Success

A delightful morning had me facilitating a workshop aimed at understanding different potential funding agencies’ viewpoints. The venture support varied among the six participants, from a few hundred thousand dollars, right through to multi-millions. One session looked at what business plans must exhibit for them to feel comfortable that success

Project Implementation Memorandum

This grandiose title relates to a doc appreciated by a particular business funder. I get the impression it is for endeavours that have gone past the ‘prototype’ stage, yet are still to fully understand a comprehensive business plan. After a meeting with them recently, they kindly provided a checklist of

Darwinian Difficulty

There’s all sorts of wonderfully produced BBC documentaries celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of his Origin of the Species publication. One such programme focused on what Darwin did not know at the time, and pondered whether it added or subtracted from his proposition. One base

Another Golden Rule

I was involved in one of those informal, first-meet handshake, style introductions over a bottle of excellent red the other day with a chap that ran a firm specialising in writing business plans on behalf of prospective corporate funders. He thought that there was an unhealthy attitude prevalent among the

Bank Manager's Top 2 Business Plan Failings

Will the lengthy and deep downturn trigger a long period of almost static economic performance or worse still, become a double-dip recession? This is a question taxing the financial press, yet many of the people I speak to, working in the field day-in, day-out, seem more optimistic. One such chirpy

Related Angel Truths

A friend of mine went surfing for insight into the often murky world of Angel Investors. Apparently, there are over 300,000 such individuals in America alone, and according to the same site that stated that fact, there are three Angel-related “Bitter Truths”. 1. More than 80% of all businesses

Just One Page

As I merrily helped put together a document for “Executive” consumption, I stated that a certain topic wasn’t succinct enough. Protests abounded. They had so much to say that it simply all had to be kept in. The problem I had was that the info didn’t fit onto