A lot of questions are asked here about business planning, building a team and raising money, so here's a method I've developed to do it. It's not as easy as downloading a business plan template and filling it in, but it's far more effective:
- Come up with the business concept. Write a SHORT concept document.
- Make a list of a few people who'd be ideal for each senior management position
- Take the concept document to the easiest person to convince to join you.
- Take that person and the concept document to the next easiest person. Ask them to join you (you're no longer a one-man band, after all!)
- Continue until you have a good team - CEO, CFO, CLO, CMO, CTO, etc.
- The TEAM now writes the business plan. Afterall, what business do you have writing parts of the plan that you have no idea about?
- Read the plan, discuss, revise, repeat.
- Make a decision with the team: do we give this plan the green light?
- Take the final draft, have it professionally type-set, printed and bound. Make it look like a plan that a Fortune 500 company would create if they were starting a new business unit.
- You now have a PROFESSIONAL business plan.
Nice!
- Ask your team for some money. The first bit of capital coming from the team themselves looks fantastic to later investors. You might not get a lot, but it's a start.
- Take your ENTIRE team and your professional plan on a shopping trip: go shopping for money.
Imagine sitting in front of a VC panel or bank loans officer by yourself with a home-made, template business plan, compared with taking your CEO John Smith, MBA, your CFO Jane Citizen, CPA, your CLO, John Doe, LLM, and others. You're now a serious force.
End result: you have a potentially very good team, hopefully with qualifications and experience, who'll write your plan, stop bad ideas going ahead, add credibility to any fundraising mission, and who will run the business when you're ready to go.
Like I said, it's hard. You might not get the people you want.
There are also obviously more details to it (like contracts, etc) than I can write here, but you get the idea.
Daniel
- Come up with the business concept. Write a SHORT concept document.
- Make a list of a few people who'd be ideal for each senior management position
- Take the concept document to the easiest person to convince to join you.
- Take that person and the concept document to the next easiest person. Ask them to join you (you're no longer a one-man band, after all!)
- Continue until you have a good team - CEO, CFO, CLO, CMO, CTO, etc.
- The TEAM now writes the business plan. Afterall, what business do you have writing parts of the plan that you have no idea about?
- Read the plan, discuss, revise, repeat.
- Make a decision with the team: do we give this plan the green light?
- Take the final draft, have it professionally type-set, printed and bound. Make it look like a plan that a Fortune 500 company would create if they were starting a new business unit.
- You now have a PROFESSIONAL business plan.
Nice!- Ask your team for some money. The first bit of capital coming from the team themselves looks fantastic to later investors. You might not get a lot, but it's a start.
- Take your ENTIRE team and your professional plan on a shopping trip: go shopping for money.
Imagine sitting in front of a VC panel or bank loans officer by yourself with a home-made, template business plan, compared with taking your CEO John Smith, MBA, your CFO Jane Citizen, CPA, your CLO, John Doe, LLM, and others. You're now a serious force.
End result: you have a potentially very good team, hopefully with qualifications and experience, who'll write your plan, stop bad ideas going ahead, add credibility to any fundraising mission, and who will run the business when you're ready to go.
Like I said, it's hard. You might not get the people you want.
There are also obviously more details to it (like contracts, etc) than I can write here, but you get the idea.
Daniel
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