I was writing an email to these folks and I just stopped, and deleted the draft. Why waste the time raising entrepreneurs I don’t even know. My complaint? I got
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Sales forecasting is much easier than you think, and much more useful than you imagine. It’s not about guessing the future correctly. We’re human; we don’t do that well. Instead,
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Three months ago I posted Securing Angel Investors in this space. I was responding then to a request that I explain the process step-by-step. But I’m afraid I skipped the
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For several decades now I’ve been back and forth between working on and building my own business, helping others build theirs, helping people manage small business, and, occasionally, helping larger
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With this post I’d like to give my personal answer to the frequent question, “What do angel investors look for in a business plan?”
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I don’t want to be a strategist. Yeah, like you, I like to be a thinker. I like analysis. And strategy sounds cool. But the term strategist is too much
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Do yourself a favor. Stop. Breathe. Take 10 minutes to watch this video by Louie Schwarzberg, a TEDx talk. The TED summary is:
Nature's beauty can be easily missed — but not through Louie Schwartzberg's lens. His stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, serves as a meditation on being grateful for every day. (Filmed at TEDxSF.)
Posted by A Life in the Day
This interesting book review came out this morning on slate.com: In her new book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte
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Startups looking for angel investors or venture capital (VC) absolutely need an exit strategy because investors require it. The exit is what gives them a return. Exit strategies related to
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If you don’t plan your business because you don’t need a formal business plan document for a loan application or investors, you’re missing out. Planning is a tool for steering
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Some of the best and brightest, some of the most educated people I know, have decided that it’s cool to use the word “sh*t” to replace the old-fashioned words “things,” “stuff,” “work,” and so on. That’s too bad. Of course I remember “get your shit straight,” a phrase that’s as old as the golden age...
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How to motivate employees? According to new research, messages from on high need to be more abstract and less details. And messages from immediate supervisors need to be more concrete.
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I’m seeing more and more marketing showing up about so-called crowd funding these days. Sorry, but no. Not yet. Reports of crowdfunding in the U.S. are, as of today, just
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I put this here today because I love this quote: “I wanted to fundamentally feel like I was the best person in the world to solve that problem.” This is
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So for me, what makes a sales forecast credible? It starts with product market fit. I want to understand the story of the need, and not necessarily big numbers, but
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The mythology of failure rates is greatly exaggerated, I think. Not that you’re not going to do it anyhow, just like I did, but, for the record, you know they
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I see this confusion a lot: People use the terms “venture capital,” “venture capitalist,” and “VC” to apply to any outsider investing in a startup. However, it’s really useful to
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Good news: Here's a simple process, five easy steps, to improve your business. It's easy to do. And, if you're not doing something like this already, then this simple addition to your process offers you substantial business improvement.
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I just read 7 Things Never to Tell Your Spouse About Business Finances, posted by Barry Molz on Amex OPEN forum. I like it. I like Barry, too, I’ve been
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This is Heidi Roizen talking about the old days of Silicon Valley software startup (T/Maker), with a true story about an ethical choice she and her co-founder brother Peter made.
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I don’t agree with everything in this infographic,but at the very least it’s an interesting summary. Notice the huge increase in the number of institutions offering courses on entrepreneurship. The
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What do you think of when you see the acronym “BS?” Do you think of business strategy? Maybe you should. I have nothing against real business strategy. I’ve posted on
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Websites are visual. They are optimized for graphics and viewing. We have become very accustomed to interpreting our data as visual images, and the numbers in your Web plan should
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Earlier this year I reviewed submissions on more than 30 businesses for our angel investment group in two days. Yes, I...
This image, proving again that a picture is worth a thousand words (although, not, I’m told, for SEO purposes, but on well …). My thanks to Jordi Pedrol, who shared
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t’s been years since I was making a real living off of business plan consulting (I migrated to business plan software instead), but I had an exchange last week that reminded me of one of the biggest problems – and most common misunderstandings – related to business plans.
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My latest on the bplans.com blog.
Here’s a key moment in a successful bootstrapping business. This is as an answer to a question I received over my ask-me form at timberry.com. Back in 1993, Palo Alto
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Here’s some great insight on the evolution of business plans and business planning, from Joi Ito, Director of MIT’s MediaLabs: Ito urges us to follow a compass rather than a
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The crumbling of mainstream journalism worries me. But am I just being nostalgic? Was it really that good in the past? The Portland Oregonian, one of the grand old daily
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