Guide for Dummies with ideas-4: Who will help to turn a dream into a business?
I did not think that I would have to go back to the start-up theme, started by “ Curved mirrors of the business plan ”, and to my ... “ Teapots with ideas ”. The feat of me going back to the “kettles” one material * , which recently appeared in the Habrawa Startups.
I didn’t even want to read this article first, stumbled upon the introductory warning of the author that everything said in it is intended only for start-up entrepreneurs. But then he tried to get into the skin of these business - neophytes and still mastered a rather long text. If we reject the author’s fundamental unwillingness to use Russian terminology, the material was not so bad, and the introduction to the problem “Where to start promoting your start-up project” is quite acceptable.
Of course, as the author claims, you need to start with the elaboration of the business model and other marketing and economic sections of the business plan. It is also impossible to disagree with the author that without the help of someone whom he calls a business developer (and for the time being I will generally call a business expert ), it will probably be difficult to do this. Only a few practical questions remain:
1. What can you expect from a business expert?
2. How to choose a “good” business expert?
3. How much will I have to pay for his work?
I will try to answer these questions. In this case, as always, I will build on my personal experience. Before that, I considered issues related to the team for the project . Now, when we missed the initial (seed) financing stage, and work on creating a prototype of our project ** is nearing completion, the problem of serious investments, and therefore much deeper marketing and economic studies, is on the agenda. This, in turn, means that you need to attract business experts. So, my answers to the three questions posed above ...
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From business developer to broker
A business expert or an appropriate team (company) can do the following for you:
1. Create a business model from scratch and on a turnkey basis and all marketing and economic sections of a business plan. All this is a business expert will issue in the finished document, adding to it with your brief technical description of the project, which he (she), of course, will edit. In addition to the business plan, the expert will develop a business summary of the project (Executive Summary) and a set of presentation materials. In order to squeeze the initial information out of you, he will ask you to fill out a questionnaire, something like the one offered by Ycombinator . It is possible that the process of his work, he will have to do additional research and evaluation of the target market. I can safely call such an expert a business developer.
2. Write a business plan for a fairly detailed source materials. Unlike a business developer, such an expert will require you to provide detailed sketches of all the necessary materials, or, at a minimum, ask you to answer a number of questions in sufficient detail. At the same time, he will not do any research and additional calculations for you - he will simply process your information and invest it in the forms accepted for this case. By analogy with technical (technical writer) and marketing ( marketing writer ) writers such a business assistant can be called a business writer (the author of the article, which was discussed above, calls him a "packer").
3. Edit the business plan developed by you and the materials attached to it. Again, such an expert will not do any research or additional calculations. He will simply "comb" the documents you have submitted. By analogy with the publishing business, I would call it a business editor.
4. To advise on all issues of interest to you. He will answer your questions, ask you the recipients, who in many ways will direct you along the right path, will give useful advice and recommendations. Such an expert can provide you with the necessary facts and figures for your target market or tell you where to find them. That is, it will be your business consultant.
5. Submit to the investor a business resume you have developed and introduce you to it. Naturally, the work on the creation of all documents while you are. The only thing you can additionally expect from such an expert is information about the personal “preferences” of the preferences of one or another investor - what volumes of documents, their rubrication, etc., they prefer. At best, he himself somewhat corrects something, but no more. Therefore, the term "expert" here is attached with some stretch (although which side to look at it :)). The main work of such a specialist is to bring you together with the investor. In other words, he is an intermediary, or, if you like, a business broker.
It is easy to guess that the cost of each of these five works are very different from each other. This, as well as some recommendations for choosing a “good” business expert, is covered in my article at iTech Bridge .
- - * As soon as I published this note in iTech Bridge, the author of this speech immediately wrote in LiveJournal that the discussion would continue. So, I look forward to his answer ...
** What we eventually ended up with our project is not what you find at the link. Time in a web business is running at an accelerating pace. What was original a couple of months ago, after this time, turn into a standard de facto. Our project today can be described as Enterprise 2.0+, where Enterprise 2.0 is a social web focused on corporate use, well, and “+” is my concept of an intelligent social environment for professionals along with trying to solve the tasks that I listed in " Yes, the hand giving will not become scanty "
Read the full text ...
I didn’t even want to read this article first, stumbled upon the introductory warning of the author that everything said in it is intended only for start-up entrepreneurs. But then he tried to get into the skin of these business - neophytes and still mastered a rather long text. If we reject the author’s fundamental unwillingness to use Russian terminology, the material was not so bad, and the introduction to the problem “Where to start promoting your start-up project” is quite acceptable.
Of course, as the author claims, you need to start with the elaboration of the business model and other marketing and economic sections of the business plan. It is also impossible to disagree with the author that without the help of someone whom he calls a business developer (and for the time being I will generally call a business expert ), it will probably be difficult to do this. Only a few practical questions remain:
1. What can you expect from a business expert?
2. How to choose a “good” business expert?
3. How much will I have to pay for his work?
I will try to answer these questions. In this case, as always, I will build on my personal experience. Before that, I considered issues related to the team for the project . Now, when we missed the initial (seed) financing stage, and work on creating a prototype of our project ** is nearing completion, the problem of serious investments, and therefore much deeper marketing and economic studies, is on the agenda. This, in turn, means that you need to attract business experts. So, my answers to the three questions posed above ...
')
From business developer to broker
A business expert or an appropriate team (company) can do the following for you:
1. Create a business model from scratch and on a turnkey basis and all marketing and economic sections of a business plan. All this is a business expert will issue in the finished document, adding to it with your brief technical description of the project, which he (she), of course, will edit. In addition to the business plan, the expert will develop a business summary of the project (Executive Summary) and a set of presentation materials. In order to squeeze the initial information out of you, he will ask you to fill out a questionnaire, something like the one offered by Ycombinator . It is possible that the process of his work, he will have to do additional research and evaluation of the target market. I can safely call such an expert a business developer.
2. Write a business plan for a fairly detailed source materials. Unlike a business developer, such an expert will require you to provide detailed sketches of all the necessary materials, or, at a minimum, ask you to answer a number of questions in sufficient detail. At the same time, he will not do any research and additional calculations for you - he will simply process your information and invest it in the forms accepted for this case. By analogy with technical (technical writer) and marketing ( marketing writer ) writers such a business assistant can be called a business writer (the author of the article, which was discussed above, calls him a "packer").
3. Edit the business plan developed by you and the materials attached to it. Again, such an expert will not do any research or additional calculations. He will simply "comb" the documents you have submitted. By analogy with the publishing business, I would call it a business editor.
4. To advise on all issues of interest to you. He will answer your questions, ask you the recipients, who in many ways will direct you along the right path, will give useful advice and recommendations. Such an expert can provide you with the necessary facts and figures for your target market or tell you where to find them. That is, it will be your business consultant.
5. Submit to the investor a business resume you have developed and introduce you to it. Naturally, the work on the creation of all documents while you are. The only thing you can additionally expect from such an expert is information about the personal “preferences” of the preferences of one or another investor - what volumes of documents, their rubrication, etc., they prefer. At best, he himself somewhat corrects something, but no more. Therefore, the term "expert" here is attached with some stretch (although which side to look at it :)). The main work of such a specialist is to bring you together with the investor. In other words, he is an intermediary, or, if you like, a business broker.
It is easy to guess that the cost of each of these five works are very different from each other. This, as well as some recommendations for choosing a “good” business expert, is covered in my article at iTech Bridge .
- - * As soon as I published this note in iTech Bridge, the author of this speech immediately wrote in LiveJournal that the discussion would continue. So, I look forward to his answer ...
** What we eventually ended up with our project is not what you find at the link. Time in a web business is running at an accelerating pace. What was original a couple of months ago, after this time, turn into a standard de facto. Our project today can be described as Enterprise 2.0+, where Enterprise 2.0 is a social web focused on corporate use, well, and “+” is my concept of an intelligent social environment for professionals along with trying to solve the tasks that I listed in " Yes, the hand giving will not become scanty "
Read the full text ...
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/27520/
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