Business Plan and Initial Funding

Startup Exit Strategy: Founders can plan their exit—or ignore it till it happens and maybe face unexpected challenges. If you have to urge to start a business, why give a moment’s attention [...]

AI For Startup: Artificial Intelligence is talked and written about a great deal, but many of us have little real understanding of what it is and even less, an appreciation of its risks or [...]

Funding for Female Founders: This Directory of Funding for Female Founders aims to help increase these numbers. It is inevitably incomplete, so we would cherish any additions or suggestions for [...]

Mission Driven and Purpose Capital Directory—USA: Seed and venture capital funds all have very particular criteria for investment in new and young ventures. Today, the fastest growing special [...]

Startup to Flourish—between divisive excess wealth and unjust extreme poverty. Flourishing involves commonwealth, built on tacit agreement of the people for the common good. New ventures are [...]

Breakeven analysis for entrepreneurs sounds very dry and like hard work for the founder who’s in love with her idea. But I found it one of the most useful bits of financial calculation, [...]

Let Thousands Invest in Your Startup: Use a Community Round, which lets thousands of your startup’s customers, users, and fans invest alongside VCs and angel investors. You may feel anxious [...]

Equity Crowdfunding Directory—USA: Equity-based crowdfunding allows people to invest in an early-stage, private company (a company that is not listed on any stock exchange) in exchange for equity [...]

Equity Crowdfunding from Friends and Family: per this Founder Institute blog, “a Friends and Family round typically results in anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000 in funding that allows a startup [...]

Burn the Business Plan: The title is arresting and has a lot of truth. I am a retired MBA teacher of new venture creation and many of my students produced business plans. For me though a business [...]

Business Incubator and Accelerator Directory—USA: According to Carl Schramm, there were 1,600 business incubators and accelerators in the US in 2016. The Business Incubator and Accelerator [...]

Sources of Startup Finance: creating a new venture is going to require money. The sources of money are almost endless. The successful entrepreneur will be financially ingenious about finding ways [...]

Early Stage Funding: Most startups are not highly capitalized. Of course it varies by sector. You are unlikely to find airline startups with hundreds of thousands dollars in startup funds. On the [...]

Missed Opportunity for Startup Funding Family Offices and Venture Capital: Founders of new ventures are frequently ignorant about an excellent source of equity investment: family offices. With [...]

Side Business to Startup: About 57 million Americans have a side business, in addition to their regular paid employment. That amounts to nearly half of American full time workers who have a side [...]

Startup Strategy is a subject much written about. Many business school professors and strategy consultants like Bain, BCG and McKinsey have built their reputations based on their own models of [...]

Startup statements of intent have a critical role to play if your new venture has a strong social purpose and the startup seeks to change the world for the better, with benefits for all. There is [...]

Logo for Startups: Choosing a startup’s logo is hard and subjective. Sometimes it can be obvious and flows from the name itself, the place of business, or the product sold. So it was with [...]

Vision Statement: My former home city, Georgetown in Texas, is one of the first US cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants with 100% renewable energy supply—provided by its own power municipal [...]

Loans from Family and Friends: The first port of call for borrowing money for startups is family and friends. Historically, promissory notes have acted as a form of privately issued currency. [...]

SOAR Analysis much resembles a SWOT Analysis. A SOAR Analysis is a tool to improve the strategic planning process and is best done in a group setting. I have a pet theme in the strategic thinking [...]

Risk Mitigation Tools: Entrepreneurs that survive tend to be very good at risk mitigation, or considering the downside risks of their actions. Ignorant people tend to describe entrepreneurs as [...]

Startup Milestones and Accountabilities: Don’t be fooled by the simplistic appearance of the Milestones and Accountabilities Chart below. Setting plans is not enough. It may seem to be [...]

Startup B-Words: Here is my list of Startup B-Words for business building. Have productive fun thinking about how these startup b-words can contribute to your success. Treat them almost as though [...]

Business Plan Mistakes: If you have never attempted to write a business plan before, beware! The territory is full of traps and you want to do your best to avoid them. If you are reading this [...]

Business Plan Outline: This is a business plan outline of a business plan that is less than 20 pages, plus appendices. Naturally you are going to make it specific to your situation. You will [...]

The Business Model Canvas is now perhaps the most widely used tool to help entrepreneurs and managers both in the commercial and nonprofit world—to describe, design, challenge, and pivot business [...]