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Show Me The Money – What Your Business Plan Must Include

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Article Overview: You’ve got your business idea, got the time to start the new business and your entrepreneur spirit is fired up but you need money and are off to the bank or a friendly angel investor with your business plan. Wait before you do, make sure that you have included this information.

Show Me The Money – What Your Business Plan Must Include

You’ve got your business idea, got the time to start the new business and your entrepreneur spirit is fired up but you need money and are off to the bank or a friendly angel investor with your business plan. Wait before you do, make sure that you have included this information.

Business Models and Strategies: Ensure that your business is well structured and follows a recognized business model. Ensure that your business strategy for the next 3-5 years are well defined. This gives a potential investor confidence in your business ability and structure.

Market Research: You must fully demonstrate that you have a detailed understanding of the market you will be selling to. How big it is, what the trends are and the people who will want to buy from you.

Product Information: Define what your product range will consist of. Your price points and how you intend to develop the products. You should pay particular attention to your differentiators.

Legal Information: This includes contracts, agreements, licenses, trademarks, copyrights, company details and any large sales that you have.

Financial Information: Financial statements and 5 year projections. Any past tax returns and accounts. Details of any loans, debts and outstanding debtors. Prove to your potential investors what you have done, play to do. Overall your financials should prove your company is financially secure, prudent and realistic in its goals.

Management Information: Provide names and resumes of all your key staff. This is to demonstrate the strength of your management team.

Differentiation: Prove how you will be different from all your competitors. Look at niches, superior service, better packaging, unusual products or services etc. Show your competitive advantage and how you will adjust to meet market changes.

Demonstrate that your business has a good understanding of the above concepts, coupled with a good product and your chance of raising money for your business increases. Good Luck!

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Article Tags: angel investor, business ability, business idea, business model, business models, business strategy, company details, competitive advantage, debtors, differentiation, good understanding, information business, investor confidence, management information, market changes, niches, raising money, superior service, tax returns, unusual products



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Business Innovation - Hi Simon If you can finish off the Business Plan and think about your strategic direction or how you are going to use your product to convince people it's a great idea, it will set the foundation for your programming project. You see, when you are looking for funding you will need a Business Plan and Strategic Plan that will convince companies to invest into your new idea. Has anyone achieved this idea before using another industry besides health and fitness that you know of? You should also design some mockups as a "preview" for your programming project. This will also help reduce your programming costs as everyone will know exactly what you want if you have detailed mockups already completed including any functionality you require. Starting mockups for websites and software applications on paper is the best way if you're not a guru in graphic editing software.
New Small Business Topic - Hello everyone, I'm on the lookout for new topics to add to my site. We just launched a Franchising section and are planning Human Resources section. Do you have any thoughts for a new section? Here's a list of what we currently have: Angel Investors Branding Bank Loans Business Coaching Business Plan Franchises (New) Insurance Legal Marketing Public Relations Sales Small Biz Loans Venture Capital
2007 Goals - 1. Web site complete, fully operational 2. Revenue stream from both individual and corporate 3. Business Plan complete 4. Full marketing strategy complete and implemented
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My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.


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