Building Start-Up By Elena Donets

Start-up

Executive Summary

Mission Statement

Company Background

Product Description

Marketing Plan

Competitor Analysis

Team

Financial Planning

Timeline

Executive Summary Some general points:

• You should lead with the most compelling statement of why you have a really big idea. You need to get your reader to think, “Wow!”

• You need to make it clear that there is a big, important problem that you are going to solve, or opportunity you are going to exploit.

• If you have customers and revenues, make it clear. If not, tell the investor when you will.

• How specifically are you going to generate revenues, and from whom? Why will it be capital efficient?

• Don’t lie.

• Write NO More Than 2 Pages . The executive summary should be simple and short, leave the detail for the business plan.

● Summary ● The Problem ● The Opportunity ● Competitors ● Business Model ● The Team ● The Promise ● The Ask

Sample Executive Summary: Link

Mission Statement How to write Mission Statement

Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit –

one person, one cup and one

neighborhood at a time.

"Mission statement help clarify what business you are in, your goals and your objectives," says Rhonda Abrams Answering the following questions will help you to create a verbal picture of your business's mission: • Why does my company exist? Who do we serve? What is our

propose? • What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? • Considering the above, along with our expertise and resources, what

business should we be in? • What is important to us? What do we stand for? Putting It All Together. Like anything with lasting value, crafting a mission statement requires time, thought and planning. Brainstorming. When writing your mission statement, keep in mind what caused you and your core group to found the organization in the first place. There is a spark, a need, a desire and a need to be fulfilled. Keep that passion close at hand during the brainstorming around the writing of the mission statement.

Product Description This section of the business plan is your opportunity

to completely hash out your product idea, down to the finest detail, which gives you a complete understanding of your product.

• Overview of your product

• The product features, benefits, and advantages

• Product development activities

• Liability issues

The product summary should also take time to focus on the problem(s) that your product will solve. In addition to an explanation of the problems, you should also discuss what the causes are, how the product solves these problems, and the benefits to potential customers. A complete description of your product, the problems it solves, and a comparison with competitors should all work to make a case as to why your product will be successful.

Marketing Plan

Market Analysis

• Market Analysis • Marketing

Strategy and Objectives

A market analysis summarizes the size and potential of your target market, current market trends, and gives demographic information about your target market. This section should include a table that lists all of the potential market segments that you will target along with all of the information you collected in your research.

Marketing Strategy and Objectives

Understanding who will buy your product is an important foundational step. By understanding who your customers are and what motivates them to buy, you will be able to create an informed, effective marketing strategy. Startup marketing is a whole different science. How so? The secret is properly combining the right channels: Content Marketing and PR.

Competitors Analysis

Questions to ask:

• Who your competitors are

• What markets or market segments your competitors serve

• What benefits your competition offers

• Why customers buy from them

• Competitor’s products and/or services, pricing, and promotion

• Who are your competitors? • What threats do they pose? • What is the profile of your competitors? • What are the objectives of your competitors? • What strategies are your competitors pursuing and how

successful are these strategies? • What are the strengths and weaknesses of your

competitors? • How are our competitors likely to respond to any

changes to the way we do business?

The competitive analysis first gives an overview of your direct and indirect competitors in relationship to your business and gives a list of all your competitors based on this definition. In the most basic sense, direct competitors are those that sell a similar product to the same customers as your business, while an indirect competitor is any company whose product could be a substitute for yours.

Team

• The Business Person

• The Developer • The Designer

The Business Person: experienced business individual who understands sales, marketing, business development. This person must be able to easily and accurately convey the value of your product or service to potential customers, investors and partners. This person must also be able to properly communicate the technical team members. This becomes critical for product development when user feedback begins pouring in.

The Developer: technical person who can create anything that the founding team can dream. This person must be well-versed in programming so that changes can be made to the product on a moment’s notice. It would best serve the startup if this technical person also was familiar with the technology of server environments, because we all know how expensive IT help can be.

The Designer: creative mind who understands how design affects user experience. This person must be able to turn an idea into something that people will enjoy using and will enjoy viewing. The success of some startups has become heavily weighted on that company’s ability to attract and retain users because of the fact that users like the website. Very few companies can still succeed with a design like Craigslist.

Financial Plan

• Expenses • Income • Taxes

Expenses: • Business registration fees • Business licensing and permits • Starting inventory • Rent deposits • Down payments on property • Down payments on equipment • Utility set up fees • Operating expenses:

• salaries (yours and staff salaries) • rent or mortage payments • telecommunications • utlities • raw materials • storage • distribution • promotion • loan payments • office supplies • maintenance

Financial Plan

• Expenses • Income • Taxes

Income • Business Model Examples:

• The Add-On model In this instance, the core offering is priced competitively but there are numerous extras that drive the final price up so the consumer is not getting the deal they initially assumed. If you have recently tried to buy an airline ticket or car insurance, you will have spotted that the number of extras you are offered can almost reach double figures!

• The Advertising model The advertising model became popular with the growth of radio and TV where the TV stations earned revenue indirectly from people looking to promote services to the audience they attracted, rather than via consumers paying radio and TV stations for the consumption of their TV programs.

• The Freemium model This is where the business gives away something for free in return for your personal details so they can then market to you and hope to build up a relationship so that you buy from them in the future. It is typically used in service-based businesses where the lifetime value of the average customer is high and is increasingly popular with Internet services such as Spotify, Skype, or Flickr.

Resource and More information: http://articles.bplans.co.uk/starting-a-business/examples-of-well-known-business-models/1040

Timeline

• Year 1: Starting Up • Years 2 to 5: Time to

Grow • Years 5 to 10:

Growing to the Next Level

• Years 10 to Retirement: Managing Maturity

• Moving On: Exit Strategies

Example: Month 3: Minimum Viable Product Month 5: Private Beta Launch Month 8: Key Hire Month 11: Public Beta Launch Month 12: x% daily growth rate in subscribers

Thank you