What are the 6 steps to landing a sale?
1.) Figure out what the customer's biggest problems are. - Identify what causes heartburn and help remedy it.
2.) Talk to the right person. - Speak to the one that is in charge of making the decision.
3.) Coax out objections. - Respect the objections, ack
What is crowdfunding?
- The practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.
- The ability to raise money kind of from the general public, as long as certain requirements are met.
What are the three must haves in your crowdfunding strategy?
1.) Perfect your message. - The most important aspect isn't around the benefits, it's around the problem it solves. Give people something to believe in, they'll be more likely to invest.
2.) Get clear on how much you need. - Asking too much can leave you
Utah Technology Investments Article
- Utah is the 6th most popular destination for investment funding. There's opportunity here because of the business climate and job growth. Utah's share continues to rise.
Twitter, Jack Dorsey Video
- CoFounder of Twitter, explains the value in writing a story from the user's perspective.
- Square's vital use of narratives to understand what customers truly experience when using the product.
- All of company's other strategies and tactics should grow
Kauffman Money Game Video
- More than half of young companies get ALL their funding from personal savings and cash flow from the business.
- Credit cards are the single LARGEST source of capital for young companies after savings.
- The third next biggest source is money from frien
What are some startup finance ecosystem players?
1.) Entrepreneurs/Founding Team - need capital.
2.) Friends and Family - provide initial capital, believe in you.
3.) Angel Investors - exist between friends and family and professional investors. wealthy individuals/entrepreneurs themselves, finance rela
What is a startup finance ecosystem?
- A small, reputation driven ecosystem.
- Everybody knows everyone.
- Investments are driven by state, amount, industry focus, and network.
- Terms of investment are largely within certain market norms.
- Documentation for deals is relatively settled.
- P
What's new in startup finance?
- Crowdsourcing: (Kickstarter & AngelList), enabled 3-4 years through the Jobs Act.
- Investment platforms
- Rapidly evolving accelerator business models.
- More focused industry emphasis: Specific for industries & sub industries.
How does venture capital work?
- Maybe 5% of all startups out there actually end up raising venture capital. This is more of an exception rather than the rule.
- Great for businesses that have a lot of promise and could grow very rapid if they succeed, but no bank will finance them.
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What is boostrapping?
- Entrepreneurs finance their own growth, never raise outside money. Became profitable quickly and finance themselves.
Limited Partners
- Individual investors that invest in the fund.
- Sign a contract (capital commitment) which is a promise for them to fund up to a certain amount of the total fund.
- Not immediately writing a check, just making a promise to invest up to the amount over t
General Partner
- The manager of the fund.
- Will seek out companies they really like and decide they want to make an investment in that company.
- Once an agreement has been documented, then the GP will capital call the limited partners for the funds.
Venture capitalists
- Deal sourcing. Goes to conferences, trade shows, word-of-mouth, becomes aware of startup firms that are seeking venture capital.
- Build and want a diversified portfolio (early stages & later stages)
- Very risky marketplace. Get whats called a preferre
How does everyone make money in venture capital?
- They have an exit: this produces a liquidity event. An exit is either when the company is acquired by a larger company or going public through an initial public offering (sell part or all their shares to the public in common stock).
- Venture capital fu
Entrepreneur role in Venture Capital Funding
- Find a venture capitalist that isn't a jerk, going to add a lot of value beyond the capital they provide.
- Money is important, but they can do other things such as recruit team members, introduce you to potential customers, can help you do a lot of thi
Dilution
- Isn't a bad thing. Having a smaller piece of a larger pie still holds more value than a fat slice of a small pie.
- Venture capitalists can help make the pie much bigger, even if they take a bunch of your equity, your equity will be worth more.
Entrepreneurship in Organizations
- The importance of committed leadership
- Organizational culture
- Overcoming conventional thinking
- The retention challenge
Committed Leadership
- Entrepreneurship is a management approach.
- Incredibly difficult to succeed without executive buy-in.
- But leadership's commitment to innovation is necessary, but not sufficient.
- Entrepreneurship can't be isolated function, department, or position.
Organizational Culture
- At the time innovation is most needed, it doesn't seem necessary.
- Tending to the existing revenue stream is what gets awarded.
- Compensation, bonuses, promotions are all oriented toward the status quo.
- Not irrational, at least in the short term.
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Overcoming Conventional Thinking
- Show colleagues what entrepreneurs are doing to disrupt your business.
- Engage in the innovation ecosystem.
- Imagine how your business model could be disrupted.
- Discuss benefits of failure.
- Incentivize entrepreneurship.
The Retention Challenge
- Once employees see how fun business can be when it's centered on entrepreneurship, how do you retain them?
- Equity ownership
- Bonus
- Promotion
What is skunkworks?
- a group of intrapreneurs who are deliberately separated from the normal operation of an organization to encourage them to devote all their attention to developing new products.
- You want separation to go out and bring things along and eventually reintr
10 slides you need in a pitch
Title
Problem
Value
Product magic
Business model
Go to market plan
Competitive analysis
Management team
Financials
Current state and timeline