Pitching to Angels

The New York Times ran an excellent small business column on June 11 on how to pitch to angels. It confirmed what I have learned over the past 10 years of working with entrepreneurs on their business plans and attending angel and VC pitching sessions. Being well prepared is far more important that enthusiasm that verges on hyperbole. I've pasted a synopsis of the article below and a link. If you want to be successful, do your homework and get a great management team together. You also really need to hone your elevator pitch.

Feel free to contact me, if you have any questions about how to pitch to angels. upstartwyn@gmail.com. www.upstartbusinessplanning.com.

Business

DealBook: In Pitching to Angel Investors, Readiness Tops Zeal

By By DealBook

Published: June 11, 2009

For entrepreneurs hoping to land start-up capital, some advice from the experts: Don't get carried away when you pitch your product.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/in-pitching-to-angel-investors-readiness-tops-zeal/

Start-up Tip - What Will It Cost to Start Your Business?

When a group of entrepreneurs called me a few months ago about editing their business plan, I asked them how much money they wanted to raise. They said $150 million! I truly could not believe my ears. How could a new venture possibly cost that much?

Well, they were planning on purchasing all sorts of heavy equipment to create a renewable energy business and setting up shop in several states. Another potential client needed $1.5 million to pay lobbyists to help effect legislative changes that would make their business more viable and create demand.

Even in a booming economy, these are not reasonable start-up expenses, in my humble opinion.

But in a recession, you really need to consider bootstrapping. Start as small as you can and expand organically, plowing profits back into the business. Capital has dried up. Banks still are not lending; lines of credit are shrinking; friends and family don't have disposable cash to lend or invest; VCs and angels are pickier than ever.

So you need to ask yourself, what is the minimum I need to get started? Write down the expected expenditures on paper or in a financial computer program like Excel. Make yourself a spread sheet. Think of the cash that will need to come in to cover monthly expenses and capital expenditures. Ask yourself if you can go without a salary? Without benefits?

Here are items you need to think of:
Cost of you producing your product:
Raw materials
labor
machinery
warehousing, picking and shipping

Overhead:
office or factory or warehouse space
some office equipment
supplies
communications
IT
legal
accounting
insurance
travel
entertainment
marketing - advertising, pr, promotion, website, branding, graphic design, trade shows, etc.
patents

Depreciation
Interest
Taxes

Capital expenditures and leases
cars
equipment
land
software

The list goes on -- What can you do without? What is essential? Do you need to create samples? Brochures?

Figure it out and write it down.

If you need help, go to the Small Business Administration (www.sba.gov). I also consult or can provide my written guidelines to financial planning. email me at upstartwyn@gmail.com -- I know how to demystify financial projections and using Excel.

www.upstartbusinessplanning.com.

facebook and urls

From MediaPost Publication --- Facebook To Offer Vanity URLs

by Mark Walsh, 5 hours ago

I've copied this article from MediaPost because it has really useful information that I have not seen in other articles about the personal or brand URLs that Facebook will offer on Saturday. Starting at midnight Eastern time on Saturday, Facebook's more than 200 million users will be able to personalize the URLs for their profiles, the company announced Tuesday. By rolling out so-called vanity URLs, the company aims to make it easier to find people and brands on Facebook via search engines, while potentially boosting its own traffic as well. Until now, a user's URL has just been a randomly assigned string of numbers. The new usernames for profiles and Facebook Pages will be offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. "Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names," according to a post on the Facebook blog by Blaise DiPersia. The move is expected to set off a land rush among individuals and businesses for the most desirable URLs. Already, hundreds of vanity URLs have been doled out to celebrities and other prominent people on Facebook such as President Obama (http://www.facebook.com/ barackobama), according to the Inside Facebook blog. Now marketers can also capitalize on the new URLs to drive traffic to their Facebook brand pages. But the company warns about choosing usernames carefully: "Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we've taken to prevent abuse or "squatting" on names. And only Pages with more than 1,000 fans before May 31 will be able to choose a vanity name. According to Inside Facebook, the company is also barring brand pages from choosing generic vanity URLs such as "pizza" or "flowers" and allowing rights holders to prevent their trademarks from being registered as usernames. To that end, it has created a form to request Facebook block use of a trademark in a URL. Not allowing users to change or transfer URLs is designed to thwart a black market from developing around usernames.