Build Your List of Potential Investors, Pitch Investors Properly, How Kevin Systrom Raised $500,000 in Two Weeks to Launch Instagram

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 12

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

Most startups need funding at some point. Once you have the addressed all of the items in the previous episodes, it is time to build your list of potential investors and start the conversations. They can be friends, family, social network, social media contacts, work colleagues, people in the business industry, etc. Try to put together a list of at least one hundred people. A list of one hundred potential investors may seems like a lot, but the more people you have on the list, the better your chances are of success.

The next step is to talk to people on your list about funding your business. If you want to pitch investors properly, I suggest you do it in a soft, but direct manner. I typically kick off the conversation on a light note. Something along the lines of, “I am starting this business project,” or “I am testing this business concept.” Avoid using salesy language and observe if others show any interest in being a part of your startup business plan.

After starting the conversation in a casual manner, discuss your investment opportunity. Warning, discuss does not mean pitch. These people know nothing about your business. You do not want to overwhelm them with loads of information about your business model. 

Think of fundraising as giving people sips of water. Give them information in bits and pieces so they can process them. It depends on how you phrase your sentences to make the potential investor ask for more sips of water.

One mistake excited entrepreneurs make is sending every business detail to everybody. It is almost like giving sips of water with a fire hose and drowning all your potential investors. It makes you sound desperate and you lose credibility. Be patient. Some investors will come to you, and some will not. If they are interested, they will come to you for more. And when they do, feel free to explain your business to them. For the ones who do not come for more, move on to the next one. Or maybe try again with a different business approach in six to nine weeks.

In 2010, Kevin Systrom went to a party for a startup called Hutch. Kevin met two venture capitalists that were impressed by his App, Bourbon. The purpose of Bourbon was so people could make plans, check in, and share photos from places that had good drinks. Shortly after the party, Kevin decided to quit his job and focus on Bourbon. Within only just two weeks, Kevin raised $500,000 from those venture capitalists at the party. By July 2010, they pivoted Bourbon, focusing just on the photo sharing feature of Bourbon. Bourbon was renamed Instagram. 

Two years later, in March 2012 Instagram had 27 million users. Facebook purchased Instagram later that year for $1 billion. 

Do you want more? 

https://youtu.be/y_lU3H315Nc

Previous Post - Faster Traction Through Funding, How Zoom and Eric Yuan Defeated Apple’s Facetime, Microsoft’s Skype, and Cisco's WebEx - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 11

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/07/faster-traction-through-funding-how.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/faster-traction-through-funding-how-zoom-eric-yuan-defeated-carlton

https://youtu.be/kGU9Ak_Kphc

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice.

Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2oh1LH45c8

Faster Traction Through Funding, How Zoom and Eric Yuan Defeated Apple’s Facetime, Microsoft’s Skype, and Cisco's WebEx

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 11

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

You have proven you have a business that works. Now it is time to put the foot on the gas pedal. When you do this, here are some questions you should be considering.

How can you leverage technology? 

Which roles need to be filled? 

Should you hire staff or contractors?

Do you have enough space? 

Where will the money come from? 

Can operational cash flow sustain your business? 

Are you profitable?

If you have not started raising capital, now is the time. If your business created a solution to a problem that can be sold for a profit, you will have competition. You need resources to compete. Resources require capital.

Eric Yuan founded Zoom, originally known as Saasbee, in April 2011. Yuan did this while working at Cisco's WebEx Cisco video conferencing business, after noticing that WebEx was not keeping up with what customers were demanding. 

Eric Yuan raises $3 million in seed funding In June 2011, two months from founding, from TSVC, WebEX founder Subrah Iyar, Matt Ocko, Dan Scheinman and Bill Tai. 

Yuan did this despite massive competitors.

CISCO acquired WEBEX for $3.2 billion in 2009

In early 2011, Apple launched FaceTime

May 10, 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion

 

First customer, at one year and seven months from founding, three months from launch: In November 2012, Zoom signs up Stanford Continuing Studies, Stanford's continuing adult education program, as its first customer.

Product one, at one year and nine months from founding, five months from launch: In January 2013, Zoom releases its Unified Meeting Experience (UMX) cloud service, which allows 25 people to participate at once, either up to 40 minutes with its free version or unlimited with its $9.99 business plan.

Second funding, at one year and nine months from founding, five months from launch: In January 2013, Zoom raises a $6 million Series A from Qualcomm Ventures, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Iyar and Dan Scheinman.

"I put the phone down and stared at it intensely. I was transfixed. Sure, I had just learned about Eric’s terrific background as an engineering leader at Webex and an executive at Cisco. However, more importantly, I was totally blown away by Eric’s unique vision on the future of video collaboration. Eric had explained his unique technical approach, and I felt that it was significantly different/better than others I had seen in the industry (from both video startups and Internet giants). Eric essentially had constructed an incredibly well thought-out “First Principles” multimedia approach for this new multi-device, cloud-based world."

Traction, at one year and nine months from founding, five months from launch: In January 2013, Zoom reaches over 500,000 participants, has held over 140,000 meetings, and has 1,000 businesses on the platform in over 2,500 cities around the world. 

Traction, at two years and one month from founding, nine months from launch: In May of 2013 Zoom reaches one million participants. It has connected over 400,000 meetings and 3,500 businesses in over 2,500 cities worldwide.

Traction, at two years and three months from founding, 11 months from launch: In July 2013, Zoom has nearly two million participants, 5,500 meetings/day and 100 million meeting minutes.

Third funding, at two years and five months from founding, one year and one month from launch: In September 2013, Zoom raises $6.5 million in Series B funding led by Horizons Ventures, with Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jerry Yang also participating. Bart Swanson, Advisor at Horizon Ventures, joins the Board of Directors at Zoom.

Traction, three years and three months from founding, one year and 11 months from launch: In July 2014, Zoom reached 10 million participants. 

Fourth funding, at three years and 10 months from founding, two years and six months from launch: In February 2015, Zoom raises $30 million in a Series C round led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Horizons Ventures, Jerry Yang, Qualcomm Ventures, and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.

Traction, at three years and 10 months from founding, two years and six months from launch: By February 2015, Zoom has 65,000 companies, 40 million individuals, over 1 billion meeting minutes and 2,500 educational institution customers.

Zoom went public on April 18, 2019, valuing the company at nearly $16 billion by the end of its IPO. 

As of March 2020, Zoom has a market cap of $38.52 billion.

None of this would have been possible without funding.

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice. 

Do you want more?

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/07/faster-traction-through-funding-how.html

https://youtu.be/kGU9Ak_Kphc

Previous Post - Making Money With Your Business, Profit and Cash Flow, Five Sustainable Companies That Make a Lot of Money - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 10

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/07/making-money-with-your-business-profit.html

https://youtu.be/rNiu6b8ICUg

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-money-your-business-profit-cash-flow-five-make-ren-carlton

Sources 

https://vator.tv/news/2020-03-26-when-zoom-was-young-the-early-years

https://backlinko.com/zoom-users#zoom-daily-meeting-participants

Making Money With Your Business, Profit and Cash Flow, Five Sustainable Companies That Make a Lot of Money

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 10

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

It is time to make money! You have been through a couple of rounds of market testing now you feel like you are on to something. The next step is to run the numbers to make sure that the business is sustainable. There are two sides to making money, profitability and cash flow.

Profitability is the difference between the expenditures of a business and its revenues. Typically, businesses sell their products or serviced for more than their purchase price or costs. The difference between revenue and expenses is profit. For example, if you buy a car for $5,000 and sell it for $7,000, you make a $2,000 profit.

Positive cash flow is different. It means more money is coming in than going out, and you have enough cash in your business bank account to pay your bills. There is a significant difference.

In the previous example, you bought a car for $5,000 and sold for $7,000. If you purchased the car using a credit card and sold the car immediately, your current cash flow would be $7,000. You sold the car before you paid for it. When you pay off the car, your cash flow will match your profit of $2,000. This is assuming no interest expense. 

If you did keep a balance on your credit card or did not pay off the car immediately, your interest expense will reduce your profitability and cash flow, If you never pay your credit card, your cash flow from the transaction will remain $7,000. 

Cash flow can be used to repay creditors, pay dividends and interest to investors, 

engage in buybacks, investments in acquisitions for inorganic growth, investments in innovation for organic growth, or debt reduction. More cash allows for more maneuverability for a company. This can allow for positive growth during economic booms and flexibility during an economic downturn, regardless of the cause of those bad times, e.g. the broader market, the industry, or the company itself.

Here are five examples of companies that have consistently make a lot of money.

Company Name

Free Cash Flow (FCF)

Debt to Equity Ratio (D/E) 

1-Year Stock Performance

Dividend Yields

Apple (APPL)

$7.17 billion (TTM ended in 06/20) 

0.61 (for the three months ending 06/30/20)

55.38% (since 12/31/19)

0.71% (as of 8/13/20)

Verizon (VZ)

$2.11 billion (TTM ended in 06/20)

1.94 (for the three months ending 06/30/20)

-4.39% (since 12/31/19)

4.20% (as of 8/13/20)

 

Microsoft (MSFT)

$4.52 billion (TTM ended in 06/20)

0.57 (for the three months ending 06/30/30)

32.47% (since 12/31/19)

0.98% (as of 8/13/20)

 

Walmart (WMT)

$1.84 billion (TTM ended in 04/20)

0.85 (for the three months ending 04/30/20)

11.58% (since 12/31/19)

2.85% (as of 8/13/20)

 

Pfizer (PFE)

$1.26 billion (TTM ended in 06/20)

0.78 (for the three months ended in 06/30/20)

 -2.86% (since 12/31/19)

3.99% (as of 8/13/20)

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice. 

Do you want more? 

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/07/making-money-with-your-business-profit.html

https://youtu.be/rNiu6b8ICUg

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-money-your-business-profit-cash-flow-five-make-ren-carlton

Previous Post - Starting to Grow, How Rushing to Market Turned Crystal Pepsi Into One of the Worst Product Fails of All Time, Even After Half a Billion of Sales in Its First Year - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 9

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/starting-to-grow-how-rushing-to-market.html

https://youtu.be/drfO0TxRpWE

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/starting-grow-how-rushing-market-turned-crystal-pepsi-ren-carlton

Sources

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cashflow.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profit.asp

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/060116/5-companies-huge-cash-flow-aaplvzmsftwmt.asp

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/microsoft-is-worth-more-based-on-its-powerful-free-cash-flow-2021-01-13

Starting to Grow, How Rushing to Market Turned Crystal Pepsi Into One of the Worst Product Fails of All Time, Even After Half a Billion of Sales in Its First Year

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 9

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

As your business starts to grow, what do you see? Is everything running smoothly? Or are there hiccups in your business operations? When everything seems okay, you grow confident and start to take on more and more customers.

With more customers come more operational challenges. Challenges such as customer service, human resources, delegating roles, etc. It is also important for entrepreneurs to anticipate future challenges and their respective solutions. It is also important to ask yourself if you still like your business. You have options.

-Evaluate your business model and make some changes

-Focus on taking your business to the next level

You also need to watch profitability and cash flow. Initially, you do not need to be overly concerned about money because there are many ways to monetize a good business. But as your business grows and takes on more customers, it becomes imperative that your business makes money for it to stand on its own. Most of us do not have enough wealth in our bank accounts to lose money forever. 

If there is a market for your business idea you will make money, you will probably move on to the next step. If not, you should probably go back to the drawing board. If it doesn’t make money, it doesn’t make sense. 

You also need to make sure you have your product or service ready for mass scaling before you grow too much.

Crystal Pepsi was poised to become a billion-dollar idea. Instead, it was a colossal flop. Less than a year after the commercial hit the airwaves, the soda was yanked from the shelves. It became a cultural laughingstock.

How did Crystal Pepsi go from pop culture darling to the beverage world’s biggest fail? 

-A rush to launch before the recipe tasted right. 

-Spoilage from using clear bottles with a clear liquid, apparently colas are brown for a reason

In April 1992, the drink launched in Boulder, Colorado, and was soon flying off the shelves. But the clock was ticking. They wanted the soft drink to launch nationally in time for the Super Bowl on Jan. 31, 1993, as part of a $40 million ad campaign.

All told, Crystal Pepsi was rolled out across America at breakneck speed -- just nine months after initially pitched. By contrast, It took three years to launch Slice. It wasn’t enough time to accurately test Crystal Pepsi’s shelf life.

After the Super Bowl commercial, sales of $1.50 six-packs soared. The company sold $474 million of Crystal Pepsi by March 1993, according to The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Cases of Crystal Pepsi were being displayed sitting out in the direct sunlight. As predicted, ultraviolet rays caused the soda to spoil. Reports began pouring into Pepsi headquarters from customers saying that Crystal Pepsi tasted strange.

By 1994, less than a year after Crystal Pepsi’s big launch, it was discontinued. Two decades later, in 2014, the soda was named one of the “10 Worst Product Fails of All Time” by TIME Magazine.

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice.

                             

Do you want more?

https://youtu.be/drfO0TxRpWE

Previous Post - Why Competition Is Good For Entrepreneurs and How Blockbuster’s $50 Million Mistake Helped Reed Hastings and Netflix Destroy a $6 Billion Empire- Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 8

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/why-competition-is-good-for.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/competition-good-50-million-mistake-helped-netflix-destroy-carlton

https://youtu.be/pF4_c4smo4E

Are you looking for investors? Use this link to send us your information. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-business-for-funding .

Use this link if you have a product or service that will help our early-stage businesses. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-to-market-to-our-companies 

Sources cited

https://www.thrillist.com/drink/nation/what-is-crystal-pepsi

https://www.mashed.com/108026/real-reason-budweiser-bombing/

https://the-soda.fandom.com/wiki/Crystal_Pepsi

Why Competition Is Good For Entrepreneurs and How Blockbuster’s $50 Million Mistake Helped Reed Hastings and Netflix Destroy a $6 Billion Empire

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 8

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

When battling for resources or investment, early-stage entrepreneurs may believe that competition is a bad thing. On the surface, they are correct. There are a limited number of angel investors willing to provide a finite amount of venture capital to founders.  

However, is competition a good thing for business startups?

Competition is not always a bad thing for entrepreneurs. If you have a brand new startup with an innovation that nobody's heard about, you may not have any competition. However, this may cause a challenge getting customers or angel investors. Why? Because your audience will likely be confused by your solution business. 

When you sell something that is truly new, your first step will be to educate your audience. People cannot buy something before it exists. It is tough to attract startup funding when investors do not understand your solution. It is even harder if there is no proof that there is a market for what you are doing. This is often the case for innovative startups, because it is hard to prove if your target market will pay for something they never had. 

This leads us to another benefit of competition. If you need to compete with other businesses in order to win customers, at least you have proof that a market does exist for your startup.

Doing a competitive analysis is critical for your business to succeed. It will give you an opportunity to see the lay of the land. However, it will also help you to avoid a common startup trap that costs millions of entrepreneurs countless hours and dollars. Creating something that already exists.

At least 20% of the pitch decks I see are promoting a business or technology that has already been created. Competing with powerful incumbents is already tough enough. But creating a clone of something that already exists without powerful differentiators is a suicide mission. Why spend time, money, and energy building a YouTube-type business technology when YouTube already exists?

However, you can attack a powerful incumbent with technological innovation. Early in 2000 Blockbuster was a $6 billion giant that dominated the home entertainment business with almost nine thousand rental stores around the world. That year, Netflix founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph offered to sell the company to their major Blockbuster for $50 million. Blockbuster turned them down. 

In 2002, two years after that meeting, we took Netflix public. Blockbuster was still a hundred times larger $5 billion versus $50 million. 

How did Netflix compete?

“It was not obvious at the time, even to me, but we had one thing that Blockbuster did not: a culture that valued people over process, emphasized innovation over efficiency, and had very few controls. Our culture, which focused on achieving top performance with talent density and leading employees with context, not control, has allowed us to continually grow and change as the world, and our members’ needs, have likewise morphed around us.

Netflix is different. We have a culture where No Rules Rules.”

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer, Netflix Founders

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice.

Do you want more? 

 

Previous Post - Market Testing for Better Decisions and Results, How Lego’s New Business Strategy Doubled Sales Overnight - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 7

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/market-testing-for-better-decisions-and.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/market-testing-better-decisions-results-how-legos-new-ren-carlton

https://youtu.be/WS29ShO8fIQ

Are you looking for investors? Use this link to send us your information. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-business-for-funding.  

Use this link if you have a product or service that will help our early-stage businesses. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-to-market-to-our-companies. 

Sources

https://www.marketplace.org/2020/09/08/ceo-reed-hastings-on-how-netflix-beat-blockbuster/

https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-business-for-funding

https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-to-market-to-our-companies 

.

Market Testing for Better Decisions and Results, How Lego’s New Business Strategy Doubled Sales Overnight - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 7

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 7 

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

Market testing is simple. Go out and try to sell. Calls, emails, social media, digital ads, networking are all easy ways to test your business plan. 

 

After finishing your first set of market tests, you need to evaluate the results. It helps you determine whether your business strategy is working or not. It also saves you money down the road if you are not pursuing the right opportunity.

When it comes to assessing your results, you need to evaluate:

● Market Reaction - What do people think about your product or service?

● Sales Performance - How many leads turned into customers who bought your product or service?

● Return-on-Investment (ROI) - Are you profitable?

Ask yourself the following questions while going through this exercise.

● What worked? 

● What did not work?

● What were the strengths and weaknesses? 

● What did I like? 

● What did I not like so much?

● What should I change about my business strategy? 

● Which part of the business is perfect the way it is?

After you thoroughly evaluate your test results, you can make an informed decision about your business strategy and next steps. Do you need more market testing? Should you consider a pivot? Are we ready to move forward?

This really depends on you. If you feel like there is too much room for improvement, keep working. However, this can take days, weeks, months, or even years if you let testing and perfecting get out of control. I suggest get comfortable with an area you are making traction and move to the next step. 

Remember the famous statement by Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and a member of the Paypal Mafia, if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product than you waited too long.

Through market tests and customer feedback, Lego discovered that only 9% of their users were girls in 2008. This obviously excluded about 50% of the children’s toy market. In 2012, Lego came out with a product line known as “Friends.” These figurines were slightly larger to accommodate accessories such as handbags and hairbrushes. They were also more colorful to appeal to young girls. It turned out to be a great success, and sales for that year were double of what was projected!

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

Are you interested in promoting your product or service to our audience, contact Opportunities@OmegaSeedFund.com

Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice. 

Do you want more? 

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/market-testing-for-better-decisions-and.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/market-testing-better-decisions-results-how-legos-new-ren-carlton

https://youtu.be/WS29ShO8fIQ

Previous Post - How Entrepreneurs Create a One-Page Executive Summary for Finding Angel Investors, TaskRabbit One-Pager, $38 Million Funding Success Story – Episode 6

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-entrepreneurs-create-one-page.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-page-executive-summary-finding-angel-investors-38-ren-carlton

https://youtu.be/UslcbCIJWkY

Are you looking for investors? Use this link to send us your information. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-business-for-funding.  

Use this link if you have a product or service that will help our early-stage businesses. https://register.omegadestiny.com/register-to-market-to-our-companies. 

Sources

http://www.duartepino.com/blog/5-ways-to-evaluate-your-marketing-plan

https://fuelcycle.com/blog/market-research-done-right-how-market-research-gave-lego-a-facelift/

How Entrepreneurs Create a One-Page Executive Summary for Finding Angel Investors, TaskRabbit One-Pager, $38 Million Funding Success Story

Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 6

This video is part of my series - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders, learn more by visiting https://bit.ly/3hExYJX

This is one of my favorite hacks/shortcuts for raising money. It will save you a ton of time and get more attention from potential investors. 

When you start a business and raise money, you obviously need to have a plan. But how long should that plan be?  

According to U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), "Most business experts and counselors say it (Business Plans) should be 30 to 50 pages, as a minimum, while others may say even less or more than this depending on their own personal perspective."

Do you know how many pages are in the business plans I use for raising money? Would you believe only one? 

There is a great tool called a one-page executive summary, or one-pager, which is a perfect way to communicate your idea to potential investors. A 1-page executive summary summarizes your thoughts, thesis, traction, and your predictions for the future of your business. Your 1-pager needs to give investors the gist of why they should invest.  

The 1-Page Executive Summary has replaced the business plan in our 140-character-or-less world. It hits all of the major areas of a business. It demonstrates a business' potential, while leaving enough flexibility for possible changes and pivots. Although there are many versions of a 1-pager, this is one of my favorite one-pager formats.

1. The Grab: You should lead with the most compelling statement of why you have a really big idea. This sentence (or two) sets the tone for the rest of the executive summary. Usually, this is a concise statement of the unique solution you have developed to a big problem. It should be direct and specific, not abstract and conceptual. If you can drop some impressive names in the first paragraph you should—world-class advisors, companies you are already working with, a brand name founding investor. Don’t expect an investor to discover that you have two Nobel laureates on your advisory board six paragraphs later. He or she may never get that far.

2. The Problem: You need to make it clear that there is a big, important problem (current or emerging) that you are going to solve. In this context you are establishing your Value Proposition—there is enormous pain out there, and you are going to increase revenues, reduce costs, increase speed, expand reach, eliminate inefficiency, increase effectiveness, whatever. Don’t confuse your statement of the problem with the size of the opportunity (see below).

3. The Solution: What specifically are you offering to whom? Software, hardware, service, a combination? Use commonly used terms to state concretely what you have, or what you do, that solves the problem you’ve identified. Avoid acronyms and don’t try to use this opportunity to create and trademark a bunch of terms that won’t mean anything to most people. You might need to clarify where you fit in the value chain or distribution channels—who do you work with in the ecosystem of your sector, and why will they be eager to work with you. If you have customers and revenues, make it clear. If not, tell the investor when you will.

4. The Opportunity: Spend a few more sentences providing the basic market segmentation, size, growth and dynamics—how many people or companies, how many dollars, how fast the growth, and what is driving the segment. You will be better off targeting a meaningful percentage of a well-defined, growing market than claiming a microscopic percentage of a huge, mature market. Don’t claim you are addressing the $24 billion widget market, when you are really addressing the $85 million market for specialized arc-widgets used in the emerging wocket sector.

5. Your Competitive Advantage: No matter what you might think, you have competition. At a minimum, you compete with the current way of doing business. Most likely, there is a near competitor, or a direct competitor that is about to emerge (are you sufficiently paranoid yet??). So, understand what your real, sustainable competitive advantage is, and state it clearly. Do not try to convince investors that your only competitive asset is your “first mover advantage.” Here is where you can articulate your unique benefits and advantages. Believe it or not, in most cases, you should be able to make this point in one or two sentences.

6. The Model: How specifically are you going to generate revenues, and from whom? Why is your model leverageable and scaleable? Why will it be capital efficient? What are the critical metrics on which you will be evaluated—customers, licenses, units, revenues, margin? Whatever it is, what impressive levels will you reach within three to five years?

7. The Team: Why is your team uniquely qualified to win? Don’t tell us you have 48 combined years of expertise in widget development; tell us your CTO was the lead widget developer for Intel, and she was on the original IEEE standards committee for arc-widgets. Don’t just regurgitate a shortened form of each founder’s resume; explain why the background of each team member fits. If you can, state the names of brand name companies your team has worked for. Don’t drop a name if it’s an unknown name, and don’t drop a name if you aren’t happy to give the contact as a reference at a later date.

8. The Promise ($$): When you are pitching to investors, your fundamental promise is that you are going to make them a boatload of money. The only way you can do that is if you can achieve a level of success that far exceeds the capital. What is your path to profitability and positive cash-flow? When will you get there? When will your investors start enjoying a financial return on their investment?

Remember, a 1-Page Executive Summaries need to be one page!

TaskRabbit, founded in 2008 by Leah Busque, is a two-sided marketplace that helps connect TaskPosters and TaskRabbits. Task Posters, people who require help with their regular tasks. TaskRabbits, people who have skills and time needed to help others in their regular tasks in return for some money. Tasks include planting, cleaning, pet care, plumbing, and more. 

TaskRabbit raised around $38 million funding as of July 2015. Then the IKEA Group acquired it in 2017. As of 2020, there were more than 140,000 Taskers on the network. On average, Taskers in the U.S. earned $35/hour. Below is an example of a Task Rabbit one-pager.

Below are some of the advantages of the one-page executive summary over the traditional, 30-50 page business plans when raising money.

-Increased likelihood of being read by potential investors, 1 versus 30+ pages

-Less work

-Easier to pivot/modify when you learn new information

I am not suggesting this is the only support for your business. You obviously need to do the work to support your one-pager. However, this still saves you from wasting a ton of time creating a formal 30-50 page document.   

Your one-page executive summary is important for every angel funding campaign. It helps you clarify your thoughts and communicate your vision. If you cannot summarize your concept in a 1-pager, you probably need to work on your business more before pitching investors.

Are you looking for funding for an idea or business, send us your stuff and we will take a look, Funding@OmegaSeedFund.com

Are you interested in investing time or money into any of our businesses, info@omegaseedfund.com

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Disclaimer: This is only for informational and discussion purposes. This does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation of any security or any other product or service. We are not offering any legal, investment, tax, or medical advice.

Do you want more? 

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/how-entrepreneurs-create-one-page.html 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/one-page-executive-summary-finding-angel-investors-38-ren-carlton 

https://youtu.be/UslcbCIJWkY 

Previous Post - Pitch Investors Using the Perfect Slide Deck and What Air Bed & Breakfast, Better Known as Airbnb, Included in Their First Pitch Deck - Find Angel Funding & Venture Capital for Business Startups, Entrepreneurs, & First Time Founders – Episode 5

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pitch-investors-using-slide-deck-airbnbs-first-find-ren-carlton

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2021/06/pitch-investors-using-perfect-slide.html

https://youtu.be/AhLISp6B4Zc

Sources

https://www.sba.gov/offices/district/az/phoenix/resources/sba-recommended-business-plans-length#:~:text=This%20is%20one%20of%20the,on%20their%20own%20personal%20perspective. 

https://rencarlton.blogspot.com/2020/01/is-writing-business-plan-waste-of-time.html 

https://guykawasaki.com/the_art_of_the_-3/

https://www.appcentricsolutions.com/how-does-taskrabbit-works/