February 9th, 2009
inbizvest and thenextwomen.com are hosting a Funding & Pitching event on the 25th February 2009 aimed at female entrepreneurs. You can meet, interact and learn from experienced women that know all about funding for both start-ups and the growing business. Spend an evening with us in the intimate setting of the Loyens & Loeff Law Firm offices, London gaining insight into how best to prepare for the finance that you will need.
The evening will include:
- Talks by The Investor, The Entrepreneur and The Pitch Expert.
- Extensive Q & A session and Discussion
- 3 ‘Try-Out’ Funding Pitches with feedback
- Networking & Drinks
We offer the exclusive opportunity to five women to try out their funding pitches before a Panel of Experts. It is a unique chance to profit from these experts’ insights, and to receive feedback and suggestions on your funding pitch before you throw yourselves in front of the ‘financial’ lions.
SPEAKERS INCLUDE:ANDREA COCKERTON (THE PITCH EXPERT), ANNA SOFAT (ADDIDI BUSINESS ANGELS) PITCHING ENTREPRENEURS: SARAH WATSON (BALINEUM)
Where: Loyens & Loeff in the City (near Bank)
When: February 25, 2009 at 6.30-9.30pm
Costs: GBP 37,50
More details are here thenextwomen
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February 9th, 2009
80+ individuals got together in London over the weekend to create 4 new web businesses in 48hrs. Friday night started with 21 Dragons’ Den style pitches, of which the following four ideas were selected:
- Charity Pie – a system for managing donations to charities
- Decision Decision – a system to assist with making decisions
- I love you cause – a system for sending messages to people based on a topic
- Local Coupons – a system for finding coupons based on your location
Individuals selected the team they wanted to be in ready for work to start on Satuarday morning. By 17:00hrs on Sunday 4 new businesses were born. They now had 45 days to move things forward before pitching to a group of business angels for investment.
See www.launch48.com for more details
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February 6th, 2009
Inbizvest is proud to sponsor Launch48.
The aim of Launch48 is to bring together participants from different backgrounds and levels of experience in the web industry to think/plan/develop and launch one or multiple web apps in one weekend. That’s right, in 48 hours! It’s a frantic, energy fuelled, entrepreneurial event designed to engage all participants while offering the opportunity to learn and meet new people.
Launch48 is taking place over the weekend 6-8th February 2009.
Tags: entrpreneurs, startup, web 2.0
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January 12th, 2009
We could be mistaken for thinking the business world is about to end with headlines like these; Profit warnings ’seven-year high’, UK slump ‘is worst for 28 years’ and Profits ‘tumble’ at finance firms.
But although the market conditions are difficult it does rather depend on the industry and niche you are in, there are alway winners and loosers with any extremes of market conditions. Here are some of the winners:
Poundland sales rose 24.3% during Christmas including new store openings and they have plans for “significant” growth in 2009, creating 30 new stores and 1,000 jobs.
Domino’s Pizza UK and Ireland has reported strong growth in profits as cash-strapped consumers choose takeaways instead of eating out. Pre-tax profits rose 32.7% to £10.9m.
McDonald’s is creating 4,000 jobs in the UK after proclaiming itself more “recession resistant” than most retailers.
Aldi and Lidl enjoying annual sales growth of 19% and 14% respectively in June 2008.
So now is still a great time to start a new business, think about this if you can survive while things are difficult then you will fly when things pick up.
Tags: business, entrepreneurs, new business, recession winners, startup
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January 6th, 2009
Business plan key messages
Your business plan must get across the following key elements to potential investors:
- Product/Service - You must outline the unique selling points of your product or service. It must be clear how this business will stand out from the crowd.
- Financials – You must show sales, cost and profit projections for the next 3 years.
- Management Team – You need to show you and your management team have the experience and skills to operate your business in your chosen market.
- Return on Investment (ROI) – Clearly lay out for the investor how and when they will get return on their investment.
Remember although your business plan is a sales tool it is not a work of fiction and must be realistic.
Tags: business plan, business startup, entrepreneurs
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December 22nd, 2008
The business plan audience
What you must also consider is your audience, a bit like your CV where you have different versions for different job applications you must have different versions of your plan. We would advice you to start by writing a version of the plan for yourself as this is likely to be the most detailed. From this detailed plan you can extract parts to create plans for other audiences.
As a general rule if you are using a business plan to gain funding then it should be a maximum of 20 pages, anything more and it will not be read.
Who are the likely audiences for your business plan:
- Banks
- Government support organisations (business link etc)
- Potential business partners
- Potential business mentors
- Grant providers
- Business angels
- Friends & Family investors
All will be looking for slightly different things from the plan so try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself if I was a bank manager what would I want to know.
Tags: business plan, business startup, entrepreneurs
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December 22nd, 2008
Business plan samples
Sometimes even with a template it can be difficult to get started so take a look at some of these sample plans to help you get a feel for the content of each section:
- Bplans – a range of industry specific example plans
- inbizvest – look at other entrepreneurs business profiles to get ideas, enhanced profiles have more details so start with them
Tags: business plan, plan samples, startup
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December 12th, 2008
Business plan templates
The first step is to find a business plan template to guide you through the process of writing the plan. Here is a list of templates we found on the web:
Using a template is a great guide but can allow entrepreneurs to fall into the “must follow the template” trap. The template should be a used as a set of possible headings for your plan not must haves, so if you don’t think a particular section should be included then don’t include it. You also don’t need to stick to the order of the template if you think for your business a section is more important and should be read before others then move them about.
Tags: business plan templates, business plans, business startup
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December 8th, 2008
Whether you are writing a business plan for your bank manager, business link, the BBC’s Dragons’ Den or for the internets Dragons’ Den at inbizvest.com there are key things that need to be included whatever the intended audience.
Now some entrepreneurs think they don’t need to write a business plan unless someone is asking for one, well you absolutely do need to write it. The process of writing your business plan is key to the success of your business and often brings reality to bear on your idea. Just having it in your head is not enough, in black and white is the only way to really understand how the business will work. The amazing thing is that in your head you have revenue figures and costs but when you put them into a spreadsheet you suddenly realise they are not as realistic as you thought. So if you only do one thing before you start your business write a plan.
Tags: business, business investment, business plan, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, start-up
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