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Tim Berry

Getting Investment, Key Factor: Initial Valuation

Last night we were talking about getting angel investment, and valuation, which is one of if not the most important points in the discussion. Valuation is essentially price.
Say you want to bring in $150,000 from an angel investor. The immediate question from the investor will be something like: “at what valuation?” Sometimes that’s called “pre-money [...]

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Not Everybody is Your Customer

This is hard to write about, and hard for business owners to accept. It seems so negative. Still, it seems like we all need a fresh reminder. Bill Cosby said it well: “I don’t know the secret to success, but I do know that the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.”
This reminds me, [...]

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Choosing your Business Name is a Fundamental

This business name stuff matters. You don’t get to do it twice, or at least not without a whole lot of pain and suffering. Most companies live forever with the first name they come up with. Factors that make your company name work include practical legal ownership, ease of use, ease of marketing and branding, [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 5: Delivery

In the real world, you know your so-called elevator speech and you use it when appropriate. Every time you do it, you and it get better. I’d recommend taking time out and working on it, but you probably won’t; you’re too busy. Think about it in the shower. Think about it when you’re stuck in [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 4: Finish Strong

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
This fourth of five parts in this series depends on who you are, where you are, and what you want. If you’ve personalized in the first part, sold yourself and/or your organization in the second, and established the attractiveness or suitability of the business offering in [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 3: What You Offer

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
Now explain what that person or organization you’re selling to gets. You’ve personalized the need or want, identified your unique qualities to solve the problem, and now you have to put the need or want in concrete terms that anybody can see. For example:
For a Trunk [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 2: Why You?

(Note: this is taken with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
In the next part of your elevator pitch address ‘why you’? Why your business? What’s special about you that makes your offering or solution interesting to the target person or organization you just identified (Part 1 of this series).
This is where you bring in your background, [...]

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Elevator Pitch Part 1: Personalize

(Reposted with permission from Planning Startups Stories)
If you can’t say it in 60 seconds, you have a problem. Your strategy isn’t clear enough. Nowadays we call it “the elevator pitch,” meaning a quick description of the business that you could do in the time you share with a stranger in an elevator. It’s becoming popular [...]

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Are You Pitching Your Business Naked?

You are if you don’t have a business plan first.
Seriously: how can you boil it down to the core if you don’t know your basic strategy such as your identity, market, and focus? How can you set a scale to it without some idea of reasonable expectations in sales? How can you possibly talk about [...]

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It has to be Your Plan for Your Business

excerpted from The Plan-as-You-Go Business Plan by Tim Berry
“Please, can you recommend somebody to write my business plan for me? How much will it cost? How do I find somebody?”
“Where can I find (or buy) a business plan for a doggie daycare? For a resort? For a website selling environmentally-sensitive goods?”
Forget it. You can’t. It [...]

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