There are 10 areas for which you must be able to explain your business in order to navigate the myriad of financiers, advisers, potential and current board members, strategic alliance partners, and key hires. I’ll go over these quickly here, but again, it’s a VITAL building block and strategy for success that we’ll go over in great detail at my Results Now Summit on June 5 and 6.  Okay, very quickly, the 10 areas you MUST have nailed down are:

1. Company Overview. A few sentences describing your company’s purpose/goal.

2. Pain. The specific market pain you will reduce/remove.

3. Solution. What your solution is to the market pain, plus a succinct description of how it works.

4. Company Information Background. Number of employees; short bios of key team members, including staff and board members if applicable.

5. Financial Information. Funding history if any; total money sought; source of dollars sought: venture capital/angel investors/loans/grants; anticipated use of funds; last year’s revenue; five-year revenue forecast; monthly burn rate; projected cash flow-positive date.

6. Product. Short paragraph explaining the status of your product; product path (offerings available now and in the future); and how each product will be segmented by customer.

7. Defensibility. How your intellectual property or market position will be protected from competitors; how you’ll mitigate financial, human resource, product, and product development risk for financiers.

8. Competition. Your competitors, now and in the future.

9. Business Model. How you’ll make money and expand your business.

10. Key Milestones. Deals/achievements that are accelerating/will accelerate your company’s growth—be specific about the status of each.

Spend the time to complete the above—do the best you can, but get them done. Bear in mind that the structure of your business will change over time, too.

Remember, you can learn more about how to ask and answer these questions effectively on June 5 and 6 at my Results Now Summit in San Francisco. We’ve scheduled FOUR “hot seats” already and we’ll spend some serious time digesting these businesses together. You’ll also get a million-dollar education in business acceleration, there will financing opportunities, networking opportunities and enough strategies for success to launch your business into the stratosphere! 

To your continued success!

Christine Comaford, Business Accelerator
CEO of Mighty Ventures, Inc.
NY Times Best Selling Author

http://www.ResultsNowSummit.com