Small business start-up resources May 4, 2007
Posted by jefft in Advice, Business plans, Startups.add a comment
Here are a couple of useful links with lots more useful links:
Bank of America’s startup guides (Thanks Ben!)
Small Business 101 (if firewalled, click here)
When is a startup not a startup? April 11, 2007
Posted by jefft in Startups.add a comment
Click here for the answer.
Powerpoint update + Adobe links April 5, 2007
Posted by jefft in Case studies, Class notes, Startups.add a comment
Here are the latest class Powerpoints from the class hours on . . .
Choice of entity review & social entrepreneurship
and
Corporate organization & finance
In addition, here are the links to the Adobe
and
Angelic investors March 28, 2007
Posted by jefft in Case studies, Micro-enterprise, Startups.add a comment
John Waller is Billboard’s top Christian recording artist to watch for 2007, and in this interview he describes how his church has invested in his start-up missionary venture:
SouthLink isn’t a large church, so how did it come to raise $50,000 to help you record your independent project?
Waller: For the first year-and-a-half, I had a lot of According to John CDs. One of them was an album that never got released. When we moved to Colorado, we had all these CDs on hand, so we decided that every family that came to the church would get one, allowing the music to minister to them and hoping they would pass that on to someone else to draw them to the church. After about a year-and-a-half, I began writing songs just for the people at SouthLink, inspired by them and what God was doing in the church. Each week I’d teach my worship team a new song, and after a while the people began asking, “When are we going to get this music?”
We cast a vision to raise money for this project and raised a little over $50,000 in four weeks. I also cast the vision to some of my friends back in Georgia. Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-Fil-A, is a friend of mine that I’ve known for a long time—his dad (and company founder) Truett Cathy was my Sunday school teacher—so he contributed a lot to the project. The church owns 75 percent of the recording, so there is a business advantage for SouthLink, too. Beach Street ended up purchasing a lot of those master recordings from the church. About four or five of the songs carried over from the indie project [to The Blessing], and I’ve also signed for a large portion of my royalties to go back to SouthLink.
Private and public March 17, 2007
Posted by jefft in Case studies, News, Startups, Stock, Trends.add a comment
In our next class we’ll start looking at stock & start-ups. We already talked briefly about the prospect of a liquidity event, such as acquistion or an IPO.
As we’ll discuss in more detail, IPOs have some advantages but they also have distinct disadvantages, particularly in regard to the legal rules that govern public companies. Still, even the most vocal critics of going public have been known to alter their opinion. For example, check out the latest news regarding the Blackstone Group: Blackstone IPO would represent a flip-flop.
Fashion start-up in Crains New York March 2, 2007
Posted by jefft in Case studies, Marketing, Startups.add a comment
Click here for the Crains article on the emerging designer trying to build a business in New York. A couple key quotes:
Mr. Tam needs to generate annual sales of at least $250,000 just to cover expenses. That figure is attainable, as one of his jackets can cost upward of $1,000. But getting there will require orders from more retailers.
`All about the buyer’
To help jump-start sales of his latest collection, Mr. Tam toned down his avant-garde style to make the clothes more wearable. “This particular season it was all about the buyer,” he says.
. . .
In anticipation of at least one large order, he’s lined up production sources in China and sorted out some financing to help cover costs. If all goes well, Mr. Tam will start moving toward his five-year goal of selling Form to a major company such as Gucci, which could turn it into a global fashion house.
What are people buying? February 23, 2007
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This article from today’s Women’s Wear Daily is a good example of an enterprise built on observing what people value. Here, a TV star/director paid close attention to what products Baywatch actors preferred to use to cover blemishes. The question asked at the end of the article is one that can inspire any number of profitable products beyond the skin care market.
Guy Kawasaki video + Powerpoint February 23, 2007
Posted by jefft in Advice, Class notes, Startups.add a comment
Click here for the Powerpoint slides from the Guy Kawasaki video that we watched in class. The full video is below. For even more helpful information, check out his blog.
