Feb 26 2009
Two Business Plans With Very Different Cover Pages
This is a tale of two business plans with very different cover pages. They both have unique business opportunities and attract investment with high yield potential. Arrive at the post in the morning, each neatly bound plan lands at the same table to potential business investors. Both plan to compete with hundreds of other documents, spreadsheets, phone calls, and articles to the attention of investors. And, they compete in time, because each of them, look for a few seconds, it is good and rarely noticed or passed back by the investors.
The first plan is tightly bound. Have a cover page made from thick paper stock. Cover page resembles the cover page to the paper. Company name in the middle of the page and contact the owner of the information in the lower left corner of the first bit to provide information about the business to investors. Not familiar with the company name or owner, the investor must now open the plan to learn something meaningful about the business.
However, the rigid cover page complicates the simplest task to prevent the document from easily flipping open and laid flat. Exacerbating investors who suddenly had to shift one arm of the business plan that does not want to work together to answer the phone because it rang for attention, leaving the remaining free hand to continue to wrestle with the cover page plan flat.
After wrestling with the business plan, investors are quick-handed get a glimpse of the first page of his plans: a standard confidentiality agreement. So the battle to find some meaningful information continues. This time, after several attempts shrinks, investors arrived on the next page, which … table of contents.
At this point, investors are reminded of the caller on the phone. Not wanting to be rude, investors apologized to the caller and return to challenge the business plan in hand. Investors eventually reach a page titled “Executive Summary.” Investors anxiously scanned page only to see an endless sea of words and “information-less” titles such as “Company”, “Market and Industry,” “Business Model / Strategy” and so forth. Not wanting to be rude to the caller again, investors decided the best to put this document other than … Continue Reading »