A guide to winning the Seedcorn competition – Part 4

Posted by Ronan on Aug 26, 2010 in cauwill, comment, innovation, ireland, Seedcorn, startup | 1 comment

This post concludes the series.  Grab the Business Plan template [here] (word document) which has all three previous posts plus extra comments from the IntertradeIreland Cube document.

To summarize:

• Make every statement count – be clear, be precise
• Don’t be technical (after all it’s a business plan)
• Make the job of reading the plan easier,  visually alert the investor to things they want to see
• (Early Stage/Startup Companies) If you have paying customers this is a big deal..
• Really make the executive summary stand out. Give the investor the motivation to read on.It really should be a self contained document that you can extract and it makes sense by itself.

Checklist:

• Business Overview (what you do and why)
• Size up the market opportunity
• Industry Analysis
• Describe the team
• Explain the business model
• Show Financial projections
• Show Funding sources (and usage)
• Exit
• Appendices/Schedules

Personally, I want to wish all entrants for the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn competition the best of luck and cannot wait to see who gets selected this year both as regional finalists and overall finalists. Winning the investment really has helped Cauwill. Financially it helped out but the PR and confidence it gave was worth than the money – as a result we’ve had a great year, signed more customers and are now looking to take our 1 year old company to the next level!

Finally, if any one entering the competition wants to get in touch please feel to do so.

Regards,
Ronan.