A guide to winning the Seedcorn competition – Part 4
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.
A guide to winning the Seedcorn competition – Part 3
Part 3 of the guide covers: the Operations, the Key Risks, the Financials, the Funding and the very important Exit.
These sections really bring the plan to a close and it’s focused one major thing: Think Jerry Maguire – think “Show me the Money!”.
You need to show the money (twice).
- Money that company will make from the product year to year
- The amount of money the company will be turning over in 3 / 5 years
Remember you are inside the mind of an investor.. if they are going to but €MONEY into the company they will want to see a return of, say, 10 times €Money. You have to be realistic. You can’t sell an iPhone App to every owner of an iPhone. You’ll get a % (a two digit number if your lucky). Investors are very smart and will therefore spot any flaw.
The last section is “The Exit”. For us (and presumably others) this was a very short section – we clearly stated what we wanted to happen in 3 years. The investor wants to see an exit otherwise no matter how good everything is they won’t invest. Scroll down to see an answer investors like to see.
Tomorrows post will conclude the series and have a word document template with even more comment!
read moreA guide to winning the Seedcorn competition – Part 2
Part 2 of the Guide will cover the Product, The Business Model and The Management.
These are big sections and require you to think long and hard. It requires getting inside the mind of an investor. This is tricky and the investors mind you get into might not be the investor that is reading your business plan. This is where a bit of luck comes into play. The seedcorn competition will try and match your business sector with an investor in a similar sector – it won’t be a perfect match.
Time to get inside the venture capitalist who is now looking at your business that offers:
- a clearly specify the product or service
- a large potential number of paying customers
- at a price well above what it would cost to produce i.e making a profit (while delivering customer satisfaction)
What else do you need to let the investor know? You need a good business model. One that offers genuine choices of:
- Who is the target customer? Why was that target sector chosen?
- What is the product?
- How is the company planning to deliver the product and maximise margins?
I can’t stress enough that this needs to be in plain and simple English – no jargon! Each of these points has to be obvious to the investor.
read moreA guide to winning the Seedcorn competition – Part 1
In a series of blog posts I’m going to share what Cauwill put into the Seedcorn Business Plan. I (there is no I in team!!) didn’t write the business plan alone nor have I put this guide together without a great deal of help from Ian. As ever Ian – a big thanks goes your way.
Don’t worry about cutting and pasting from the blog – with the last blog of the guide (Thursday) I’ll be attaching a complete word document version of the guide with extra comments from InterTradeIreland. Feel free to ask & post questions – I’ll be happy to respond to them.
At a later stage I’m going to do the same for the regional and final presentations for fortunate companies that make past the business plan evaluation section of the competition. Let’s hope it’s you!
DISCLAIMER TIME: There is no guarantee that if you follow the guide exactly that you will win the competition.. quite the contrary this business plan worked for us because it is OUR business plan. Your company business will be different to ours so your business plan will be different also. Things we left out, you may need to include. With that, we wish the best of luck.
read moreMountain Biking with Ironmen
I did something daft this weekend. I headed off to the Ballyhoura mountain bike trails with a guy who just completed the ring of Kerry on a bicycle (Iano), a guy who also completed the ring of Kerry by bicycle and THEN proceeded to cycle home (which is Galway btw!) and another guy who does Ironmen competitions. My 16k (back and forth) commute pales in comparison to what these guys do! Needless to say they were all fitter than I and very used to cycling. The only other person who hadn’t done an ironman or a ring of Kerry was the ironman’s girlfriend but she was super fit nonetheless – she was to pass me out on several occasions 
We arrived nice and early and got very cool rented Cube bikes from the centre for 40 yoyos. We were joined by another keen mountain biker who had done the Ballyhoura trails before so he was our lead and suggested we take the White trail – just 35km. The bikes were top class, very new, well serviced and well up to the task at hand – I therefore can’t blame the bike on nearly keeling over on some of the hills. I was wrecked after about 20km! Cycling up mountains is tougher than you’d think!
Apart from some steep climbs, the white trail is amazing! Some very fast parts, dark and spooky forests, long wooded boardwalks and fantastic views. The climbs might be tough but the downhill sections are just amazing and make up for the hard work getting up the hills. Speeding down a narrow track avoiding rocks really gets the adrenalin going
Because the scenery is so spectacular you might be lured into looking around but this is the biggest mistake you’ll make – it will only result in a crash – which will hurt! I came off a few times the worst when the pedal caught a rock and sent me flying! The other thing that will hurt like mad will be your ass! So here is my top-tip for mountain biking – wear shorts with (extra) padding!!
I’ll definitely be going back again – once my ass has recovered!
Iano brought his super-duper GPS watch which produces a map of of the trail.. (very cool). Note the steep climbs!
Enter Seedcorn 2010
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