iGap is drawing to a conclusion, just one more session on funding which will be delivered by  Brian Caulfied @BrianCVC . Brian, who gives VC’s a good name, is one of the main organisers of iGAP along with Ray Walsh (EI) and Sarah Buckley (EI).

iGAP is a programme that is designed specifically to help early-stage internet companies to develop that clarity and to give them tools to help them to execute on the strategy they have defined.

It’s the “clarity” bit I’d like to explore a little more. At Cauwill we have a great product that works well internationally. We have (international) customers in the travel sector some of which pay, others are very slow to pay   Before embarking on iGAP we identified a few concerns with the sector which would prevent growth & scaling. iGAP  confirmed our concerns and has helped us to formulate a plan to tackle a new sector i.e. get our value prop and promise statement for the sector,  how best to approach it and the best route  to market. We had a tendency to build things first and then go  to market. iGAP helped to us to step back from the product & features and focus on a strategy before building/coding anything.

So how did iGAP change the way we do things?

I firmly believe it’s a combination of quality speakers and the format of iGAP that makes it a success. I’ll get back to the speakers in a moment but I’d like to focus on the format.

• Training – I hesitate to call it training.. it’s more than training. Speakers provide insight into their businesses, how they run things, how they set the team up and how things work in web businesses.
• War Stories – we get to hear from those ahead of us about how they got there.. and in some case what they did wrong to cause the company to fail. for example Colm Lyon of Realex Payments, Ray Nolan of Worky.com, Feargal Mooney of HostelWorld, Niall Harbison of Simply Zesty, David Lenehan of Polldaddy and others too numerous to mention here but thank you all for coming in and talking to us.
• Networking – everyone on iGAP is encouraged to network, get to know everyone one the programme and the past programme. iGAP also run several events/panels in parallel where more networking is possible. They even had the Telegraph in and several iGAP companies got profiled on it. A common thread with a lot of the speakers was that b2b business can be very personal and finding the right person is half the battle.
• Open and Sharing Environment - after ‘training’ we go to our cohort groups which is run by the facilitators. Here we openly discuss the day and discuss the ‘homework’. Companies bounce ideas off each other and a lot of good stuff comes out of the cohort meetings. We are all in the same boat so it’s easier to row together and share our pains than remain in isolation. Some of the feedback at times can be brutally honest.

I know many such management training and incubation programmes exist, we were on LEAP which was good for us at the time, but iGAP is different because it focuses specifically on the needs of internet businesses.  Over a period of seven months, six modules were led by international lean start-up and customer development experts such as Eric Ries, Scott Rafer, Paul O’Dea , Justin Knecth, Sean Ellisand Oren Michels .Over the programme they addressed issues such as lean startup theory, product market fit, monetisation strategies, internet customer acquisition, business development using APIs, etc.

Here is a quick synopsis of the content covered by the speakers

Paul O’Dea : Provided the Business battle card. This a great way to get an overview of the your business in 5 questions:

• What do you want to be famous for?
• Who are selected customers?
• Where is your measurable value?
• Why should customers choose you rather than your competitors?
• How will you get your product to market?

Eric Ries : What can I say? This guy has changed the way we do things in Cauwill. We love the lean startup theory and before we do anything we pause and think  - how can we do this the lean way? If you’re reading this – thank you so much Eric.  #leanstartup #MVP

Scott Rafer :  Scott dealt with the business models and understanding your customers sales funnel. The better you know your customer – the better chance you have in closing out a deal with them. “Startups fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model” – Steve Blank

Sean Ellis : Delivered content on Marketing and Customer Acquisition. Really enjoyed this talk. Everything in the presentation is based around the Startup growth pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is correctly finding product market fit. He provided us with a set of questions and one very tough task – asking your customers how they would feel if they could no longer use your product. It’s a horrible question because we live a world where we (startup companies) think our product is super cool and everyone should love/use it .. we just don’t want to hear potentially bad stuff from customers. You know what? This was a great (tough) task and helped us to improve our product market fit.  Do it here http://survey.io

Justin Knecht : I was too ill to attend Justin’s talk, but catching up from Ian and hearing his thoughts on the module this was also another great presentation with real insights into user centric design. I’m currently going through the slides so I’ll update this post with my thoughts at a later stage.

Oren Michels : Up there with one of the best speakers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. This guy is all about biz dev. Very clear delivery on how to be stronger with customers and help prevent the sales funnel from filling up with ‘Barney Deals’. Oren mixes in stories from The Valley which are very entertaining! The timing of this talk was just serendipity.

iGAP has provided us a framework to structure our decisions and do things faster. It’s not rocket science but it is definitely some form of science – mixed with a bit of luck. We still have things to fix but we’re confident that with a clear focus and sticking to a good strategy we’ll be fine.

Cauwill got accepted on to the Internet Growth Acceleration Programme (iGAP).

iGAP is an intensive management development programme aimed exclusively at high potential internet companies.

It’s a real interesting time at the moment and we got some challenges ahead so iGAP is coming just at the right time.

It’s happening over the next six months,according to the blurb iGAP will equip managers within the Irish internet industry with the practical tools needed to formulate aggressive international growth plans and scale their businesses.

The first introduction day is Wednesday where we get to meet all the other participants. I’m going to blog (and maybe tweet) the events  as they happen. As part of the introduction email Enterprise Ireland sent a word document with directions to East Point.. a word document!! All they really need is  http://directions.to/ei in their emails  

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.

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.

So let’s look at Part 1 of the guide which will cover: Overview Document length and style, Cover Page, Executive Summary and  Sections1 – 3.

English and style of our business plan

• Formal English
• Font size 11 (Calibri/Myriad Pro)
• Numbered Section Headings
• Short snappy sections – no long & fluffy paragraphs!

Total Document =

1 Cover page + 25 page BizPlan + 4 pages Schedules / appendices

Cover page had:

Company Name, Date and Seedcorn Category.

Executive Summary (3 pages)

Really important section and you should do this LAST as it’s the best of the document.

• The Problem
• The Solution (add a picture if it helps describing the solution)
• Business Model
• The Opportunity
• Achievements to Date
  • If you have paying customers make sure you state it (helped us stand out)
• Management
• Forecast Sales and Profit
• Funding Required
• The Exit
  • Investors want to see how they are going to get their moneyx10 back

1         Business Overview

1.1       About the Company

Who you are, What you do in. Who you sell to.  All in less than 300 words.

The most important things to talk about here is the “Value-add” – what have you got that others will see the value of and will therefore pay for. Do you save them money or provide a way for them to make more money – that’s all its really about. Need to capture the reader imagination here – if they “get it” and believe you at this point then everything else will confirm it for them – if you lose the reader on the value-add –then you’ve lost them totally!

1.2       What the product is

• Features
• USP
• Benefits (to your customer)

2         Market Opportunity

2.1       Who needs the product?

Identify the sector who needs the product. Cleary Identify why they need it.

2.2       How many of them are there?

Quantify.

2.3       Other Markets

Maybe your product is applicable to other markets but you are focusing on one/two at the moment.  If so identify them here.

2.4       Key purchasing criteria

Why would customers buy your product. Hint you are going to:

• Save them money
• Save them time
• Make them money (by selling it, getting more customer etc.)
• all of the above

2.5       External Factors influencing market demand

Eh – downturn!

2.6       Specific market/demand opportunities

You should show very specific and independently delivered facts that the market is looking for your product.  “According to Market research conducted by PhoCusWright.. PWC etc.)

3         Industry & Competition

What makes you confident that you are in the right industry? What has happened to strengthen your belief that the industry is growing.

What is happening within the markets/sectors that convinces you the business has potential to grow?

3.1       Competition | Direct

List direct competition here – find out as much as you can about them. Market share, funding, backing , strength, weaknesses etc.

ps. You have competition. If you don’t there probably isn’t a market for your product.

3.2       Competition | In Direct

Same here but not as much detail as direct.

3.3       Competitive Advantage

Why is your product better than the direct competition.

Section 4 in tomorrows Post…

The blurb : With Voddler you can watch movies and TV shows the way you want, anytime. Voddler is easy, legal and available around the clock ..

Before I could it to work I had to configure the firewall correctly to allow inbound/outbound permissions but still it didn’t pass the startup test completely. It worked fine though.  The UI is a bit clunky but once you get the hang of it ..it’s fine. Enter and ESC with the nav keys pretty much do everything. You can see the UI designers have TVs in mind.. everything is BIG ! I kinda like it!

Because Voddler originates from Sweden  subtitles are on by default. You can turn them off in the settings.

The video quality of the movies is excellent as is the sound quality however the movie selection is s a bit limited at the moment but still I’d happily watch most of the movies currently listed.  Voddler also has TV series listed, I haven’t investigated them too much right now but from the first glance they looked to be a good mix of stuff.

The moves are listed as FREE and then there is a Premium section… as you would expect.

Before the movie starts you get to watch some advertisements, which is fine and understandable.  I haven’t watched a movie in it’s entirety to see if advertisements occur in the middle of it. If you exit a movie and come back in – it picks up where you left off (again with a few advertisements prior to it).

Overall – I like it! 8/10

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So Ian and I went to Dublin on Thursday to give a pitch for the final of InterTradeIrelands Seedcorn competition. It went well but it took until 11pm that night to find out how well it went.

Since spinning out from the University (July this year) and running solo with Cauwill we’ve worked hard on fine tuning the technology, focusing on a vertical market and generating sales – on Thursday night at 11.05pm our effort and thought process was recognised. To use a cliche – we are over the moon – it was fantastic to stand up and pitch our business idea to VC’s and serial entrepreneurs and win the Best Emerging company of 2009.

A lot of people to thank – but Ian is top of the list, fantastic business partner and friend  (I wonder could we have ever imagined being in this position today when we met over 10years ago in the ‘that’ office?). Family and friends (& soccer) have been a massive support – without I would have gone a little crazy a long time ago. Enterprise Ireland have played there part too – they were there to seed the idea in the Proof of Concept project while in UL. In particular, Mark and Gearoid have been tremendous.  To all the people in the EAC – many thanks for the advice, coffee and outlet to talk about everything and anything. A big thanks to InterTradeIreland and all the judges (at the final and regional level).

Congratulations to Sophia Search who is winner from  the High Growth category. Congrats to all the regional winners too – they walked away with €25,000.  A very special mention to coClarity who won the Special award for best spin out  or platform.

Go raibh maith agaibh.

We got some serious validation of our business model this week when we got the phone call from InterTradeIreland Friday.

Cauwill, (Founded by Ian Rice and myself) won the Best Emerging Company in Munster 2009.

Getting customers and validating our business is an important goal for us and it just happened that Fergal was in again to talk to us on Goals.

Thankfully those two goals have now been achieved and we delighted!

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay his entire session (we had a few meetings and prep work to do for Seedcorn) but I really enjoyed the half day.

We did an exercise where we had to fill out our goals. There was 3 categories. Personal(life) goals.. Things (I’d like to have) and Financial Goals. Each of these then had to assigned a time scale (1, 3,5 ,10 and 20 years), then we had to take our top 3 one year goals and assign a first task in achieving it.

To be honest, I was so surprise to find myself pouring out personal goals, finding it difficult to ‘want stuff’ and the financial goals were short. I was expecting myself to ‘Want’ more stuff.. after all I do like gadgets but I just didn’t really feel I really really wanted them.. whereas the personal stuff I really really wanted.

Very interesting exercise. Really makes you think of whats important to YOU and your business..

The other exercise was to write up your business purpose in 3 sentences.  Then, other people got to review it and leave comments on it.  Because it was psuedo anonymous I felt I should leave fair and constructive comments and not be afraid of putting someones nose out of joint. In return, I wanted the same. I got it too from others that attended and you know it really helped in getting my thoughts together for the Seedcorn presentation. Thanks guys!

An exciting week this week for Ian and I.. collectively known as Cauwill.

We got a phone call Wednesday morning from those nice people in Intertrade Ireland letting us know Cauwill had made the Regional Finals for the Seedcorn competition. We are listed along side really great companies and we are really honoured and chuffed!
In the Munster final all three companies (Mobanode, coClarity and Cauwill)  are from the Enterprise Acceleration Centre here in Limerick! There must be something in the water

A big thanks to the Donncha and Graham for their help and guidance.

Here is the Regional Final List - The very best of luck to all!

Seedcorn is open for applications..!

You’ve dreamed it. You’ve built it.  Now give your business lift-off with the 2009 InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Business Competition.

Get the funding to give your business lift-off.  This year the competition is offering the biggest ever cash prize fund of €360,000 spread across 9 cash prizes to help the brightest new business stars across the whole island.

And that’s not all………..

Enter and you’ll get expert help on becoming investor-ready, make valuable contacts and get expert help to become investor-ready.  We provide online support and workshops, so you’re all set to impress with your business pitch.  Because the Seedcorn Competition is all about matching businesses with investors the BENEFITS are more than the cash prize: -

• Accelerate the development of your business idea
• Learn how to pitch your business plan to investors
• Gain exposure with venture capitalists and other investors
• Get feedback on your business plan
• Increase the profile of your business

In every way, it’s a top-flight opportunity!

Well today was first day of LEAP.. 14 new companies walked into the boardroom of  EAC in LIT at 9am this morning and we started our adventure. It was great to see quite a few of the STARTERS on LEAP and of course it was good to meet  some new faces.  As I left, I wondered  – where will we be in 12 months? What state of mind will be in? What will the be the state of our companies?  Will we have customers? Will we be standing on our own, or will we have created partnerships and be driving to the next level? Who knows.. but one thing for certain the next 12 months will be filled with  lots of highs and lows.  The road will be rocky that’s for sure but  I’m hoping to balance out the high with the lows  on all fronts. Of course there will be time for coffee to discuss the rocky road