 Founding a company as a legal process doesn’t need much effort, aside
from the capital needed to meet formal requirements. A successful
launch and start up phase will rather depend on
a careful and probably
time consuming analytical effort and many discussions with potential
partners, customers and capital providers etc to arrive a solid
business plan.
This business plan should not only be the roadmap for your own
entrepreneurial activities, but it will also be the basic
prerequisite for negotiations with any party addressed for
furnishing money, be it banks, VC companies or business angels.
This business plan should comprehensively present all essential information related to:
- The company objectives
- Its specific products and services with their customer benefits
- The market and competitors
- Marketing and Sales activities planned for
- The time, capacity, infrastructure and personnel requirements for the provision and production of products
- Services during the start up phase, plus their related cost
- Turnover and profit expected over the planning horizon
- The overall financial requirements and sources available
- The budget plans
- The company structure, organisation and the qualification of the start up personnel
- Assessment of opportunities and risks
Nowadays you will not be left alone, but can rely on a number of
networks established to support “young” entrepreneurs, aside from the
literature, that was published during the last years.
One interesting possibility is to take part the Munich Business Plan
Competition (www.MBPW.de) , which is launched once per year (just
started again) and can be joined any time during the 3 phases,
during which the competitors have a chance to visit lectures rsp.
Training workshops and meet coaches and VC representatives at regular
events, that are competent in technological, legal or financial matters
and will try to answer any question you may have. And of course they
have a chance to network among each other. At the end of each phase the
planning results developed during this time are assessed and the best
papers awarded a price, giving each team a chance to do better during
the next phase.
One big advantage is that interesting ideas are closely watched by the
representatives of VC companies, so that already during the development
process negotiations can be informally initiated. In the ideal case a
financing contract can already be signed at the end of the competition
allowing a flying start of the company.
There are far more than 100 future entrepreneurs’ rsp teams
participating each year, expatriates being very much welcomed, even
when they can only present documents in English. In fact about 370
companies offering meanwhile almost 3.000 jobs have been founded since
1997 after participation in the competition, incl. a company that has
moved to Taiwan.
If you don’t want to go to the events you can at least download a
handbook from the MBPW-homepage describing in detail the content of a
business plan.
The Munich competition has stimulated similar events in other German
towns and parallel events in Munich itself. So there are additional
opportunities to meet potential partners, VC companies or business
angels and exchange ideas, experiences and tips. Just look e.g. at: www.gruenderwerkstatt.de, a BJU (Federal Association of young
Entrepreneurs) homepage, describing their activities all over Germany.
You can also book a newsletter there.
Start-up training in Munich is offered by an initiative described under
www.startup-muenchen.de. Unfortunately all this information is
available in German only. But if
that is a problem for you you’ll hopefully find a friend to assist you.
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