You Don’t Need This Book

Indexing

Create a library of written works.
It can unfold into a timeless asset.

Imagine if you had already started writing. With no index cards required, welcome to your very own collection of organized, articulated thoughts, eh!

You will have embraced the moments of your own thoughts. You will also have felt the nourishment of released energy that awaits within the art of writing. Even more, you also moved past the fear and began “shipping your art” by sharing it within a community as well.

With your library of writings in place, even if traffic is low, your future self can become a real-time index. Available any time, from any device, and you’ll remember them all because you created them!

This treasure trove becomes super handy and very valuable! You can effectively add thickness to any interaction. What a timeless gift to yourself and to those you seek to serve, beyond so many beautiful, but brief sparks in time.

Quick temperature check. The world is experiencing a mainstream surge in AI, but don’t let that become an excuse. Anyone can now unleash AI and #ChatUX is so sweet, but those who show ingenuity will never be out created. Along with helping us all maintain intensity, your own writings can represent a honest heart connected to different topic you’re also talking about… maybe even building realities around as well!

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“Reading helps us understand the world.
Writing helps us understand ourselves.”
– Ben McDougal, Roasted Reflections

Does writing take serious time? Yes. Does publishing your writing online spark hesitations? Yes. Will writing welcome a creative release and potentially deliver more art for you to ship? Also yes.

Start writing my friend, then get generous by sharing it with us.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Escorting Execution

After a few early moves, developing a business plan is a hearty exercise. Business plans are less pivotal than some scholars preach, but writing a business plan does force you to pick through the details of your business. This deliberate planning will help pave a path toward sustainability. The understandings will also help you articulate honest details to potential co-founders, investors, and early adopters.

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I considered sharing the original FliteBrite business plan from 2016, but decided to keep this detailed document offline. That said, if you’re building and would like to look at this multimedia masterpiece, send me a note and we’ll look at it together! If you’d like feedback on your emerging business plan, I’d be happy to discuss that as well.

This first version of a business plan does not need to be super long, but it should include a handful of key elements. While this can feel heavy, the work you previously put into wireframing and canvasing will lighten the load as you flesh out details. Below are the traditional elements to include:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Company Description
  3. Market Analysis
  4. Products & Services
  5. Marketing & Sales
  6. Operations
  7. Financials
  8. Appendix

While using a standard form may add efficiency for readers, one size does not fit all. Consider how you’ll be using this dynamic document and who will be reviewing it. There are more details and endless examples online, such as this guide from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which will help you cater a business plan to your needs.

Creating a business plan is rarely a waste of time, but they do become a required asset when you’re raising financial capital. A few situations where you’ll likely need a business plan include grant applications, traditional bank loans, equity financing, and pitch competitions. Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) may request a business plan to activate their services as well.

As you build a business plan, use a clarifying framework, concise content, and mark areas that may need to be frequently updated. This makes the document interesting, more digestible, and easier to maintain. Along with keeping this evolving asset fresh, consider how your business plan connects to support other emerging resources that collectively paint the picture of your company.

Stay tuned as we’ll look at one pagers, pitch decks, and investor memos next week, then explain how to weave everything into a forwardable investor pack as we conclude this month of themed tactics geared to keep your idea from slipping toward someday.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Coworking

Coworking spaces provide entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs with an environment where everyone is working on their own thing, but doing it together.

When you choose to ride the lonely roller coaster of entrepreneurship, coworking can provide a cooperative, fun, and supportive environment. Coworking spaces are built to energize your work and provide a professional location to host meetings as well.

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Coworking Day is August 9th.

As you might imagine, working around others naturally leads to more interactions. A good coworking climate offers more than trendy office space. It provides members a sense of community. With so many good people in one place, coworking spaces often become a prime location for a variety of events as well. This allows you to get more involved with less effort required. Whether it’s educational sessions, random conversations throughout the day, impromptu happy hours, or larger community events, coworking connects you to more people who “get it.” The home office or local coffee shop is still great, but joining a coworking community allows you to focus on your work while enjoying a communal experience with more people who share an entrepreneurial spirit.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Incubators

Incubators warm you up until it’s time to hatch.

They are similar to coworking spaces, but incubators often focus on entrepreneurial education. This developmental focus attracts newer entrepreneurs and has incubators most often found in educational environments, with semester or year-long programs. Incubators can also be found outside educational environments. Public incubators may have less rigidity, but there’s still urgency that most entrepreneurs benefit from. The timelines of an incubator are not as compressed as accelerators, but there is usually a beginning and an end to these programs.

This rotational nature of incubators provide a cyclical, yet stabilizing effect within startup communities. Entrepreneurs working through incubator programs become stronger founders eager to stay connected. As founders transition out of an incubator, they add human, intellectual, network, and cultural capital to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Their departure also makes room for the next class of entrepreneurs eager to develop a business within the incubator.

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Wondering how your business should evolve? Work around other entrepreneurs.

Another common draw of an incubator, is less expensive office space. Low rent alone attracts early tenants, but here lies the motive for many unhealthy incubators. If an incubator is only about cheap office space, the lack of heart will suck the cool right out. A fixation on cheap rent leads to less interest in helping entrepreneurs. This leaves floundering tenants starving for community. As cultural starvation occurs, entrepreneurs migrate and programs fail.

Incubators must be safe cocoons for less experienced entrepreneurs. They should allow entrepreneurs to repeatedly test, fail, and improve alongside their peers. With a supportive space dedicated to nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit, incubators allow connected entrepreneurs to hatch fresh ideas ready to fly.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Accelerators

Accelerators are incubators on steroids.

These programs recruit scalable companies that have shown early promise. They coordinate dramatic transformation within a compact timeline.They are like early-stage investment firms, as they provide seed funding in exchange for equity. Accelerators hedge bets by connecting entrepreneurs to resources, mentors, customers, investors, and community allies.

The rise of the accelerator model is interesting. Accelerators help entrepreneurs build stronger companies, but they need money to function. How do they support the financial investments in each company? What about staff salaries, community events, and all the resources they provide? There’s usually an initial fund raised to start these programs. Some accelerators also have financial infusions from sponsoring organizations. With this financial foundation in place, accelerators then depend on the performance of the companies in their portfolio. When a portfolio company is acquired or exits, the accelerator’s equity converts to cash or ownership options in more successful businesses.

As an accelerator’s portfolio performs, its reach widens and the program prospers. This motivates program directors to pick the right companies. It also gives founders the confidence that the experience is built for them to succeed. These complementary relationships are how accelerators make a lasting impact in less time.

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Incubators vs. Accelerators vs. Venture Studios vs. Coworking

For entrepreneurs, so much potential makes it easy to fall in love with the idea of being an accelerator-backed company. As business owners consider applying to accelerators, it’s important to understand the terms. When startup accelerators first started in 2005, they were industry agnostic. As this collaboration-based investment strategy has evolved, industry-specific accelerators have also emerged. This means there are more accelerators than ever and not all of them will be the right fit. The educational, networked, and cultural experiences matter. Entrepreneurs must vet accelerators like they would other equity investors. Do terms of the accelerator align with the long-term goals of your company? Will the implied results outweigh an intense time commitment? Even if it’s temporary, will the team be required to relocate? How deep is the network of fellow founders who have worked through the accelerator? Do portfolio companies stay connected? If so, how does that connected landscape support your work beyond the program?

The accelerator experience can be life changing for a startup. Based on a deep understanding of each company, these action-packed programs #GiveFirst and help build on what’s working. They also quickly identify areas for improvement. This empathetic support combined with a shared mission to grow allows accelerators and their portfolio companies to be more successful as everyone collectively builds to go big.

By Ben McDougal, ago