This is a little belated, but I want to put a shout out to our other advisory members: Eric Bram and Dariush who’s invaluable help has really gotten this business to our current “turning point” with our Kickstarter project just a few short months away. Eric’s creative writing skills and Dariush’s business and computer graphics experience have brought incredibly valuable skills and experience to us, and we are thankful for their undying support.
Category Archives: Business Details
Meetings, Videographer, and 1st Version Of Animated Logo
We had a very productive week this week. To start, we had a meeting with a business consultant, setup by our business advisor. This gentleman works with large corporations, and startups to guide them towards success. He’s also an angel investor. Today’s meeting was not about looking for money (right now that’s what our Kickstarter project is for), but rather to see if our business is on the right track. I’m happy to say that he feels we are, and that we are right to focus on our upcoming Kickstarter project. We have several goals attached to the project. The obvious one is to raise the funds needed to buy equipment so we can produce a product. The other goal is to show demand. This is investing and business 101. If we can fund successfully we can show that our product has a demand (investors love to see this). This gives us a base to grow our business from. Besides Kickstarter, he had some other great suggestions that we will be incorporating into our business plan. We are looking to hire him on as another consultant and look forward to the experience and knowledge he can bring to the table. More on that later.
We are also happy to announce that we have secured a videographer to help film out video for the project. I don’t have details yet, as this was arranged by one of our advisory board members, and I have yet to meet with him. We also were able to see early versions of our animated logo. It’s a great start! Our artist is hard at work moving it along to a “final” product for us to use in the video!
Business And Strategic Plans Completed
After many meetings and several revisions, I think we are finally done with the Business Plan and Strategic Plan, although I will now directly contradict myself and say that they are technically never done. We’ve tuned both of them to a point where we feel comfortable giving them to potential investors, or others for their feedback. As we move through the business building process, I’ve educated myself more and more, and make adjustments to the plans as a result.
You might be asking yourself: “what’s the difference between a Business Plan and a Strategic Plan”. Well, definitions seem to vary a bit when looking them up on the Internet, but it is my understanding that a Business Plan is the goals and definitions of how your business is going to work, while a Strategic Plan is how you are going to accomplish those goals (including the financials etc.).
Our First Meeting With Our Business Advisor
We had our first meeting with our business advisor today. He’s really awesome and generous with his time. He’s a co-founder of an angel investment group, and will be a great asset to help us get off the ground. We gave him our business plan for his review to see if we are on the right track.
We also learned a lot. It was almost too much to put down. One of the highlights that came up was putting together an “advisory” board. This is simply a group of people that are support of your business idea, and can bring something to the table (so to speak), either experience in a particular industry or other useable skills. At the beginning, they will not be anything more than advisors/supporters, however, in the future, there is a possibility of either stock or other investment opportunities.
I already named my friends Eric Bram, and Dariush Derakhshani to the board. Both have already been extremely supportive.