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The Resource Center has all the info you'll need From content to user feedback, the resource center has the information you need for every level of the entrepreneurial process.
Selling your business is similar to raising capital. The difference: you're selling the whole company. Selling your company, like raising money, includes preparing the business plan, financials, cash-flow projections, and demonstration of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance practices.
Owners of growing companies need to begin positioning them for sale early in the life of the firm and continue to take steps toward sale throughout the business's life, writes an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Included are eight suggestions for doing just that.
Specialization led to market domination for this manufacturer of videogame accessories. To improve his company's overseas sales, he's reviewing marketing strategies and listening to local managers. Coordinating packing, shipping and back-office functions with its acquirer is also helping the business expand.
A software company has to make choices: stick to consulting or build a product, pick the right technology, convince systems integrators to use it and introduce it to their customers. The hardest is deciding how much money you can afford to lose. Good management and execution got this company past the IPO and made it a profitable winner.
A tremendous amount of coordination, effort, and savvy is necessary to launch a global sales strategy, according to the author.
The author, Jana Matthews, asserts that without policies and procedures, business growth becomes much harder to achieve. If you want to grow, you (the entrepreneur) have to stop doing everything yourself.
Picnik's Jonathan Sposato helped orchestrate one of the Seattle tech community's highest profile M&A deals of the year when he sold the online photo editing service to Google. The feat was even more impressive given that it marked the second time that the 43-year-old Internet entrepreneur had sold a company to the search giant. And Sposato did it all without taking a dime of venture capital.
So, how did he pull it off? Sposato offered his thoughts on bootstrapping as well as his tips for selling companies in a talk at Seattle Lunch 2.0 last Friday. We were there, taking notes and shooting video. Here are some of the highlights, including Sposato telling the crowd that he and co-founders Mike Harrington and Darrin Massena didn't take venture capital money because they were "greedy."
Physician turned venture capitalist Drew Senyei sees education as society's great equalizer.
To help motivate and reward his senior-level sales force, this entrepreneur writes that he uses phantom stock to allow associates to feel they own a piece of the company while retaining his full ownership of the firm. This compensation plan is based on sales reps' performance or time, and can serve as the basis for junior-level bonuses.
There is no doubt that it is a nearly impossible time for entrepreneurs to raise venture capital. Only the best of the best new companies are attracting such funding, according to the author. Entrepreneurs need to prepare themselves when approaching venture capitalists. Increasingly, several must have factors have become an essential part of the necessary preparation.
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