It Takes Money to
Make Money
How many times have
you seen your idea "stolen" and
merchandised before you had a chance to do something
with it? Don't you just hate it when you see someone
become a great success with an idea you had too? Or
have you ever had a great idea for a Web site only to see
someone else run with the concept before you could?
So What Happened?
You didn't or couldn't
act fast enough to implement your idea before someone
else did it. Or, you didn't have a strategy for
implementing your plan. Or, most likely, you didn't
have the money to make it a reality.
The biggest
stumbling block for any major Internet endeavor is
funding. Next to not having enough faith in your
idea to take action, not having the proper funding
debilitates more innovative thinkers than anything
else. So how do you get funding? You need a
plan. You need a strategy to convince an investor
that your idea has merit.
Planning is
Critical
Anyone can come up
with an idea, but people flock toward someone who has
a plan for actually making it happen. Before you can
even think about approaching a venture capitalist or
investor about your idea, you should have your plans
down on paper. You'll need the following:
- A marketing plan
- A business plan
- Financial
projections. Most investors require a
one-year projection broken down on a monthly
basis. They also want to see a 5-year
projection broken down by years.
Steps to Success
The following are the
overall steps that you should take when developing an
Internet project for presentation to investors.
Step 1: Formulate
your idea.
Step 2: Evaluate
your idea. Have a professional Internet marketer
or business consultant review your idea for merit.
Use their feedback to polish your idea and decide
whether to continue with the remaining steps.
Step 3: Create a
marketing plan.
Step 4: Create a
business plan.
Step 5: Create
letters and proposals for joint ventures, venture
capitalists or lenders.
Step 6: Present
your plans and obtain funding.
Step 7: Organize
and layout the site on paper.
Step 8: Pull in the
resources and people to create the site. You'll
most likely need programmers, designers and graphic
artists. You'll also need a savvy webmaster to
coordinate their efforts.
Step 9: Launch the
Site. This includes opening it to the public,
sending out press releases, registering with search
engines, etc.
Step 10:
Continually advertise, market and promote the site.
Another variation on
these steps is to go ahead and do what you can in
planning and creating the site. Go ahead and pre-test
the concept. Have it in working order - even if it is
manual instead of automated. Then, once you've proven
that there is a demand for what you are doing on a
small scale, you can approach investors for expansion
funding. Did you know that most of the big name
Internet companies on the stock exchange aren't even
making a profit? They just aren't losing as much this
quarter as they did last. The key is to show steady
improvement. A profit isn't even necessary to find
investors!
More sites make it
through this initial planning and funding phase than
you might think. Where they fail next is in poor
management. We'll discuss Strategies for
Successful Site Management next week.
