Career Roadmap

Entrepreneurial Endeavors

Overview
Considering whether or not to start your own business? You'd better be ready to raise some money. What do VCs and other investors look for when investing? A good business plan, sure, but what else?

WetFeet interviewed entrepreneurs about what it takes to succeed and investors on what they look for when they invest in a startup. Here's what they told us is the essence of what you need to create a winning company.

Passion
Your excitement has to be intoxicating enough (above and beyond your business plan and excellent idea) to make others believe in your dream just as much as you do. This is the key to finding great employees, connected board members, and generous funders.

Once you become an entrepreneur, you're on 24-hour call selling the concept behind your business, its viability, and its future. A convincing case can only be delivered by a true believer. Investors don't want to fund greed. They want to fund a revolution—your passion will make the difference.

A Winning Team
Want funding? The quality of your management team will make or break you. Your top employees' credentials show that you're ready (or not) for whatever the economy, markets, or the competition throw your way. Your team also needs to be flexible—able to adapt to wherever the company's growth takes you. This is particularly key in the seed-capital phase when investors bet on unproven concepts based on their gut feelings about a team.

That's why you'll need to fill out core positions before you meet investors: CEO, engineer, and marketing. The other crucial reason you need to put together a cohesive and talented team is the long hours you'll spend together.

The Big Idea
Your concept needs to be different and useful. Investors want to fund firsts, not variations on a theme. They also want to fund winners: companies positioned to get major market share (a first-to-market story is always good). Best-case scenario: your idea is defensible—difficult to duplicate or compete against (like patents).

Market Insight
Become an industry expert, verify that no one else is in your way, and find out what's kept others from your breakthrough. Master your competitive landscape and environment; show how your company is bound to benefit from economic and market trends. You also need to need to have a sense of what's ahead on the horizon, and that your business isn't about to become obsolete. Before they fund you, investors want to know you know all the angles.

The Business Plan
It shouldn't just talk about how you'll start your business, but how you'll grow it and make your investors money. Four out of five entrepreneurs agree: The executive summary is the single most important component. Boil your plan down to a clear two-page document that hooks the reader in.

The next step is the management team description—your team's experience and track record should comfort investors. Honest financials also make a difference—a complete competitive analysis and reasonable assumptions should support your claims. Breezy optimism is a turn-off.

Finally, show your investors the money—build in a credible exit strategy (either acquisition or IPO) to make the investment worthwhile.
Source: Wetfeet

Print Resources Available in the CDO

• Starting your Own Business. From WetFeet
  
• Vault Guide to Starting Your Own Business
  
• Learning to Lead, A Workbook on Becoming a Leader
  by Warren Bennis, Joan Goldsmith
  
• Good to Great : Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't
  by Jim Collins "Good is the enemy of great..." 

• Small Business Sourcebook: The Entrepreneur's Resource (Small Business Sourcebook) : by Amy R. Suchowski (Editor), Theresa J. Macfarlane (Editor)
  
• Shifting Into Higher Gear : An Owner's Manual for Uniting Your Calling and Career : by Tom Siciliano, Jeff Caliguire
  
• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
  by David Bornstein
  
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
  
•  The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz

Periodicals

Inc Magazine (online)
Inc.com, the website for Inc. magazine, delivers advice, tools, and services, to help business owners and CEOs start, run, and grow their businesses more successfully. You'll find information and advice covering virtually every business and management task, including marketing, sales, finding capital, managing people, and much, much more.

Entrepreneur Magazine (online)
Entrepreneur Media has some reading material for the self-employed. Targeting small-business owners and those thinking about taking the leap, Entrepreneur Media publishes Entrepreneur magazine (with 550,000 subscribers) and operates entrepreneur.com. The company also publishes international editions of its magazine and runs several other business-related Web sites. In addition, Entrepreneur Media publishes books through its Book Publishing Entrepreneur Press and Business Start-Up Guides units.

Career Sites Focused on Entrepreneur Endeavors

• Yale Entrepreneurial Society: http://www.yes.yale.edu/
• Articles for the Entrepreneur http://www.wetfeet.com/cb/schools/yalesom/entrepreneurship.asp
• How to Network like an Expert: http://www.wetfeet.com/asp/article.asp?aid=215&atype=Networking
• Bringing your career in line with your Personal Priorities: http://www.wetfeet.com/asp/article.asp?aid=126&atype=General
• On Becoming an Entrepreneur: http://inventors.about.com/od/entrepreneur/index.htm?terms=entrepreneur
• Starting a business: http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/gettingstarted/
• Entrepreneur’s Glossary of Terms: http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/generalresources/a/glossaryindex.htm
• Small Business Books: http://www.smallbizbooks.com/cgi-bin/SmallBizBooks/index.html
• WetFeet.comhttp://www.wetfeet.com/asp/home.asp
• Vault.com: www.vault.com

Additional Job Search Web Sites
www.som.yale.edu/careers/jswebsites/jswebdefault.asp

Women Entrepreneur Message Board: http://www.vault.com/community/mb/mb_main.jsp?forum_id=10881&ch_id=252

Small Business Association: www.sba.gov

Entrepreneurial Endeavors Career Preparation Timeline