In french:

Beaucoup se posent la question de : Comment écrire un business plan?

Voici un peu d’aide.

Si vous êtes un entrepreneur, écrivez-vous-même vos business plan.
Ceci est obligatoire pour la simple raison que vous dirigez le navire. Ne déléguez pas cette tâche.
Il est important de conceptualiser et mettre à plat ce que vous avez en tête.
Mesurez les différences entre vos attentes du marché et le marché est de loin le meilleur MBA que vous pouvez suivre.

Essayez d’éviter les logiciels de création de Business Plan:
Premièrement car les investisseurs identifient facilement ces business plan clé en  mains et ces derniers ne finissent que trop souvent dans une poubelle.
Deuxièmement car cela restreint votre habilité à créer et innover.-
Il n’y a pas de modèle type de business plan mais disons que 20 pages suffisent.
Suivez la matrice ci jointe et adaptez là au fré du projet.

1    La page de couverture : vos détails personnels, nom du projet, l’objectif du business plan (levée de fonds ou recrutement) et insérer la marque « confidentiel » sur chaque page.
2    La genèse : d’où vient l’idée
3    Le concept/solution : comment répondez vous à un besoin du marché ?
4    Le business modèle : sous forme de texte
5    Le business modèle : sous forme de graphiques afin d’illustrer combien de cash sera généré pour vous et eux.
6    Vos concurrents/marché : analysez vos compétiteurs au sens large du terme, ne soyez pas restrictif en disant il n’y a personne qui fait ce que nous faisons, c’est peut être vrai mais d’autres proposent aussi des solutions de substitution donc analysez tous cela.
7    Valeur ajoutée de votre solution : qu’est ce que vous apportez de plus, un point unique de vente, de rencontre…
8    L’équipe : toute l’équipe et pas uniquement les fondateurs du projet, c’est très important.
9    Chiffres clé de l’étude de marché
10    Le prix : comment avez-vous établi ce prix, quel est le ROI (Retour sur investissement) pour le client
11    Tableau financier : une prévision sur 5 ans des profits et pertes en une page. Si vous êtes un financier inclure plus d’infos en annexe
12    L’évaluation : Etablir les cash flow générés par votre gestion du projet et bien expliquer que ces chiffres ne veulent rien dire, ils prouveront néanmoins l’ambition que vous avez.
13    Le plan financier : comment voyez-vous l’avenir ?
14    L’analyse du risque : établir une liste des risques existants opérationnels, de réputation, de marché, d’environnement….
15    L’analyse de votre marché : montrez que vous avez bossé et maitrisez parfaitement votre sujet-
16    Etat du projet : ce qui a déjà été fait et ce qui doit encore l’être
17    Le plan opérationnel : Comment allez vous mettre ce plan en œuvre, atteindre vos objectifs, parer aux imprévus etc…
18   Vos objectifs : qu’attendez-vous des personnes en face, quel type de collaboration etc…
19    Fiche de contact.

Si vous avez des questions n’hésitez pas.

Ce post est une adaptation rapide d’un excellent post de Jeremy Fain [ICI]

Si cela vous intéresse c’est par ici

What it is?

It is an open seed project in order to concentrate all european efforts and create seed school around Europe.

I started by France but everyone is welcome. What can make it successful will probably be the network.

I started with a simple 4 pages website, if i observe traction i will allow everyone to share in a commun space and will see what happens.

So spread the word about that initiative.

We are the 1st of April, i think it is a good time to start. Google has shown us the way.
Thank you folks.

It’s very hard to distill insights gained on angel investing over a period of 3 years into a talk of just 7 minutes. So I thought it would help to re-summarize those lessons in writing. Here’s a pretty comprehensive list (though not exhaustive) of what I think is key to be a good angel investor:

• Pick a Goal - Picking a goal as an angel investor is important: decide if this activity is a hobby, philanthropy or the next professional step in your career. Maybe it’s one or all of those, but it affects the outcome and your investment style.
• Pick a Focus - Everything else being equal, investing in an area of expertise, based on a field of experience or knowledge is key in reducing the risk while increasing the chances of success. It also allows you to know your segment and your companies better than others.
• Be Social - Woody Allen once said that “90% of success is showing up”; the best foundation of angel investing is a solid personal network, which is ideally built one connection at a time. It’s also important to always be nice & helpful to the entrepreneurs as well as your co-investors, referrals produce often the best investments
• Be Transparent - It’s OK to pass on deals, in fact, it’s necessary to decline a lot more investments than proceeding with them. But doing so in a transparent, timely, helpful and polite way is very important.
• Be Different / Build a Brand - There is no shortage of capital, even in this economically challenged times we’re in. Putting in the extra effort and paying attention to details will pay off big over time. Building a strong personal brand is key to attract the best entrepreneurs and have them choose to work with you. It’s also key to creating a “proprietary deal-flow” which is the most important success factor in angel investing
• Understand and Pay Attention to Terms - At times this could be the difference between losing your investment and generating a positive outcome. While lawyers can help here, so can being part of a reputable, professional and good investment syndicate
• Use numbers to your advantage - having a portfolio of a reasonable size (larger than 10) is pretty essential in several ways:
  • it helps spread the risk
  • if you are helpful to your portfolio companies, their teams become your champions. The more companies and people speak positively on your behalf, the higher are your chances of discovering extraordinary founders and start-ups
• Have fun - Enjoying what you’re doing will reflect positively in your attitude. Working with founders you like on ideas that make a difference and seeing those companies grow can be extremely rewarding. Enthusiasm is contagious.
• Know that it’s not a picnic - A great portion (1/3 according to Ron Conway) of the companies in your portfolio is likely to fail; in fact it’s expected. Remember this is about making bold bets, and with those come often losses, and the pain of seeing companies close their doors. Tolerance for losses is a necessity not an option.
• Pattern recognition / Supply and Demand - Seeing a very high number of deals and having a portfolio is key in training your pattern recognition. Angel investing is not an exact science, it’s an art. The best way to perfect that art is exposure to as many data points as possible. Equally important is understanding that with most early stage investments, data is scarce and information is opaque. So valuation is often determined by the supply and demand. However, popularity of a deal is rarely correlated if an outcome is positive or not.
• Structure - If you’re doing angel investments professionally, structure might be important. Make sure to look into decent legal help regarding forming a legal entity to make the investments through (for liability reasons), or putting the investments in a retirement plan for future tax benefits. These details might not be obvious at the onset, but might become critical later on.

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• Fantastic Advice for Angel Investors (ventureblog.com)

What is the big deal?

Sequoia is the most famous VC firm on earth and Y Combinator has proved his model to be a successful one….why everyone is so surprised about it?I guess a lot of VC firms will join the bandwagon and i will not not be surprised to see TechStars annoucing the same kind of deal very soon.

Seedcamp wich is developing a quite similar model in Europe has been funding at start with 3 millions Euros by about 10 VCs to access  “premium dealflow” and “investment opportunity”.

I guess more and more entrepreneurs will play the angel as less money needs to be poured into companies these days and sweat equity is by far the key for a new entrepreneur.

Jean David Chamboredon from 3i has talked about this new model saying “successful entrepreneurs will be business angels of tomorrow”

We can interprete that Sequoia investment as a new trend for VC to outsource the early stage stage of development to small dedicated teams and focus on big deals only.

If Y Combinator has a great PR, it is not the case for all other small angel teams doing the same job and having difficulties to access a great audience. This is why we created CapitalBooster, we understood that new trend and wanted to be part of it.

If you are a Y Combinator copycat (i wish you are) and want to present yourself, feel free to contact us. We will be pleased to present your team and structure.

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• Mentoring Women Tech Start Ups (adventurista.com)
• Brad Feld Talks Startups (killerblog.com)
• TechStars Comes to Boston (2-speed.com)
• Mini Seedcamp Tel Aviv - The Lucky Ones (seedcamp.com)
• Innovate! Europe (the-accelerator.blogspot.com)

This will be ideal as a 2nd job for passionate people about TECH and Investment.

If interested send : resume + Why i should pick you?  to jeancarlcohen AT gmail DOT com

These are some blurbs I made notes of from the AngelConf conference put on by Paul Graham.

Ron Conway
• “have to have a portfolio, to have hits”
• “it’s not fun; it’s hugely interesting to talk to entrepreneurs who literally in front of you are telling you the future”.

• “spend 25% of my time in philanthropy”
• Need to be very dedicated to angel investing.
• Don’t invest in someone you don’t really like; life is too short. Have personal chemistry.
• You have to have value to add; you won’t get into the great deals [they have allocation problems; you have to fight your way in].
• Be patient;
• I recommend investing in a bunch of companies. [he invests 50k-100k]
• 10k-25k to get your feet wet.
• 1/3 of them will go out of business. Failure is part of learning process.
• Pick a sector you like; I like sectors that are Internet and have massive growth. Invest in several companies in that sector.
• Great deal flow (respect for entrepreneurs to get the access) and due diligence = great portfolio.
• Build a referral network of entrepreneurs that you can invest in with, etc.
• Reputation is very important – screw 1 entrepreneur, you’re screwed.
• As lead angel, you need to take the entrepreneur to Sand Hill Road and you help them get funded.

if you want some more…

Thank to Steve Poland for that.

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• Paul Graham: How to be an Angel Investor (killerblog.com)
• Live Stream: Y Combinator’s AngelConf Offers A Crash Course In Angel Investing (techcrunch.com)
• Fantastic Advice for Angel Investors (ventureblog.com)

I believe this investment would be splitted in 3 or 4 investments.

If you want to apply contact me via twitter or email jeancarlcohen A T gmail DOT com.

i will follow you up.

Good luck

For those who are not ready, do not worry we have plenty of people willing to invest and you will get introduce by June the 01st.

We will soon be ready.

Not sure, you can find some infos on this excellent blog

I am proud to announce we are going to experiment the first ever crowd funding round in a real startup.

As the round is not closed yet i can not say to much about it but i will use that blog to comment the experience and let you know more on a regular basis …but imagine 80 shareholders (high profile = smart money people) sharing and building the same venture. It is WOW and i am sure you would like to be part of it.

I am really exciting about it, if we success in that ad-venture we might propose that new venture capital model to others startups.

It is hard and exciting to build the future but we need feedback from you.
I am willing to share in more details that experience, feel free to contact and leave a comment to let you know your thoughts.

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• SXSW: What’s Next For Venture Capital Investing and Entrepreneurship in the US (myventurepad.com)

Are you looking to raise capital?

It is easy, please provide investors the following documents:

• wonderful resume,
• proofs that you’ve already had 3 successful IPO exits

and we are done.

Do i have to remind you that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page , Mark Zuckerberg and others are first time entrepreneur? They all created their venture just after school and all found people who took risk with them.

Why are all investors dreaming about the next Google, Ebay, Facebook…. and do not trust first time entrepreneurs?

There is a strong equity gap in the seed and early stage venture in Europe, we need more business angels, more early stage VCs and investors willing to build, create, write a (his)story.

“Looking at a data set of 1,018 companies, Mr. Gera determined that not a single entrepreneur received venture capital funding by submitting a business plan “over the transom.” By contrast, about 5 percent of entrepreneurs who knew the venture capitalist or gained a personal introduction received funding.

Asked what his finding meant for today’s entrepreneurs, Mr. Gera says, “In this economy, the social network will be even more necessary.”

This is the reason why we came with Capital Booster’s idea and hope to fill that gap.