Venture foundation workflow

Sustain Fund's primary project currently involves building a workflow tool (i.e. cross-platform mobile+web app with data hosted in the cloud) for managing the workflow of hundreds of Sustain Fund's own projects as well as helping others to manage their projects' workflows. We would be happy to use someone else's tool if we could find something that works ... basically we are looking for something that would replace our current approach (i.e. customized CRM tool for relationship/campaign mgmt + MSExcel + MSProject).

The reason we are doing this is that it is fundamental to what we do -- Sustain Fund targeted at sustaining projects that might be incubating in the brain of an experienced engineer with a desire to make a difference ... our model is the intensely-practical Kickstart.org approach to developing genuinely needed technology that can lay a foundation for a range of diverse affiliated products and provide a fertile environment for seeds of entrepreneurial growth that enable people to develop the skills and aptitudes necessary to develop their own better solutions. You could say that Sustain Fund aims to be a soil building agent for entrepreneurs who will farm the fields of opportunity.

Laying the foundation for a working project is about the workflow that involves taking your idea from concept to project [with an alpha-level demo/test] to venture [with a beta-level products/services to share] to an money-making enterprise with a tested service or product, a happy and growing base of customers and quite possibly employees and investors.

Of course, our reason for posting this entry is expose our ignorance ... we are looking for a lot better ideas, a lot better workflow ... mostly, that means that are very interested in what you see as shortcomings of or problems with this workflow. It also our way of displaying our competitive nature -- our way of calling out people who think that they are smarter than us ... if so, how? If you are scared of helping us, are you really all that smart? What are you worried about?

1) Sketch your idea, doodle, draw...ultimately we put things in CAD systems, but we find that it usually works best to draw an idea on a piece of paper or whiteboard...also, it is necessary to record thoughts about your idea on you mobile phone's voice recorder...let your idea sit for a few days, come back to it, sketch, doodle, draw, write some more...let your idea sit for a month or two...keep coming back to it, visualize it, speak about it, sketch it in more detail.

2) Develop 10-slide presentation for your idea; it will become the biz plan

• Define the problem -- why is this a problem; what are you trying to correct, how does it cause pain or discomfort to people, how big of a problem is it, why does it matter to people, what do people do now, what will happen if no one does anything,
• Your solution to the problem -- discuss different facets of your solution: what kind of a thing or tool is it, how does someone use it, how do they try it, how do they pay for it, what materials are necessary to make it, can you simulate it its performance, can it be automated or scaled or expanded, what is the method of implementation, what are the pre-requisites for its use what sort of training is necessary, what are its impacts on the environment and society
• Business model -- describe how you monetize this thing or earn $, why is it a fantastic value proposition for your customers [what costs do they avoid by going with your solution vs. a competing solution], what is your strategy for referrals or getting more customers, what about future renewals, how will you achieve organic growth, how will you expand the amount of business from each customer,
• Secret sauce, special magic, business legs-- what is disruptive about this, how will you maintain your competitive advantage, what are the next big things in your idea pipeline, how diversified is your idea pipeline, how do you do something better that someone else with more capital/experience is already trying to do, what keeps somebody else from adopting the key part of your idea and making their own?
• Marketing, sales, PR, social networking plan -- is this a web-centric, mobile-centric business -- if not, why not, can it be, how will you reach people without spending an enormous amount for an office, holding events or some sort of presence in their lives? How are you going to reach people face-to-face, what are you going to use for salesforce automation or a customer relationship management system, how do you reach your current base of customers, what sort of PR events or projects will you be using to build good will and publicize your company,
• Competition, industry, SWOT -- this is a detailed discussion of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; what are the keys to success fo the business, what will you do to track these keys, what metrics will you monitor
• Team, partners, vendors -- what skills does your team have, what about your partners and suppliers, who holes are you trying to fill, how are you recruiting people, how are you expanding your network of partners
• Key milestones, funding needs, projections -- the more that you look at financial projections, the more you will realize that this is, first of all, about what can you achieve WITHOUT spending money and then how $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 expands the set of opportunities.
• Project status, timelines -- this is about dynamic project planning, how will success scale your project, are you ready to take advantage of opportunities.
• Call to action -- after you have demonstrated clearly, succinctly that you have done the homework and are READY to exploit this opportunity, ask people for EXACTLY what you need from them ... if you need $32,500, ask for "$32,500 for X" -- do not ask for "probably gonna need at least $30,000" -- do not tell them we "need about $35,000."

3) Implement your plan, spend as little as possible...register several good domain names associated with the idea to stake your claim on the brand, $500 spent on different domain names will get one that resonates; avoid long names, very short URLs can be used/sold for other projects.

4) Check how it's working, Use web analytics [if you're building a web-centric business] or similar tools Get feedback on your implementation from as many people as you can, especially from likely customers

5) Rebuild your plan, SCRUM style every 4 weeks ... each time revisit, revise, improve all ten points of step #2 ... reload and put the revisions in place for step #3 ... re-do step #4 but go it one better: not only check how the plan's working, also check how your good your checks/metrics are, revise your checks/metrics for next time ... repeat until it's not necessary.