Ross McDonald | Banker | Strategist | CFO

SFU Guest Speaker - Early-stage finance

Clean West is always delighted to interact with entrepreneurs. In November 2009, Ross McDonald of Clean West, was a guest speaker to an entrepreneurship class at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

A PDF file of the related slides can be downloaded.

WSJ: Business plans, pitfalls & fixes

John Mullins, Chair of Entrepreneurship at London Business School and my old professor, just published an article in the Wall Street Journal. The article concerns business plans, common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

According to John then the five top business plan pitfalls are:
■ Here I am, Nevermind the problem - excessive technology focus, no commercial application
■ A Coke for every kid in China - assume small market share of 'huge' market
■ Just look at our [paper] profits - impressive analytics, tripping on simple business
■ Our team walks on water - dazzling credentials over relevant experience
■ Everything is beautiful - dismissive or ignorant of risks, challenges

Full article text.

Business plan shocker

Recently I read the worst ever business plan. It arrived in the mail. Below, in italics, are direct quotations (with spelling corrections) followed by some observations ...

Business plan pitfalls

Being a corporate financier then I read quite a few business plans. Their quality varies substantially. Well prepared, professional business plans stand out from the crowd. They explain the value proposition clearly, evidence assumptions, answer key questions and provide comfort on execution. A few reasons for poor plans are jotted below, along with some guidance and actionable steps ...

Executive MBA: Financing an Early-Stage Venture

Last week, I was guest speaker to an Executive MBA 'Managing New Ventures' class at a Canadian business school. An enjoyable, interactive class session hosted by sales/marketing superstar - and ultramarathon runner - Ean Jackson. The topic of discussion was Financing an Early-Stage Business. Given that the students were presenting their new business ideas the following day to a VC-panel then the topic of investor pitches, investor priorities and indeed investor due diligence were all hot discussion topics ...

Gapminder graphs

Macroeconomics is rarely the sort of stuff to get entrepreneurs excited. But relevant data, meaningfully presented can yield precious creative insight and can provide validation of evolving trends in externalities. A free, online tool that is quietly aiding such macroeconomic analytics is Gapminder.org. Gapminder provides a simple, graphical interface to view time-series macroeconomic data, that it has garnered from multiple public databases ...

TED.com - ideas worth spreading

TED.com is a remarkable website. It's compelling, insightful and its content is virtually guaranteed to make someone stop and think. TED.com provides free, streaming, video presentations by a wide variety of business, social and political leaders on important topics ... hence the strapline 'ideas worth spreading'. Think of it as recorded keynote speakers. To encourage video viewing by the public then TED.com presents the talks in easy categories ...

Presentations

Successful MS Powerpoint presentations are both compelling and productive. They meaningfully progress a specific objective ... communicate topic, stimulate discussion, educate audience or drive a specific decision. But far too many presentations are dull, confusing and meander to no specific conclusion. Here's six tips to help shed some light ...

Mindmapping

Mindmapping is a powerful graphic technique that aids brainstorming, structuring of information in a memorable way. Uses range from business meetings, presentation aids, university lectures to child classrooms. Created in 1974 by Tony Buzan, a British learning and memory expert, mindmaps can be created using paper and pens (ideally coloured) or via computer software - such as Nova-mind.com (PC and Apple Mac) or Mind Manager. A more basic open-source, and free, version is FreeMind...

SaaS for SMEs

A US firm, www.planhq.com, recently launched online collaboration business planning software. Once upon a time, well likely even still, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel would have been considered entirely sufficient, if not preferable, for the important task of business planning. Clearly the Software as a Service (SaaS) juggernaught continues to gather momentum, much to the concern of traditional licence-driven software providers.

The range of Software as a Solution tools available to small businesses is ever broadening ...