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The papers are filled with scary statistics. Here are a few more for entrepreneurs on the hunt for capital from angel investors--those loosely banded groups of deep-pocketed individuals looking for the handsome returns that only risky, early stage investing can (sometimes) bring. According to the latest data from AngelSoft, which pairs entrepreneurs with angel groups in a particular city or ZIP code, only about one out of 100 companies that make a formal request for angel funding manage to secure the capital. Among the axed, three-quarters never make it past the initial screening process; of those that do, more than half are eliminated during live presentations and discussions, and another 10% during the following due-diligence process. It's a brutal gauntlet. Article Controls
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share Yahoo! BuzzWhile there are no guaranteed strategies for success, you can boost your chances of survival. Over the past decade, I have had the opportunity to see how the process works, several times from the start-up side, and more recently from the angel perspective (as a member of the selection committee for the Arizona Angels Investment Network, in Phoenix). In Depth: The Lowdown On Seven Social Lending Sites How To: Five Techniques For Putting A Price On A Start-Up Here is my list of the top 10 action items for those looking to land angel funding. If some of these are familiar, ask yourself: Are you actually doing something about them? Rate This StoryYour Rating  Overall Rating
1. Incorporate your business now. If you expect to seek external funding, first incorporate as an S-Corp, C-Corp, or a limited liability company, rather than the more expeditious sole proprietorship or partnership. Corporate entities allow for easy carving up of equity stakes, one reason why unincorporated entities often can't find funding. 2. Line up an experienced team. There's an adage: "Investors fund people, not ideas." Not only is this dead on, poorly assembled teams are probably the biggest stumbling block in the initial angel-screening process. If the founders are not experienced, find a couple of advisers who are experts in your industry to fill the gap. 3. Launch a Web site. I don't care what kind of company you are, in today's world, you need a cleanly designed, easy-to-use Web site. If not, you won't be perceived as a real company. Investors routinely troll sites of companies looking for capital to get a feel for their tone and scope, as well as the nature and maturity of their products and services. Also, protect that virtual real estate by reserving the company name on social-networking sites. In Depth Meet America's 20 Most Promising Companies In Depth: 10 Elements Of A Sound Business Plan 4. If you have real intellectual property, defend it. File patents and trademarks. They may or may not be true barriers to entry (first-mover advantage can be more powerful than any patent), but they are often perceived as such. Start the process early, as it takes a while to pound through. (Note: Patents can run the gamut. For more on this, check out "Ten Of The Zaniest Patents.") 5. Build a prototype product. Many entrepreneurs need capital to build a prototype product, yet most angels expect to see a prototype before they invest. Do what you can to demonstrate progress early. 6. Hit the high notes. At the initial screening, investors expect a one- or two-page summary of the business, including an explanation of how it makes money and how specifically you would invest an angel's capital to boost your prospects--all backed up by a streamlined 10-slide PowerPoint investor presentation. Remember to aim the content at investors, not customers. (Translation: Don't spend too much time gushing over every last product detail.) 7. Prepare an investment-grade business plan. All entrepreneurs need a well-crafted business plan for their own use, whether they intend to seek investor funding or not. As a founder, you may think that everyone understands your vision based on your words and passion, but it doesn't work that way. A good business plan should answer every question an investor or associate might ask. For a breakdown, check out "10 Elements Of A Sound Business Plan." 8. Finalize your financial model. Like the business plan, a financial model is required as much for your own use as to impress angel investors. In most cases, an interactive Microsoft Excel spreadsheet is adequate, with projections (and well-defined and denoted assumptions that drive them) for revenue, expenses and cash flow over the next five years. Best-, expected and worst-case scenarios add credibility. 9. Close at least one customer. This must be someone who is willing to pay real money for your product or service. Free trials don't count. All the conviction and market research in the world are no substitute for real customers paying real money. 10. Network--ahead of time. This last item should be your first: Build relationships with investors and friends of investors before you need their money. Start by taking an active role in relevant technology groups, trade associations and university functions. I hope the takeaway is clear: Angels can be saviors, but not without plenty of careful preparation. Don't expect anyone to swoop down, gather you up and whisk you to financial freedom. For more on raising angel funding, read "Wooing And Choosing The Right Backer." Martin Zwilling is the founder and chief executive officer of Startup Professionals, a company that provides products and services to start-up founders and small business owners. He can be reached at marty@startupprofessionals.com. In Depth: The Lowdown On Seven Social Lending Sites How To: Five Techniques For Putting A Price On A Start-Up In Depth Meet America's 20 Most Promising Companies In Depth: 10 Elements Of A Sound Business Plan
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Links to this post Reforzar la seguridad al usar Gmail  Reforzar la seguridad al usar Gmail Blog sobre Internet, webs que marcan tendencias, servicios virtuales, blogosfera, web 2.0, software social, tecnología y otras curiosidades. Posted by at 4:00 PM 5 ways to secure your Gmail account Secure and reliable system is not enough to be secure. You are playing a major role in your own security. Specially in cyber space as you can be a targeted in may ways. Gmail team has come up with 5 ways to secure your Gmail account. ... Posted by SjAy at 3:50 PM Googland: [G] Gmail account security tips Official Gmail Blog: Gmail account security tips. Posted by Sarah Price, Online Operations Strategist As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we recently posted about how to pick a smart password. Having a strong password ... Posted by X at 1:54 PM < Google Made /> :: Gmail is now more Secured : Tips from GMail As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we recently posted about how to pick a smart password. Having a strong password goes a long way in helping to protect your data, but there are a number of additional steps you can take ... Posted by Umarfaruk M at 1:43 PM < Google Made /> :: Gmail is now more Secured : Tips from GMail As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we recently posted about how to pick a smart password. Having a strong password goes a long way in helping to protect your data, but there are a number of additional steps you can take ... Posted by Umarfaruk M at 1:36 PM Create a Link
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 | | Masoud Modarres and his family in San Francisco after a charitable bike race. All share a dedication to public service. |
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- For millions of job seekers, unemployment is a painful position they must endure until another opportunity comes along. But for some, it's the impetus to do something great. When Masoud Modarres lost his job, he saw an opportunity to make big changes. Modarres, 51, was the president of a small publishing company in New York that went out of business last year. But instead of panicking and then hunting for a similar position, Modarres decided it was time to follow his dream of helping people. "Although I had been working in the publishing world for the last 25 years, I always wanted to work for a nonprofit organization, something with a cause," he said. "My wife thinks of it as my midlife crisis." This wasn't just a whim. Two years ago, Modarres enrolled in a masters program at Rutgers University and graduated with a degree in nonprofit organization management. He also spent time volunteering with various charities near his home in New Jersey. Once out of work, he spent over six hours a day online looking for jobs in the nonprofit field. But as the job market worsened, openings dried up. "The more I looked, the less I found," he said. Eventually, he turned up an unexpected lead. As a long-time volunteer, Modarres had a contact at the Child Foundation, which was looking for an executive manager at the headquarters in Portland. "I never thought I would leave NYC, but when [the president of the organization] contacted me, I told myself, why not change the city if I am changing the career?" Although his wife, Homa, had a good job as a teacher at Head Start in New Jersey, she was willing to support her husband in pursuing his dream. With both kids out of the house -- a daughter in graduate school and a son in college -- moving across the country seemed manageable. Now, Modarres lives and works in Portland and loves it. "The city is nice, people are nice, homes are cheap, no sales tax, and I am doing what I always wanted to do: helping people." As an executive manager, Modarres finds sponsors for needy children of Afghanistan, Iran and Indonesia. "Every day I feel that I am doing something for somebody and that gives me a really good feeling. Every day I go home happy and every morning I am eager to come to work." Adding to his job satisfaction is a 15-minute commute to work during rush hour -- a far cry from the hour-long bus ride into New York that Modarres used to endure on a daily basis. A job crisis turned opportunity Our career experts say that being out of work can be an opportunity to explore a new profession or trade. "Sometimes people, particularly if they've been in a job for a long period of time, don't know what life outside is like," said Dan King, principal of Career Planning and Management Inc. in Boston. Losing a job may even be a "blessing in disguise" he said. "It can give you the kick you need to go and explore something else." "Step back and say, what is it I really want to do with my life?" said King. For others who want to make a change, King recommends utilizing existing contacts to get job leads, rather than relying on online job postings or cold calls. "You don't often have the luxury of using traditional approaches, because other people will appear more qualified on paper," he explained. Those who are interested in pursuing public service should start by volunteering like Modarres did, added Gerry Crispin, co-owner of Careerxroads, a consulting firm based in New Jersey. "It is the absolute easiest industry to break in on because every one of those nonprofits needs volunteers." Since it can be difficult to volunteer without another source of income, this type of change may be well suited for boomers who have acquired some wealth or who have another spouse working and are willing to accept a lower salary, Crispin said. It's also advantageous for nonprofits that can benefit from a new pool of talent with a drive to make a difference and a career's worth of knowledge and wisdom. "We all should have midlife career crises like that," Crispin said.  First Published: October 26, 2009: 2:15 PM ET
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America's health care system is expensive, inefficient, and leaves many citizens without coverage. Here's what 6 entrepreneurial companies are doing about it. (Fortune Small Business) -- While running health services at the University of Baltimore in the early 1990s, Fran Lessans met a law student who was petrified about the prospect of attending her mother-in-law's funeral in Ghana. The young woman had visited the country once before but ended up getting sick and spending two weeks in the hospital. For the funeral trip, she'd done her homework and gotten the right shots, Lessans recalls. But no one had counseled her about water purification and what foods to avoid. In 1994, Lessans founded Passport Health to provide counseling and vaccines for travelers headed overseas. "I noticed that when people got good counseling they stayed healthy, so we spend about an hour with each of our travelers," says Lessans, 61. In 1997, she started franchising the company, which has since grown to more than 160 locations nationwide. Franchisees pay a onetime $35,000 franchise fee, as well as 7% of all revenues. Altogether they deliver 30,000 to 40,000 injections a month. The franchise network has landed contracts with such national corporations as Macy's (M, Fortune 500) and PNC Bank (PNC, Fortune 500), driving revenues from $5 million in 2003 to $37 million last year. About 60% of the company's sales come from providing vaccines to travelers, and the rest from flu vaccines delivered during the fall. "Doing both was an intentional way to balance revenue streams," says Lessans. "I didn't think travel would be enough to sustain the revenue model." That turned out to be a canny choice this year. An international travel slump provoked a 10% slump in Passport's travel vaccine sales, Lessans says. But franchisees have seen a 10% increase in flu shot bookings because the swine flu scare has reminded people to get their regular flu shots as well. She expects 2009 revenues to be about level with last year's. Before swine flu arrived, the influenza vaccine market "was already growing pretty consistently," says Bruce Carlson, publisher at Kalorama Information, a medical industry research firm. He attributes some of that growth to America's aging population. According to Kalorama, flu vaccine sales hit $3.2 billion in 2008, up 15.1% from 2007, and should rise 16.6% annually through 2013. To write a note to the editor about this article, click here.
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DETROIT (Reuters) – In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded. After five hours of calling out a drumbeat of "no bid" for properties listed in an auction book as thick as a city phone directory, the energy of the county auctioneer began to flag. "OK," he said. "We only have 300 more pages to go." There was tired laughter from investors ready to roll the dice on a city that has become a symbol of the collapse of the U.S. auto industry, pressures on the industrial middle-class and intractable problems for the urban poor. On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters. Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate. The tax foreclosure auction by Wayne County authorities also stood as one of the most ambitious one-stop attempts to sell off urban property since the real-estate market collapse. Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days. The county had no estimate of how much was raised by the auction, a second attempt to sell property that had failed to find buyers for the full amount of back taxes in September. The unsold parcels add to an expanding ghost town within the once-vibrant town known worldwide as the Motor City. Critics say the poor showing at the auction underscores the limits of using a market-based system to clean up property tax problems. They say the system has enriched a few but failed to deliver a way for Detroit to staunch its dwindling population and could worsen the vacancy crisis. One proposed alternative would have officials take control of the tax foreclosure process through a land bank program of the kind being used to revitalize the nearby city of Flint. The stakes in the debate are rising. The number of Detroit properties in tax foreclosure has more than tripled since 2007 and seems certain to rise further. The lots for sale last week represented arrears from only 2006, well before the worst of the downturn for U.S. automakers. "We have to keep in mind that GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy this year," said Terrance Keith, chief deputy treasurer of Wayne County. "Some people are going to be totally tapped out next year." Detroit, already stuck with a $300 million budget deficit, is responsible in the meantime for cutting the weeds and responding to fire calls for thousands more abandoned lots. 'WHY AM I COMPETING AGAINST A BANK?' Many potential homeowners that Detroit desperately needs said they felt penalized by the auction process. They mostly found themselves outbid by deeper-pocketed investors from California and New York who were in a race to claim the auction book's relatively few livable properties. Dozens of potential bidders, mostly local residents, were turned away on the first day of the auction by deputies after they failed to meet the morning deadline for registration. Ross Wallace, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, turned in his check for $500 and waited on the auction floor in full dress uniform for a chance to buy a Detroit house on the cheap. Wallace, 27, said he did not want to leave his fiancee and two children with a mortgage before shipping out to Iraq later this year. "I still have student loans and I'm trying to be responsible. I don't want to leave debt," he said. Wallace waited for the auction to roll around to Detroit's Boston-Edison district, a once stately area that was home to boxing legend Joe Louis and Motown founder Berry Gordy. But he was quickly outbid. An unidentified investor at the front of the room who had scooped up several dozen properties took the home Wallace wanted for about $15,000. "Why am I competing against a bank?" he said later. "It would be common sense to have a separate process for people who want to move back to the city or it's going to stay empty." Nearby, a Dutch-born local woman, Riet Schumack, 54, knitted patiently through the auction for a chance to bid on a lot in Brightmoor, one of the most blighted neighborhoods. Schumack, who runs a community garden near her home that employs 14 neighborhood children, said she had been battling through a maze of bureaucracy for years to try to buy an abandoned lot nearby to expand and plant fruit trees. She learned the lot had been taken back from its previous owner -- an absentee investor with more than 100 abandoned lots in Brightmoor -- only because of her constant calls to city and county officials, she said. When officials told her she would have to wait for a fourth day to bid on the property, Schumack broke down into tears. "Anybody with a job is not able to sit here for days. So you are left with the sharks," she said. Opinions were divided on whether the investors buying lots and homes by the dozen were a sign of better times ahead. "They weren't here two years ago. So why are they here now? Unless, as speculators, they believe this is the bottom," said Keith of the Wayne County treasurer's office. Bill Frank, a Detroit realtor trying to buy a small house for a just-married friend, found himself repeatedly outbid. "Speculators are often not good for a city and, from my experience, they are going to lose a fortune," he said. "But there are no easy answers. It's a declining city." (Editing by Peter Bohan and John O'Callaghan)
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