James E. Timmons

The Entrepreneurial Engineer: Business Plans, Presentations, and Letters

The road to success is always under construction . Arnold Palmer, famous golfer Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Accordingly a genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework . Thomas Edison Entrepreneur’s Diary Launching your business beyond the friends and family stage will require you to rewrite your business plan, probably for the umpteenth time! I will guarantee you one thing: the circle of professional acquaintances that you had thought might invest in your company … well, most won’t … and the ones who do invest, will have a lot of advice for you, and probably more than you want! Advice can be a good thing, but when one investor says, “Go right,” and the next investor says, “Go left,” you’ll likely find yourself wondering which direction is correct. But, you must do something ! I have been pretty successful in raising capital for my start-ups. My business plans were a critical component of my successful fundraising. Were they perfect? No, but these plans raised money! In fact, one of the VC investors said several times that she thought my business plan for my aquaculture tilapia start-up was one of the best business plans she had ever read. Her VC firm required a supporting partner (a proponent was required before this venture firm would make an investment) to make a personal investment in any company that is submitted to the VC group for consideration. After the initial acceptance, the tilapia business several years later ended up under new management and despite the earlier VC’s praise for the original plan, one of the first objectives of the new management team was to write a “really good” business plan. My “best she’d read” plan got tossed out the window. What does this tell you?

The Entrepreneurial Engineer: Creating Your Team

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better be alone than in bad company . George Washington Entrepreneur’s Diary I was getting pretty close to starting my fish business; I was concluding some final negotiations to secure the capital I needed to implement the business plan strategy (I needed

Water filtration system and its use

500,000). As you get involved in this entrepreneurship arena, you’ll quickly discover that there is a lot of parallel processing going on. You will need to juggle several activities concurrently in order to pull this business launch off successfully. My situation was that I knew I was going to need a general manager (GM) about the same day I broke ground on the fish production building. So, about three months before I thought I needed my GM, I initiated a concerted effort to find a competent GM, who would be my first paid employee. I spread the word through my contact list and a national online site for aquaculture. I also received a call from Dr. Tom Fields, a colleague at a private fish farm near Saratoga Springs, New York, with whom we (Cornell University) had done business with over the years.