Nic Brisbourne and Tim Berry on what a Business Plan should include

In the context of our Business Plan Development course we have to research about what experts in the field of investment consider key that an entrepreneur should show in it’s BP. The reason? Well to prepare us or at least have the most accurate idea of how it works for when the time comes that we will need to present our own BP to a group of investors. I found two interesting articles/blogs of two experts that I considered useful and practical especially because it’s information coming from people that know what they do and have years of experience in the investment field.

Nic Brisbourne is a British expert venture capitalist since 2000 and is currently partnered with DFJ Spirit. Among his career he counts with being an expert focusing in software and media working from Europe to Silicon Valley and having been part of Reuters Venture Capital (www.telegraph.co.uk). Brisbourne not also enjoys being a venture capitalist but also shares his thoughts on the European market and venture capitalism through his blog ‘theequitykicker’ where one of his posts from September last year gives an interesting point of view. Although this article was also posted by another student in a previous course I also wanted to reference it because I kind of fell in love with Nic’s work and more specifically his blog and all he writes about; to me it just seems incredibly interesting and accurate. 
In ‘Understanding how a business plan is read’ Nic explores the difference between the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur in means of the writer and the reader. A thought he came up with after attending the BVCA conference. In Nic’s perspective, the reader, which in this case relates to the VC, usually has limited time to go thoroughly through a proposal due to the amount of business plans received every day, said in his words: “when I’m looking at a new business plan I’m rushed and my aim is to quickly work out whether it makes sense to meet the company behind the plan or whether we should politely let them know we are not interested”. Whereas in the case of the entrepreneur the scenario varies as they are trying to make THE impression so they can at least achieve a first meeting with a VC. So from the entrepreneur’s side a lot of time and effort are put into work when from the other side might not be ‘appreciated’ entirely since the VC’s read it quickly. So from this premise, Nic being a VC and understanding the other side of the coin, recommends the sections of a business plan that should be more explicit in order to drop in the list of future meetings:

•       Summary of product

•       Evidence of momentum – e.g. user traction or customers

•       Summary financials

•       Evidence of ambition

• Maybe a description of the market dynamics.

Another article I read that can complement the previous one is Tim Berry’s ‘What investors look for in a plan”. Tim berry is an entrepreneur, author and expert in business plan coaching. He is the president and founder of Palo Alto Software, bplans.com, and Borland International, and author of Business Plan Pro. He is also a speaker and a teacher. Berry shares that a venture capitalist usually is extra demanding because they use other people’s money to invest what makes them also be extra careful and leaving low limits of risk. Tim explains that for that reason when a VC searches or evaluates a business plan what they look for is:

•       A management team with a proven track record

•       A defensible product with a competitive advantage.

•       Reasonable valuation.

•       A clear statement of the investment offering

Another thing Berry considers important for a VC is “a clearly stated exit strategy”. Because according to his beliefs investors want to have evidence that the entrepreneur at least thought of how the investors will get their money back.

Orlando Calling, the next big festival

Appropriate to the topic of this blog is the upcoming event - Orlando Calling the 12^th and 13^th of November in the Citrus Bowl of Orlando. For the first time in this city an event of this magnitude is going to take place. Inspired on the Glastonbury Festivals, the concept is brought to our city in a two-day event consisting of 4 stages and more than 4000 bands to perform. Sounds exiting, right? Well it is! The fact that this kind of event will take place here could represent a lot to the city, the community and the music industry as well. Sometimes it seems that Orlando was only being perceived as a vacation destiny and the emphasis of promoting this city had been reduced just to that. While, as a matter of fact, being a touristic destination should be taken in advantage for so much more. Under this point of view I think it’s great for the community, for the economy and the tourism industry especially if it’s adopted as a yearly event. Then, of course for the music industry it also represents a huge step because it means there are more open doors where musicians and artists can knock on, more specifically for the local bands it’s a great opportunity as well. I just think that under any point of view this project can benefit a lot of people and industries.

Orlando Calling is being put up together by an exquisite team presided by Paul Lovett from Incognitus. Incognitus is a company that strives in consultancy of strategy, solution and sustainability for organizations around the world planning high scale events in global venues or retail management arenas. From project management, manpower logistics, efficiency engineering, to operational readiness, Paul together with his partners gather lots of years in experience in this field. A great asset that let’s us predict that this event will run flawless.

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Paramount Pictures distribution in Venezuela

At the beginning of July the movie Transformers 3: Dark side of the moon was released worldwide of course including in Latin America. And the country of Venezuela was no exception. The movie had been featured in the local charts for two weeks previous to the release date until two days before that it was taken out of the charts. At the moment the theater companies announced through their twitter accounts that the movie was no longer going to be shown nor released and the reasons were not disclosed. What generated a wave of anger within the Venezuelan population as the movie was highly expected. So the audience and the media started speculating about the real reason why the movie was not going to be shown.
The first reason they said why the movie was banned was because apparently there was a scene in the movie where the country was mentioned, which for those of us who have seen the movie know it’s not true, and the second reason was because the Venezuelan government was not giving enough money to the theater companies for them to purchase the movies from the distributors. One week after all this happened Paramount Pictures announced and confirmed the non-release of the movie in Venezuela and said the reasons would be communicated later on. 
Currently we are in the month of August and this first week Paramount Pictures announced that not only Transformers 3 was not going to be released in the mentioned country but also that non of their movies would be shown including next worldwide scheduled releases like: Captain America, Mission Impossible 4, Puss in Boots, Hugo, Super 8 and The Adventures of Tin Tin.  The note by Reuters (2011) says as follows: "Paramount reports that, until further notice, it is postponing the dates of its screenings in Venezuela"...

"We offer our most sincere apologies for the annoyance or inconvenience this may cause. Paramount appreciates your interest in the titles, which is why we will disclose more information when we have it”.

For more information you can click the link
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/07/23/idINIndia-58409420110723