Business Plans
Every company should develop and use a succinct written business plan to guide its operations. The plan should describe:
- Brief company history including funding history
- Description of product or resources to be developed
- Specific market opportunity and target customers/ expansion potential of leasehold position
- Business model including distribution strategy/resource development strategy
- Benefits and competitive advantage of offering
- Competitive analysis
- Strategic marketing and selling /resource market logistics
- Experience of management team
- Funding requirements and valuation expectations
- Financial history and 3-year projections
To expedite the initial review process, CodeAmerica urges companies to provide an Executive Summary before sending a complete business plan. E-mail is preferred.
We try to review business plan summaries within a week of their receipt. The complete due diligence process involves several meetings with management, professional and customer (if applicable) references, financial and market analysis and term sheet discussions. As a small, non-bureaucratic fund, this process is streamlined and can take as little as a couple of weeks. More typically, the process of getting to know each other takes about two months.