Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

What exactly is your business idea?  Surely you have something like an inkling of an elevator speech or something to share.

Treading the line between keeping your jewels hidden (aka "due diligence") and divulging enough so that others can truly help you is a fine art.   One way to move that line advantageously is with careful use of non-disclosure and non-compete agreements.  When you approach potential partners, investors, advisors, and even in some cases vendors and clients, you should have some NDA`s ready to sign.

Becoming an LLC mainly helps keep your business life and personal life from colliding (a sometimes violent affair.)

Trademarking offers some level of protection to your idea.   Depending on what it is that you don`t want to talk about here, but that needs protection, you might consider finding a patent attorney.  Business processes -- not just devices -- can be patented.

Good luck!



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Richard Johnson
New Ideas for a New World

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Our Goal Is Your Success!
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Credibility means being believable. As such, it all comes under the philosophy of reality and truth. Putting a label on something doesn`t make it believable. Instead, it`s the countless aspects of language, communication, the way a person looks during a face-to-face meeting, the product, the explanations, and reasoning, to name a few.

Investors are completely adjusted to making allowances for nerves, being new, and so forth. It`s a lot like an agent auditioning a new band. With enough experience, it doesn`t really matter if the band is nervous, young, unpracticed, and so forth. You can "hear" the underlying quality or unique differences of the music.

So too, listening to plenty of elevator pitches, an investor is going to get a pretty good feel for the *basic* idea of the business. If it`s a good idea, then you`ll get a lot of questions and help to flesh out the overall proposals. It`s the idea that counts, not the labels and letters after the company name.

Interestingly enough, you don`t "create credibility." In most cases, you meet a stranger and they assign you credibility by default, unless they`re a strong cynic, skeptic, or they`re paranoid. What actually happens is you "lose credibility," as you move into the initial communication with someone.

In the case of written materials and interviews, as with a business meeting, if the writing is bad, grammar fails, the words create ambiguities, that`s a major loss of credibility. Your overall appearance, your sense of confidence; those too affect the credibility. If numbers don`t connect or they contradict each other, or they`re just not there, that`s yet another loss of credibility.

Way to go Craig!  It`s certainly true in my experience that supreme confidence and crystal clear communication do more to keep my chances alive than a month of engineering.  Maybe that`s why its important to be passionate, because it shows through.

Have you checked the resources and services tabs here?  Perhaps there`s at least one company that would (for a small fee, naturally) look over your business plan, listen to you elevator speech, and provide useful feedback on what you need to do to convert your would-be investors from ogres into suitors. 

Business Growth Partners <http://www.bizgrowthmasters.com> comes immediately to mind, but they`re surely not the only ones, and I haven`t dealt with them myself, so there`s no specific recommendation.


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Richard Johnson
New Ideas for a New World