Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

To Whom this may concern,

I am in search of funding for a start-up business that a partner of mine and I have been working on for the last six months. We have a business plan and all of our expenses have been laid out clearly. To start I am going to tell you about what we do.

We are Mohs Histotechnicians, to those who are unfamiliar with what that is I will explain as clearly and simply as possible. For years now the process of curing skin cancer has been to contact your dermatologist and have them refer you to a surgeon who performs a biopsy to remove the infected skin and then patches you up. Mohs surgery is when the cancer infected skin is in an area that requires the surgeon to also worry about the cosmetic requirements of the patient. These areas include the face, arms, chest, hands..ect. In Mohs surgery the surgeon ( who has to be specially certified in Mohs) removes the cancer in small stages making sure that the least possible skin is removed from the area while cutting out the cancerous tissue. This process is done in various stages; that is where we come in. Our job is to take the cancerous tissue from the surgeon and using our Cryostat turn the tissue into a microscopic slide that the surgeon can read in between the stages to identify if he has cut out all the cancer tissue or not. In short we provide the surgeon with a map of where he has to keep cutting whether it be deeper, higher, lower, or to a respective side of the patients face.

Now that you have a general idea of what goes into being a MOHS Histotech, I will explain how my business partner and I are planning to turn this into a business.

Dermatologists that perform Mohs surgery in most cases do not, nor have the need to, hire a full time Mohs Tech. This is because the surgery is only offered once or at most twice a week and they would need to have their own OSHA certified lab. What they do is hire an independent contractor to come in and process the tissue slides for a day. The independent contractor will bring all the materials and machines needed to complete the job. At the end of the workday they clean up and call it a day. The Dermatologist office pays these contractors by the case.

Needless to say as with everything else in the cosmetic industry, this service is highly profitable. The materials needed are a minimum cost at most, the majority of the cost is the very skilled labor that the technician brings. My partner and I are very good at what we do. Currently we work for a well known and very high case load MOHS surgeon that requires us to be the best. We are going to open our own travel laboratory to service other MOHS surgeons in our general area. The demand is absolute.

WHAT WE NEED

In order to start our travel laboratory we are going to need start-up capital amounting to 30k. This will cover the cost of our 300lb Cryostat, a Cargo Van with a lift that will transport our machine, as well as the solutions and materials that will carry us through our day. We have had extensive counseling with the Small Business Administration and have all our stones in order. The problem we are facing is that we are both young and relatively credit less, thus eliminating our chance of obtaining a bank loan. I have ventured into obtaining a Micro Loan which has proven unsuccessful.

Any and all information or funding alleyways that anyone can offer would be a tremendous help to us. We are ready to get started and have offices ready to service, all we need is the start-up capital and we can begin the venture.

THANK YOU ALL

Hi MohsMan,

Your Histotech business idea sounds very good and health-care is a field in which venture capitalists are very interested to invest. As you have already written your business plan and you are not alone in this search for capital you also have a business partner, you should try to think about a search strategy. There are chances to get funded if the right company sees your forum post. To increase your chances of getting capital you should also search for potential investors. You need to contact the most suitable ones, those having experience with other companies in healthcare and also being geographically positioned in an area very close to yours (they'll also be able to provide advice, that is why it's important for them to be able to come to your offices as often as necessary).

Searching for potential investors means asking acquaintances to refer you to angel investors or to venture capitalists, if you happen to have common acquaintances. Or, you could access a database of business investors and select the most suitable ones from there, they have all the contact details included. You will send them an executive summary of the business plan and if they are interested, the rest depends on you. I used this database a few years ago, to start-up a tech business and it took me a few months to finally be accepted by the right investors, but it was worth it. I decided to suggest the website to all the business people I know, since it was a useful tool and it could be an easier alternative to get the necessary capital.