Posts Tagged ‘small business’
How to Find More Customers
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012Three Things You Must Do to Attract People to Your Business
One of the greatest challenges for a young business is getting customer traction. This rarely happens overnight; however, it won’t cost a fortune or take forever when you apply these three practices:
1. Optimize the message. Make sure the message is clear. The content of the press release, the tweet, the Facebook post must be concise and to the point. We live in an era of multi-media, so the message can also have embedded video and photos. The old way of doing press releases is dead. Press releases are also searchable by keyword phrases. Make sure your press and social media is written so reporters and media professionals can find you.
2. Open a dialogue. Make sure you can listen to your customers as well as you can talk to them. Gone are the days when you use your mouth, but not your ears. When you write a press release, tweet or post a blog or Facebook entry, you need to give your audience the opportunity to reply AND you must have a way to collect those replies. Using your mouth and ears must be followed by using your brain to evolve your message and your business.
3. Be consistent. Be constant. Be patient. One tweet or press release won’t do anything. One thousand tweets or ten press releases in one day won’t either. A steady flow of information reinforces your message and steadily reminds your customers about your business. Trust isn’t built on a one night stand. Trust is built over time, so understand that you must commit time and discipline to your PR and social media activity.
We constantly hear from fellow entrepreneurs who want a winning PR and social media strategy, but they don’t believe they have the time or the money. Well, it doesn’t have to cost thousands of dollars each month or take half of each day to get results.
We found a solution.
We found a solution we like so well that we partnered with them to bring it to you. A company called Vocus, based in Maryland, has created a suite of PR and marketing tools just for startups and small businesses.
From a single dashboard, we can
- Create press releases and deliver them to thousands of reporters and journalists,
- Track activity in our Twitter and Facebook accounts, and receive suggestions for engaging our audience, and
- Receive inquiries from journalists and bloggers who are looking to write stories that could feature us.
Using Vocus, our followers and interaction have increased on Twitter and Facebook and we’re spending much less time while getting better results. Vocus is easy enough to use that you can be completely new to PR or social media and become proficient within a day. Vocus also has great white papers, guides and webinars to educate you on the latest trends and strategies in public relations and social media.
Check it out. They have given us a deal to share with the ActSeed community, and you can see it firsthand in a really compelling personalized demo by clicking here.
Business Formation: A Little Planning Saves You Money
Thursday, April 19th, 2012Starting a new business venture is an exciting time full of hope and dreams. Unfortunately, the formation of a new business entity is also filled with complicated, bureaucratic formalities that can confuse and frustrate even the most experienced entrepreneur and add unneeded additional startup expenses.
When to Incorporate? One major expense that often arises when starting a new business are the legal fees associated with incorporating. One primary question that many entrepreneurs do not ask themselves or their partners prior to forming a corporation is, “Do we really need to incorporate?” Without any doubt, forming a corporation has many advantages, but is it a vital expense that is necessary when starting a new business?
The beginning of a new business venture is an experience filled with thoughts and emotions that it will grow into the next Apple or McDonald’s, but until that happens, do you have the money to spend on incorporating? More importantly, will your organization financially benefit enough to offset the formation expenses? Apple was in business for almost a year and McDonald’s was in business for over fifteen before they were formally incorporated.
Where to Incorporate? In addition to the normal expense for forming an entity, incorporating in the wrong state can also have a significant impact on your business. Different states have different tax benefits for incorporating in that state. Just because your business is physically in Minnesota does not mean you can’t incorporate in Delaware of Nevada where there are benefits may be more advantageous.
When to File for Incorporation? Another commonly overlooked detail is when to form an entity. Incorporating just before or on December 31 can be costly. For example, some states, California being one of them, requires all entities to pay an $800.00 yearly fee. I have seen clients come in December 30 wanting to setup an LLC before the December 31 and then after it was formed, they could not understand why they had to pay the state $800.00 when they were only in existence for 2 days. Furthermore, the company will have to go to the expense of filing tax returns for an entire year even though they were only in existence for two days. Remember, closing an entity is more complicated than opening one so it’s important to get it right the first time.
Compliance. Compliance of Federal, State, and local laws can also financially burden a business. If not found and resolved quickly, business and corporate compliance issues can be very costly to any organization regardless of size. Professionals, such as lawyers and accountants, who usually bill their time by the hour, derive a significant portion of their income from answering questions and fixing mistakes or “messes” made by their clients. Many of these mistakes can cost a client hundreds if not thousands of dollars. What makes matters worse is that so many of these costly errors could have been avoided with some forethought.
For example, many of us drive our cars for business purposes and deduct the gasoline, maintenance, etc. for the car. However, if the vehicle is not properly titled in the name of the business, the tax deductions could be disallowed. Your CPA or tax attorney will spend a time reviewing the latest case law or IRS regulations looking for a strategy to get the deduction. All the time expended by your attorney or CPA is usually billed by the hour and could have been avoided had the vehicle been properly place in the name of the business from the outset. Most attorneys and CPAs will tell their clients that it costs a lot less to prevent problems than it does to fix them.
Other legal and tax expenses that can be avoided are:
Annual Minutes: Not preparing these can be a real issue as annual minutes are reviewed by other parties for business loans and other activities. No minutes? No loan.
Loan Documents: One benefit to owning a corporation is the concept of loaning money to a shareholder as a tax strategy. This is a perfectly legitimate corporate benefit, but if the corporate documents to do not accurately reflect the loan, the IRS could disallow the loan and convert that money into taxable income.
Timely Filing of All Documents: Failure to file everything from taxes to various Federal and State government reports can be very costly and you may also incur penalties for late filing. Again, this is east to avoid.
Summary
The formation of an entity is a process that can be confusing, arduous, and costly if not handled properly. Don’t rush into it lightly or recklessly. Using the services of a company like Legalzoom or other companies may only impede your decision and cost you more in the long run. Do your own due diligence and seek the guidance of a licensed attorney and CPA before you form any entity. The money you invest in their time should save you needless headaches and let you focus on the future and not wasting time cleaning up the past.
[NOTE: Thanks to Michael S. Duell for this guest author contribution. Mr. Duell is the Director of Business Operations at Ruyle & Ruyle, a firm that includes small business corporate law as one of its specialities. If you are looking for a good boutique law firm that caters to small businesses and startups, consider Ruyle & Ruyle.]
Marketing That Works
Monday, November 28th, 2011
This is one of our favorite marketing reference books for entrepreneurs and startups.
Make sure this book is in your own entrepreneurial library.
This book explains how the good steak can sizzle without leaving you with just an aroma. “Marketing that Works” was written by some of the best minds in startup marketing who have held prominent positions in blockbuster startups, idealab!, Wharton and venture capital: Howard Morgan of First Round Capital, Leonard Lodish of Wharton and Shellye Archambeau, former president of Blockbuster’s e-commerce division.
This book includes practical approaches (not just theoretical!) to developing business ideas, pricing, market validation, distribution and channel strategies, product launches and more.
To buy a paper copy or download a Kindle version from our bookstore partner, Amazon.com, click here.
TEC – How One ActSeed Entrepreneur Group Member is Sparking the Economy
Friday, November 11th, 2011
Sometimes, an ActSeed Entrepreneur Group member not only has a promising business, but is also an ally in ActSeed’s mission to assist people in building exceptional companies of all types. The TEC Center is one such partner that has the potential to make a positive impact on our economy.
There are a lot of folks hurting for work and wanting an opportunity to leap out-and-up from their current economic situation. As many big companies sit on the sideline for hiring, a growing number of disenfranchised people aspire to take control of their future and create their own job by starting a business or joining a startup. The trouble is: where do they turn? Where can they acquire the knowledge to be a business owner, a business partner, an entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship is not a reserved for a “ruling class” or exclusive to the highly-educated. At its core, entrepreneurship is about building something of value that others want to purchase and accepting the risks inherent in the process of moving from “idea to implementation”. This includes butchers and bakers, not just iPhone app makers. Just as ActSeed is dedicated to assisting regular people build exceptional businesses, TEC is committed to training regular people to become business partners.
We interviewed Jack Finkelstein, the co-founder and President of TEC – which is as much a movement for positive change as it is a promising young business. We have provided Jack’s contact information at the end of the interview so you can reach him directly and explore how to get involved.
Q. Describe your “Eureka Moment”. What was the market opportunity that drove your decision to form a company around this product/service?
A. The Eureka Moment came when we realized that every one of our graduates will be guaranteed a job. This is a powerful statement to make in the middle of a recession. We also realized that not only are there millions who need our service, but every year an additional 2 million young adults enter our target market zone.
Q. How did you fund the company to its current state?
My partner and I have self-funded the project till now. We have also formed a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation, held seminars with Operation Hope in Harlem to test market our program, acquired an office at 590 Madison Avenue in New York City, and started some of the businesses that our graduates will participate in.
Q. ActSeed champions the need for solid planning and preparation from the very beginning. How important is planning and prep to your company’s success? Can you share an example or two?
A. Planning and preparation is important to the success of any new corporation. The seminars we held at Operation Hope and some of the high schools resulted in the following: Young adults in the inner cities with a high school degree or GED degree desperately want and need the TEC Center Program. Not only will they be guaranteed jobs but they will also become partners in the business that they will work in. Our target market currently has an unemployment rate of close to 20%. The TEC Center Program is a valuable program that can provide them with the type of success they may otherwise only dream about.
Q. How long did it take to get your idea into the market from initial concept to first customer?
A. This has been a 3 year labor of love that not only is about a great business venture – but also a “movement.” From understanding the inner city individual to determining which businesses can be formed and remain successful in the inner city has taken up the majority of our time. The last 6 months have been spent in looking for the right nationally accredited school with the proper accreditation, and Title IV abilities that we require for our program.
Q. What influence have the internet and new media had on the way you are marketing, selling and supporting your products/services?
A. An advantage we have is that we know how to reach our target market. Every high school graduating class, every GED class, and even the colleges represent potential students for our program. It is not a surprise that these individuals all have email addresses and a cell phone. We also utilize the internet as a research tool to teach entrepreneurialism to our students.
Q. Describe the challenges you faced as you built your customer base, including defining the customer target, establishing the right price and pricing strategy and of course, closing the first few deals. Any wisdom to share with other entrepreneurs on this subject?
A. Defining and reaching our customer base is perhaps our easiest task. We decided primarily on young adults in the inner cities because they can utilize our services more than college grads. The cost of tuition is covered through Title IV Federal Student Loan Program. Students pay back the loan after they graduate and begin working. Since all students will be working for one of our company-sponsored startups, we do not anticipate any issues in paying back the loan.
Q. What techniques have you used to establish credibility in the eyes of customers, investors, partners, personnel and the general public?
A. The TEC Center Program speaks for itself. Guaranteed government funding for every one of our students (each student gets pre-qualified for the funding). Guaranteed jobs for all graduates. The government spends approximately $100 Billion dollars every year on education and we anticipate that this will continue for a long time. This is virtually a no-risk, low cost business to enter. A classroom of 32 students can be turned around 3 times a day (each class is 3 ½ hours long). This represents enough revenue to support full operations and the company-initiated small businesses. Direct overhead is approximately 20%. Investors salivate over these statistics.
Q. Have government, University, or other community / economic development programs been useful? If so, how?
A. We believe that educators are good at educating but do not make the best entrepreneurs. Most have never owned or operated a successful business. While high schools mostly concentrate on math and science to prepare students for college, we concentrate on entrepreneurship and prepare our students to become partners in a business – a business that they will enter as a partner, without being required to apply any of their own savings. Most inner city economic development offices attempt to convince large businesses to move into their district in order to create jobs (mostly low level jobs). The TEC Center Program provides the tools, entrepreneurial education, training and a myriad of jobs and businesses that students can choose from.
Q. What is the most important thing people never tell you about joining or founding an early-stage company?
A. Most people do not know enough to give sound advice about founding an early-stage company. Entrepreneurs and optimists tell you to “go for it.” Non-entrepreneurs and pessimists tell you that “most new businesses fail.” The real key to success is to keep your expenses down, understand your target market and product (or service) better than anyone else, don’t hesitate to continually challenge all of your assumptions, and have plenty of contingency plans if things do not go as expected.
Q. Is there anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t ask you in the questions above?
A. In addition to an expected healthy financial return to our investors TEC is a shining example of a social value enterprise: a profitable venture that address a major public need and gives back to the community. The success of the TEC Center Program will also help reduce the dramatic high school drop-out rate, especially in the inner cities. Nationally, the high school drop-out rate is 25% to 50%, over 50% in the inner cities. In addition, 50% of college students drop out of college – 30% the first year alone. This dropout rate is called “The Silent Epidemic” because few people are talking about it. These individuals can now learn how to become entrepreneurs and partners in a business. TEC will be instrumental in training the unemployed, single parent families, returning G.I. veterans, and individuals who have been released from a correctional institution as long as they have a high school or GED degree. Something has to be done now. The TEC Center Program takes a major step forward in solving this very serious situation. Having just 1,000 students in each state represents a major contribution to job creation and the economic growth in each stage. We are not in a high-tech business; we are in a high-value business.
Our thoughts about ActSeed: “ActSeed is very professional and I strongly believe that its CEO, Bill Attinger, truly cares about our program. ActSeed has been involved in every aspect of the processes that are required to present the TEC Center Program as good as possible. You can’t go wrong by giving ActSeed the opportunity of matching your program to possible investors.”
For more information about The TEC Center, please contact Jack Finkelstein, founder and President, at jack@theteccenter.com or visit their web site at http://www.tecmembers.com.
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Your Ideal Source of Cash…
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011…is from customers!
A great way to grow your business: find new customers using daily deals from GroupPrice. ActSeed likes Group Price because they enable you to increase your sales with no upfront marketing expenses while cutting your costs with daily deals from other small businesses.
Problem
One of the growth problems for startups is getting more cash coming in than is going out. Cash is the fuel that powers a business. Not receivables or IOUs, but cash in the bank. You must positively impact your cash two ways:
- Increase revenues by attracting new paying customers
- Reduce expenses by finding great deals for the business services you need
Solution
ActSeed has partnered with GroupPrice to help you tap this innovative marketplace to boost your business in two important ways:
- Spark an increase in sales by tapping new customers without any upfront marketing or advertising expense.
- Find daily deals on products and services aimed at your start up or small businesses with discounts up to 80%.
How to Maximize the Benefits from the ActSeed-GroupPrice Partnership
Two steps. Both are free.
1. Register with GroupPrice so you can buy and sell on the GroupPrice marketplace.
2. Register with ActSeed where you can access exclusive promotions and discounts from our leading partners like GroupPrice.
Like Fox Business TV, we think Group Price is like Groupon® – but dedicated to entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses.
Summary
ActSeed and GroupPrice are aligned in a commitment to helping you find sources of capital and streams of revenue. Cash is king. Heck, cash is also queen, prince and the whole royal court.
Forrester Research has identified that “daily deals for business is a persistent and growing trend.” Startups and small businesses – the backbone of the US economy – have been badly weakened by the recession, but sites like Group Price are helping them recover and grow.
Raise your revenue. Cut your costs. Do both using GroupPrice.
…Now that’s an obvious partnership that ActSeed can champion.
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Getting Legal Guidance Should Always Be This Easy and Affordable
Friday, July 15th, 2011
Startups and small businesses are often incredibly hesitant to call a lawyer for advice. Why? Because they want to avoid legal issues? No. Because they want to avoid the invoice afterwards.
Navigating legal issues is a challenge — a time-consuming and costly component of launching a business. Small businesses need legal guidance from many angles: corporate law, securities law, employment law, patents, trademarks, privacy, finance, litigation, tax… and the list goes on.
Interpreting and applying the law often deals with “shades of gray” more than “black and white”. In other words, a handful of very smart attorneys may offer very different perspectives and legal advice on a given issue.
So, wouldn’t it be incredible if an entrepreneur or small business owner could throw out a legal question to 10 attorneys who have a relevant background and receive responses from each – all for just a few bucks?
The founders of LawPivot thought so, and ActSeed agrees.
LawPivot is one of those “no-brainer” services for a startup or small business budget. Being able to tap legal knowledge like this is invaluable. ActSeed is more than a strategic ally of LawPivot; it’s also a happy client. Consider this a very warm referral for all ActSeed members.
If you’d like to try LawPivot, they will give you a free trial.
If you become a member of the ActSeed community (register for ActSeed here to receive the LawPivot bonus code; it’s free!), ActSeed will give a Promotional Code to extend your free LawPivot service through the end of 2011.
Not all of a company’s legal needs can be boiled down to a crowd-sourced response. Attorneys and legal work will still need to be in the budget, but having access to a breadth of legal minds for a small monthly fee is invaluable. To receive this service for free during 2011 is, literally, priceless.
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Impact Your Business
Saturday, June 11th, 2011Many entrepreneurs are “allergic to the numbers side of the business”. Part of the high failure rate of small businesses is due to avoiding and ignoring basic financial principals.
Ken Kaufman’s book explains the essentials of small business finance and how to easily apply them through the use of allegory. In other words, he uses “good ol’ fashioned story-telling” to make even the most finance-phobic business owner learn and appreciate the need for quantitative, financial management.
This is not just a story about Steve, a man struggling as a small business owner, a husband and a dad. It is a guide penned in a way we can all identify with. It goes beyond merely being clever about teaching financials.
For example, in Chapter 23, the protagonist (Steve) starts to see, from his own experiences, how anxiety and clarity are negatively correlated. This is a non-financial lesson we all must learn and respect. This book is full of well-articulated insights that we all face as business owners.
The first time you read it, Kaufman’s book is an enjoyable story that “hits home”. Then, it becomes a very useful reference guide for the next hundred times you’ll take it off your bookshelf.
You can get your copy of “Impact Your Business” here.
Kick the Tires: A Continuing Series for a New Generation of Small Business Investors
Monday, May 23rd, 2011ActSeed’s mission of reducing small business failure rates depend upon both well-prepared entrepreneurs and well-informed investors. This new series of articles, called “Kick the Tires”, will help both investors and entrepreneurs align for the best chances to achieve reciprocal success.
["Kicking the Tires" - an idiom - giving something an initial inspection before making a decision to pursue a transaction - origin: early car buyers would kick a vehicle's tires to see if they properly held air]
So far, we have been more visible on the entrepreneur-preparation side of the equation. Recently, we have started to make significant inroads on the other side of the same equation - sharing “best practices” with a new generation of small business investors and attracting seasoned investors with our methodologies that will help them accelerate the review process (“due diligence”) for making investment decisions.
“Kick the Tires” is a new series of articles that highlight the many issues that a small business investor or “startup angel” should address before making an investment decision. We’ll include red flags to watch for. We’ll review “tangibles” and “intangibles” alike. We’ll explore small business investing from almost every angle, including legal, financial, organizational, strategic and cultural.
To date, our primary efforts toward building new reservoirs of investor capital have been through our workshops and webinars (“How to Evaluate Prospective Deals Like a Professional Angel Investor“). These workshops are well-attended, but it feels like we try to cram two months of information into a two hour presentation. Seriously, we do share a lot of information in a short period of time. From there, we develop a relationship and rapport with the attendees to assure they have tools to find and evaluate small business investment opportunities within the ActSeed entrepreneur community and beyond. Kick the Tires is meant to supplement, expand and reinforce the knowledge shared in our workshops.
Who will benefit from reading the articles in this series?
Small business investors - both novice and seasoned. Whether you want to invest $5,000 or $5 million, you still should apply a defined due diligence methodology and process to assure your interests are aligned with your investment choice.
Entrepreneurs. These articles don’t contain fabricated hurdles or secret handshakes, but they do outline the issues that together create a solid business foundation that will give the business the greatest resistance to failure, which is another way to say the greatest chances for success. Investors don’t want to invest in a company destined for failure any more than the entrepreneur wants to build a business exposed to avoidable failure. In other words, what’s good for the investor is also good for the entrepreneur, making this series equally relevant to those building businesses.
Beyond the articles in this series, what can be done to help connect “well-prepared entrepreneurs” with “well-informed investors”?
Join ActSeed. Apply the knowledge that is shared in the articles by joining the ActSeed Entrepreneur Group or the ActSeed Investor Group. The principles and issues we highlight in “Kick the Tires” are the same that we use to connect compatible ‘treps and investors within ActSeed.com using our scored profiles and filtered search tools.
Finally, please send us suggestions or questions about small business investing that you’d like us to cover. We’ll do our best to address these issues here as well. Please send your questions about small business investing to: groupadmin.investor@actseed.com.
Together, let’s get to work and build some wealth!
Positive Impact 365: Big Brands Helping Small Business
Thursday, May 19th, 2011ActSeed has developed a program to help large enterprises and governmental agencies foster entrepreneurship and build early relationships with today’s emerging small businesses and tomorrow’s most promising startups.
There is a natural symbiosis between large enterprises and an “Innovation Economy” full of startups and emerging businesses.
Tomorrow’s market leaders are hard at work today, building companies that will grow our economy by generating taxable profits, creating jobs and contributing to free enterprise. Today’s “big brands” want to engage those young companies that are taking steps to build a solid business foundation for a long life. The same big brands want to avoid companies that show signs of being “here today but gone tomorrow”.
While some of today’s small businesses will grow up to be big brands and dominant market leaders, most successful small businesses will become customers and partners of large enterprises. In addition to selling products and services to small biz, big corporations constantly look for innovation within small companies to find new products, processes and technologies to invest in, license or even acquire.
With over 50% of all new businesses not even lasting five years, it is important for large enterprises to invest time and money with the companies that are avoiding the behaviors that often lead to failure, including a lack of planning, inadequate preparation and the failure to establish sound business fundamentals from the very beginning.
State and local economic development agencies are also very interested in attracting and nurturing small businesses that have potential to grow, create jobs and contribute to the local economy.
Governmental agencies are not usually interested or able to compete in the “home run ball” game that venture capital firms play with its portfolio of young companies, where one big ”hit” (company) might generate enough returns to account for the remainder of the investment portfolio to be written off or sold at breakeven at best. Economic development agencies don’t manage investment portfolios that must generate returns in a finite amount of time; rather, they want to nurture companies that will contribute to the local economy over generations, even if they don’t “get big fast”.
In summary, large enterprises and governmental agencies can use ActSeed’s “Positive Impact 365™” program to identify and nurture the most promising small businesses in specific industries and at specific growth stages.
If you want to learn more about how you can get your brand or agency involved in the Positive Impact 365 program, please send us an email to positiveimpact365@actseed.com.
Compatibility Counts
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011What is compatibility in the context of small business investing and why is it important?
Private direct investment is very different than buying a publicly traded security. Investors do not have the same regulatory support or liquidity as a publicly traded stock. While we have witnessed a number of publicly traded companies mislead the public with incorrect or incomplete information in the past, at least there is a formal structure with a set of reporting regulations and consequences for failing to adhere to those regs and provide certain information to investors. With startups and small businesses, there is much less information available and very little regulation on what must be shared with investors.
Because of this, there is a greater element of compatibility required between the small business investor and the small business.
Trust and Alignment of Purpose
Understanding this need for compatibility is one of the key topics in the ActSeed Investor Workshop (“How to Evaluate Deals Like a Professional Angel Investor”). Simply stated, we strongly recommend that seed stage investors and startup entrepreneurs are fully aligned in purpose and culture as well as around expected return on investment and “exit strategies”. At the early stages of a business, investors should be viewed as a partner, not as a transaction – a co-pilot and navigation assistance, not merely gas in the tank. The business risk is extremely high in the early stages of a new company and the investor should play an active role in helping the entrepreneur steer clear of pitfalls.
Last year, we created a fun vignette about how ActSeed was like an “eHarmony for startups and investors” – how we help match investor-entrepreneur compatibilities. Recently, we had an inquiry from an entrepreneur who didn’t quite understand our analogy, and interestingly, was persistent in trying to understand how we were an “eHarmony to investors”. So, we drafted a candid reply:
“Simply put, most early/seed stage investors look for strategic and long term compatibility, not “quick hits”. The days of throwing money into something based upon a whim or basic concept are gone.
eHarmony markets their community as one where “people are brought together based on the things that really matter” (the current front page quote on eHarmony.com). ActSeed does the same for investors and entrepreneurs.
To further apply the personal relationship / eHarmony metaphor: investors aren’t interested in “one night stands” and “casual encounters.” Investors are no longer being seduced by what sounds good without verifying what IS good. ActSeed provides a mechanism to help the investor verify and accelerate the due diligence process by 60-90 days.
The common theme from our growing Investor Group members is that they don’t have time to see millions of interesting ideas, but they want to quickly find a few good ones that match their interests AND that provide evidence of preparedness in the core areas of business …PLUS a demonstrated ability to execute a sound plan.”
We know ActSeed isn’t for every entrepreneur, but we pledge to our growing group of Investors that the companies and entrepreneurs they will find within ActSeed’s Entrepreneur Group are ready to “extend trust” through an early presentation of the due diligence issues that will eventually need to be addressed anyway. The sooner this information is “on the table”, the faster a deal can be done or the parties can move on. If you can use the ActSeed process to cut 60-90 days out of the due diligence process, why not?
Within ActSeed, in order for a successful investment to occur:
- ActSeed presents the questions to be answered
- The Entrepreneur must provide the answers
- The Investor must trust the answers
Are you an ActSeed Investor?
If you are someone who wants to invest an amount between $5,000 and $5 million in early stage, seed stage, startup or small businesses, please join ActSeed’s Investor Group. It’s free to join, takes 15 minutes to set up, and allows you to interact on a username basis and allows you to reveal your real identity when and if you choose (to avoid the possibility of “overly ambitious” entrepreneurs).
Learn more about ActSeed’s Investor Group through the resources below:
Click here to download a 1-page PDF about ActSeed’s Investor Group
Watch a two-minute video about ActSeed’s Investor Group:
Join ActSeed (no cost).
Then join ActSeed’s Investor Group.
Let us know how we can help you get set up.
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