great template give-away and other resources

The other week, my consulting website went down for unknown reasons. While I was annoyed at first, in the end I figured it was a good opportunity to shut it down anyway and redirect traffic here. I have not been actively consulting for a while, despite the occasional request to help out. Why? Because I'm doing my PhD and consulting is a distraction.

This was going to be a longer blog post, but frankly I'm up to my neck with teaching, research and other PhD related things, so this one's going to be point form.

• As mentioned in an earlier post, here are some business planning templates: They include a simple one-pager business profile for entrepreneurs to use and iterate with feedback from others as often as possible. With luck, they'll ask for feedback from someone who want to see more detail. Also in the package is a whiz-bang financial model template. Input all data only on the IS (income statement) tab. If you change some modelling assumptions, use the button to take a snapshot of the model for comparison between changes. Disclaimer, I am not an accountant. This model is for estimation purposes only, not auditing. The last tab includes a bunch of valuation models so you can ball park what your business might be worth. Too high valuations are among the highest reasons angels walk away from deals. Be realistic. The last file in the package is a template for share structure. That should be self explanatory.

I came across two nifty blogs this last while:

1. http://www.angelsoft.net/ which is an aggregator of angel networks around the world. One of the most recent postings has some pointers on how to present to investors, which was also featured at TED.com:




2. http://www.ted.com/: These are great 20-minutes-or-less lessons about all sorts of topics. In today's world of shortening attention spans and mass media consumption, these (downloadable) videos could be great course material, too. One of my recent favorites was Ann Cooper's talk about food in schools. I really enjoyed it because of the topic, but also because of the passion with which she expressed how mad this world is, reminding me of this award winning performance in the 1976 movie "Network":
   
   To get change to happen, "first, you've got to get mad."