If you’re a business, you need to have a website and for that SEO optimization is key, but just putting a website on the web isn’t enough, you’ll have to get it to pop up in searches, and build some buzz around it. In short so the googles and bings of this world will list you on page one. As such, we found this article from Josh Klein, and figured we’d share it with you.

1. Pick a domain name that matches your primary keyword.

2. Get other important keywords into the secondary page URLs using mod rewrite (or a platform that supports it, like Wordpress).

3. Make sure every page has a unique title and H1 tag that matches your primary keyword objectives for that page.

4. Make sure the homepage links to most, if not all, other pages (at least to start).

5. Make sure every page links back to the homepage and many other secondary pages using appropriate anchor text.

6. Register on every social media site that makes sense for you (using this list). Include a link to the site in your profile. You can see how I have done so at Twitter or LinkedIn. It helps if the username you choose is a primary keyword.

7. Link the social media profiles to each other where applicable. Fill them out as fully as possible.

8. Actually use the social networks. More activity will create more links to the profiles, in turn passing more “juice” to the website.

9. Want a link from Wikipedia but you’re not famous enough? You can write whatever you want on your own user page.

10. Claim your site using Google Webmaster Tools. Submit your sitemap (preferably one that is automatically updated when you add new content, like with this plugin for Wordpress).

11. Add a link to your email signature. No, it doesn’t count as a link. Yes, it can get other people to link.

12. Write guest posts for blogs matching your niche. Include your link in the byline.

13. Bookmark every page on deicious, stumbleupon, digg, reddit, etc.. .

14. Do a Google Search for every one of your top keywords. Figure out how to get a link from any site showing in the top 20 results.

15. If it’s a blog, become a Chris Brogan Rockstar, Liz Strauss SOB, and Alltop Whatchamacallit. If possible, start your own badge instead.

16. Do not under any circumstance pay someone for a link. Do not offer or accept offers to trade links.

17. Avoid linking out to shady websites of any kind.

18. Study the keywords your competitors target (if they use meta-keywords you can just view source). Write landing pages ultra-optimized (is that the name of a Transformer?) for those keywords.

19. Write a blog, or find some other way to continually add new content. This adds to the content you have indexed, but is also another opportunity for links.

20. Focus on putting up great and relevant content on the site, that’s the winner in the long run. Oh, and link to old content.

Follow these tips and you’ll end up with a few hundred links to your site. It’s a start, but no replacement for the real work of being worth caring about. For the original article – by Josh Klein click here

This Saturday we would like to introduce you to CFI Partners, a crowd financing platform recently started by a couple of IMD MBA’s. What we find specifically interesting in CFI is their alternative approach to financing startups, it’s new, novel, and it’s taking a risk, it’s what we believe any startup should be, so without further ado, this week’s Startup Saturday: CFI Partners

How did you come up with the idea to crowdfinance?

Imagine the number of missed opportunities that are overlooked or can’t be addressed by the more traditional mechanisms of financing such as private equity and venture capital.

We ourselves saw several cases where entrepreneurs had a great idea but were unable to get past the initial seed funding, or where there idea had a potential for generating strong revenue, but not on the scale that would interest venture capital.

There are several reasons for this, the difficulty of evaluating each opportunity, the cost of the transaction, and the fact that risk capital is not as well developed in Continental Europe, let’s say in comparison to the US. These factors create a threshold where investment opportunities under <$2 Million are uneconomical for traditional venture financing. Furthermore, with more and more of the funding for venture capital and private equity coming from big funds, there is an increasing trend for larger investments.

With crowd financing we democratize the process and make it more efficient. The amount of money that can be raised can be quite significant. If you look at the Obama Presidential Campaign, he rose over $400 million from individual contributions of $200 or less. So substantial amounts of money can be raised. But another aspect that makes crowd financing attractive is the fact that by decreasing the amount that needs to be invested, you open up the process to a whole new market. As this market is more efficient, smaller investments remain attractive. Thus crowd financing allows us to address an interesting part of the innovation market, the area of 50,000 € to 2 Million €, which is underserved at the moment.

Another factor that attracted us to crowd financing, was the chance to develop a community where the considerable power of sharing information can be leveraged. Members of our community will help develop entrepreneurial ideas with their feedback. Basically we will act to bring together the information latent in members of our community, leading to more efficient and we hope more successful investments.

Interestingly, we set out initially to design a platform with the classical technology innovation entrepreneur in mind. However, we have seen a strong demand from film makers, bands, and designers who feel that crowdfinancing could be the best approach for them to raise funds.

Any milestones that you’d like to share?

We started out developing this idea in November 2009, and have been working on refining and developing the concept. Understanding the market and who are our customers. At the beginning of 2010, we refined the website of our company to explain more our ideas and elicit some feedback.

We have been also working on getting feedback from both entrepreneurs and investors. These inputs are going into the development of our web platform for crowd financing, which we are scheduling for launch in Spring/early Summer 2010.

Another important aspect, of course, is raising funding for our own platform. A process which we have just begun.

Can you tell us a bit about the team?

Hervé and I met as classmates in the executive MBA program of IMD. We have rather different backgrounds, but high levels of experience. Hervé has a strong background in marketing and finance, having worked both in large corporations such as GE, but also for smaller startups. He not only has experience working for start-ups, but also has worked with private equity. Thus he has a good experience with both sides of the equation.

Myself, I have over 16 years of driving innovation in Biotechnology. Initially, leading research at top Universities (I have a PhD in Molecular Pharmacology from Stanford) and more recently working in start-ups driving the R&D program and supporting product development. I have a strong insight of the needs that start-ups have when it comes to innovation support. Hence, my excitement in supporting our project.

Any difficulties you’ve experienced in the startup process of your company?

I think what has been the most surprising thing for us is the speed at which the interest and demand has developed around this idea and our platform. Hence, the biggest difficulty we’ve had has been the lack of resources. Hervé and I are bootstrapping the company, while keeping our full time jobs, and still making time for our families. Luckily for us, we seem not to need a lot of sleep! ☺

But seriously, the lack of the time and limited financial resources has meant that we have difficulty keeping up with the pace of the project.

To make sure we capture this opportunity is why we are pushing to launch this spring.

Any advice to pass on to budding entrepreneurs?

Engage with other entrepreneurs about your ideas, they can help you develop your ideas and evolve them. To many times entrepreneurs keep their ideas to themselves and lose the power of other peoples input to convert their ideas into successful ones.

And Tthe next time you are considering fundraising, consider the power of using crowdfinancing. You can a get more details at our website. www.cfi-partners.eu and consider using our platform this Spring for your fundraising needs!

BY F3FUNDIT

If you haven’t taken a MBA class on Entrepreneurship, chances are you won’t know where to start, and with the hundreds of pages out there telling you that you can get a sample business plan for your business for only 39.95 that may or may not be good we figured we’d save you the time and money and check this, give it away for free, and something that’ 1/2 way decent on top of that, this outline has time and time again won and been featured in bplan competition finals.

With that, your guide to writing a business plan. Step by step, links to Wikipedia for terms that may be foreign to non business types. Enjoy!

BUSINESS PLAN

Legal Company Name, Names of Partners

Contents

1. Executive Summary.

• 1.1. Introduction.
• 1.2. The Idea.
• 1.3. Sales and Marketing.
• 1.4. Opportunity Assessment.
• 1.5. The Team that will exploit the identified opportunity.
• 1.6. Strategic Investor.
• 1.7. Summary of Financials.

2. The Opportunity.

• 2.1. Introduction.
• 2.2. Summary of Sales and Marketing.
• 2.3. Opportunity Assessment – Market Overview & Trends.
• 2.3.1 Opportunity Assessment & Trends.
• 2.3.2. Market Overview of _whatever industry you’re getting into_.
• 2.4. Segmentation.
• 2.5. Positioning.
• 2.6. Product Strategy.
• 2.7. Pricing Strategy.
• 2.8. Distribution Channel Strategy.
• 2.9. Communication Strategy.

3. Operations.

• 3.1. Identification and Map of Processes.
• 3.2. Analysis of most relevant Processes.
• 3.3. Location.
• 3.4. Technology Development (if any).
• 3.4.1. Technology Implementation (if any).
• 3.4.2. Development Framework of Product (if any).
• 3.5. Hardware Infrastructure (if any).
• 3.6. Subcontracting.
• 3.7. Inventory Management.
• 3.8. Investments + main Cost Drivers.
• 3.9. Launch Plan.

4. Organizations and Human Resources (HR)

• 4.1. Organizational Structure.
• 4.2. Personnel needed.
• 4.3. Job Descriptions.
• 4.4. HR Policies: Selection, Management, Compensation.

5. Financial Plan.

• 5.1. Financial Hypotheses/Assumptions.
• 5.2. Pro Forma Income Statement.
• 5.3. Pro Forma Cashflow Statement.
• 5.4. Pro Forma Balance Sheet.
• 5.5. Financing Need.
• 5.6. Sources of Financing.
• 5.7. Financial Feasibility: BEP Ratios.
• 5.8. Sensitivity Analysis.
• 5.9. Key Financial Charts.
• 5.10. Valuation.

6. Legal Aspects.

• 6.1. Protection and Issues of Intellectual Property Rights.
• 6.2. Standards and Regulations (market specific).
• 6.3. Insurances & Responsibilities.
• 6.4. Social Security.
• 6.5. Fiscal Obligations: Taxes.
• 6.6. Official Documentation.
• 6.7. Legal Structure.

7. Company Growth and Development Strategy.

• 7.1. Company Growth Strategy.
• 7.2. Risks, Problems and Assumptions.
• 7.3. Exit / Payback Strategy.

Appendices: Illustrations, Process Design, Website Design, Functionality anything else you believe is relevant.

—-

If you have any questions, let us know. And we’ll do our best to answer them.

BY F3FUNDIT

“As entrepreneurs we strive to make the world a better place, we drive innovation, and we lead, though sometimes we haven’t a clue as to where we’re going” so said the entrepreneur.

Today’s video series is about leadership, and how it affects the world, it’s more a think piece than anything else, and we hope you’ll very much like it. We did, and it’s one of our favorite video series so far.

However, as much as we would like to take credit for such an absolutely amazing video we cannot, it comes from the good people at XPLANE a company that specializes in visual communication, and with clients such as the Economist, BASF, UNICEF, Vodafone, etc…, you know there’s something to them.

This video however, comes from a more academic background and was put together in collaboration with Nitin Nohria and Amanda Pepper of Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative in order to get people talking about leadership, and what is specifically interesting to us, and the wider entrepreneurship community out there is that the majority of leaders presented in the video were / are entreprenerus.

We as entrepreneurs work every day, to change and make the world a better place, we do this because we see possibilities, and because we love it and have an undying passion for it, and if you do it just for the money, I’ll tell you now, save your breath, you’ll fail. You have to enjoy it.

And with that ladies and gentlemen of the wider internets entrepreneurial and otherwise community, we at f3fundit.com present you with Imagine Leadership

BEFORE YOU SKIP AWAY – THINK ABOUT THE FOLLOWING.

• Am I a leader? And was I born this way or made? What are my strengths, weaknesses?
• Does an entrepreneur have to be a leader, or a leader an entrepreneur?
• What is the defining difference between a leader and a manager? After all managers can start companies can’t they?

We’d love to hear your thoughts?

In 2002, Joan Magretta published a very interesting article in the Harvard Business Review titled “Why Business Models Matter”, this was right after the internet bubble burst and your everyday investor was keen to stay away from anything and everything that could in any such way be associated with the dot com boom, the term “business model” was one of these and the sheer sight of a “business model” ran shivers down people’s spines.

However, Joan made a very good observation, this was that a “good business model begins with the insight into human motivations and ends in a rich stream of profits”, and whether dot com companies were here to stay, one could not disagree with the fact that human motivation will lead to some form of behaviour, in this – one that leads to purchases. Which is in the end a business model.

Telling a Good Story

Creating a business model is like telling a story. Take the example of J.C. Fargo, the president of AmEx who in 1982 during a European vacation identified the need for the travelers cheque.

The story associated with the business model was easy peasy for customers to grasp. For a small fee, the traveler could buy a secured against theft product that was convenient as it was widely accepted. On the other side of the table, AmEx was a trusted name, and businesses happily accepted the cheques, as more businesses accepted the cheques, and more individuals used them, more businesses would subscribe as not to stand on the sidelines and get in the game.

As for AmEx, well, we don’t have to go into details, but surely the equivalents of an interest free loan from customers and the nearly risk free nature of the business (customers always paid in cash), made this one of AmEx better business ideas.

But what’s all this have to do with business models? It’s simple really, a business model represents a better way of conducting something, improving on the current alternatives, it may offer value to a group of customers, or it may revolutionize processes until someone else revolutionizes those processes. In the end it tells a story about how something can be done better than it is now.

Doing the Math: The Numbers Test

Does it add up? Are your profits more than your losses? What is your burn rate? How long until you’re out of the red? Will my customers buy my product or service? Changing something and making it better is one thing, there have been millions of Euros, Dollars, Pounds, Yen or whatever currency you’d like to use, thrown at project that were simply put unsellable. These projects had great technologies behind them, they were innovators in their fields, they were new and something truly special, but they flopped.

Why? Because no one bought them, many were simply too expensive, i.e. various online grocers who’d bet that consumers would pay more for the same jar of jam if it could be delivered to their home, or in the 1980’s when Sears decided it would give its customers the option to purchase financial products. Why anyone would purchase an investment to add into their portfolio while shopping around for a car tire is beyond me, but hey, the exec’s thought it’d work. It didnt.

The moral of all this is basically, 1. Tell a good story, see if there’s a need and reason to develop a product or service you’re thinking about developing, who will your customers be, and will everyone involved benefit, and 2. will it be profitable based on a series of critical what-if assumptions focused on your business and product.

And if after all that, you’ve still got a green light. Well… then it’s time to think about scalability and strategy.

BY F3FINDIT

Let’s face it, getting money to finance your business is no easy task, and especially so when you’re talking about recessions where people’s pockets are harder and harder to get into, but say you’ve got a good idea for a business that in any other economy would work, but it just cant provide the 30x ROI that Business Angels (BAs) are looking for now. Nor do you have the capital yourself that you need to develop a prototype, or start selling, so what on earth can you do?

Small Business Loans

Small business loans are a great way to get yourself a prototype or a launch product, but the truth is in this climate banks are just about as stingy with their money as BA’s and most other investors. So the short story is, getting a loan may not be easy, but all the while bring in a biz plan, talk to your local banker, and see if you can’t squeeze any money out of them.

This is one option, but by no means should you stick to this one, and anyways, it’s old, outdated, adds additional risk to the entrepreneur and you may have to put down collateral, which quite frankly is not ideal.

Peer 2 Peer Lending Options

A great option to getting cash is P2P Lending – basically there are websites out there, usually two or three per country, that put lenders and borrowers in touch with one another. The website tends to manage risk, provide the lenders with the borrowers debt rating etc… one such site in the UK, and Italy is Zopa, Spain has Comuniate, and doing a Google search ought to point you in the right direction for the service in your country. Rates are typically fixed, and it’s much easier to get

Crowd Funding

This is by far the favorite, but also requires a bit more leg work than the others, and if time is on your side, we highly recommend trying to get Crowdfunded. What is it though, basically it’s getting the community at large to help fund your project, it’s worked well in the music industry, people have made movies based on crowd funding, as well as started all sorts of projects, businesses, etc… To see a few examples of what it does we recommend heading over to Kickstarter, and as for a quick portal where you can start your own fund we recommend Create A Fund.

When it comes down to funding a project though, we highly recommend offering something in return. After all people are giving up their own hard earned cash to help you reach for the sky, so give them something back, be it a page on your website, a personalized letter, inclusion in materials, adding them in the credits of a film, whatever you feel like.

Another good thing about crowd-funding is that it typically happens via PayPal, meaning if your entire project costs €2000, but the payment needs to be done in stages you can raise your first 500, start the project, etc… and develop it as the money comes in.

Did we miss anything? Let us know.

BY F3FUNDIT

One thing about providing a good service to all our readers is to try and provide it on an almost continuous basis, and while we do talk about starups, entrepreneurship, best practices, capital and a whole array of other topics relating to new and small enterprises – we figured, if most entrepreneurs are working six days a week, so should we, after all, we don’t want to be called hypocrites here at F3FundIt.

So we got to thinking, Saturday should be a time to at least wind down a bit, and what better way to wind down than to each Saturday feature a new promising startup. Now this being week zero of this feature series we figured we might as well give you a general guideline on what to send us in order to qualify for … wait for it….

Startup Saturdays…

Just send an e-mail to info@f3fundit.com with the subject line “Startup Satuday Submission” or “S3” with the following information.

: Satrtup Name -
: Website -
: Industry -
: Where are you located? -
: What exactly do you do? In one sentence please. -
: How did you come up with the idea? -
: What stage of the startup process are you currently in? -
: Any milestones we should tell the world about?
: How about your team? Who are they? -
: Any fears, phobias, anxieties? -
: Any advice to pass onto new budding entrepreners? -
: Anything you want to add? -

Groovy, that ought to cover it. And when you do submit your startup, it’d be killer if you could provide a logo that we could throw up and if you have a video or any other media, well… you can submit that as well.

BY JACEK GREBSKI

You have to be thinking to yourself, what on earth does Burger King have to do with startups. Well, a few months back I was talking with a colleague regarding startups, projects, and someone wanting to buy a portal we had developed for a small sum, and the concept of the burger king opportunity cost came about.

In a nutshell it’s a way to quantify if the time spent working on your project is paying off, or if it’s an utter and complete waste of time, i.e. is my startup worth more than the money I could earn flipping burgers at Burger King.

Now, valuing a startup is no easy task, and most current tools are used to assess whether or not to invest in a company, not whether the entrepreneur’s time is worth the commitment to the idea and startup. However we need to understand and employ these methods in order to find out if you’re time is worth it. Depending on the stage of the startup, methods utilized by investors are

Anticipated Return on Investment (ROI) – which basically states that an Angel Investor should look to invest in companies that can yield 30x Return on Investment, i.e. 100k invested -> 3million return.

Why so high? Startups are RISKY investments and on average at least 50% will fail, as an investor, the portfolio of companies invested in should ideally bring in between 10x-50x ROI. Anything less, doesn’t justify the investment. Can your startup compete with this?

Venture Capital Method – which in its simplest form is

Post-Money Valuation = Discounted Terminal Value / Cash-on-Cash ROI

Post Money Valuation – is the valuation of a company immediately after a round of investment is closed.

Post-Money Valuation = Investment + Pre-Money Valuation

Terminal Value – the valuation of a company at exit, meaning the proceeds from the sale of the company via M&A, IPO where investor ownership is liquidated

Cash-on-Cash ROI – the cash-on-cash return on investment expected for said investment in the year of harvest (exit).

To calculate your BK Opportunity Cost, you have to get the value of your startup today. But how do you do that?

Fundamentally, we have to look at two things.
1. Is your startup able to bring in a ROI of 30x for an angel, and if it is
2. What is its Pre-Money Valuation in the Angel Round, meaning now.

Burger King Opportunity Cost

So for the sake of the exercise, let’s assume the following.

You and your partners own 100 shares of Startup Ltd, which is 100% of equity. And say you’re looking for investment into Startup, Ltd. of 100k in return for 20 newly issued shares, the implied post-money valuation is:

(€100k) * 120 / 20 = €600k

To calculate the pre-money valuation, the amount of the investment is subtracted from the post-money valuation. In this case, it is:

€600k – €100k = €500k

So you and your partner dilute your ownership to 100/120 = 83.33%.

To get the Burger King Opportunity Cost of your business you follow the formula

Pre-Money Valuation – Investment in Project ≥ Possible Salary Received from Working at Burger King * Partners * Time

Using the above example, Startup Ltd. has three partners, you’ve been working on the project for a year each, your Pre-Money Valuation is at €500k and say you invested in the company €100k. And, assuming the annual salary of a burger king employee on a monthly basis is €1000, Your BK Opportunity Cost would then be.

€500k – €100k ≥ €1k * 3 * 12 = €400k ≥ 36k @ BK

Woohoo, it was better off for the guys Startup Ltd. to start the project than to flip burgers.

Why? Because the opportunity cost of starting Startup, Ltd. is greater than the minimum sustainable wage that you can have in order to survive, and for that specific reason we’ve used Burger King, and not the salary of an iBanker, Engineer, etc… however those salaries can be easily applied to the opportunity cost formula.

On the other hand. If Startiup, Ltd. is not able to get Business Angel Investment of a 100k, and instead are only  are able to sell their work for €20k, then the BK opportunity cost is €20k ≤ 36k @ BK, and it’s reversed, meaning their time would have been better spent flipping burgers.

Thougths?

BY F3FUNDIT

ECER along with Banque Populaire have released a list of the top European cities to start conducting a business in. The study itself is based on a dual measure of the importance and satisfaction expressed by entrepreneurs regarding the range of territorial provision available to them and looks at both the importance of the city, and the satisfaction gained from conducting business there. The process involved asking nearly 2400 entrepreneurs a series of 36 questions, in 37 major European cities, 19 countries and 14 languages.

Out of the top 10, four cities were in Scandinavia, and 3 of these in the top five. Germany also saw four cities in the top 10, with the other two spots going to Austria and Poland.

The bottom of the list saw UK then Southern European cities taking up the bottom spots along with Paris, however the Southern Europe has made some serious gains within the past years, especially Spain, and Portugal.

As for the top ten in 2009, they are as follows. 1. Helsinki 2. Stockholm 3. Munich 4. Malmo 5. Hamburg 6. Cologne 7. Frankfurt 8. Vienna 9. Gothenburg 10. Warsaw

ECER has also begun to study and rank European countries based on the most success in entrepreneurial satisfaction.

The top ten countries were as follows. 1. Finland 2. Sweden 3. Germany 4. Austria 5. Poland 6. Lithuania 7. Portugal 8. Czech Republic 9. Spain 10. Belgium.