The importance of your business plan when seeking funding

The importance of your business plan when seeking funding

with Alan Hall

Alan Hall the founder and a managing director of Mercato Partners and also also the founder, chairman and former CEO of MarketStar Corporation joins Enterprise Radio.

Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Alan Hall discuss the following:

  • From an investor standpoint, what role does a business plan play when an entrepreneur calls seeking funding?
  • As an investor, how important is the businesses executive team in deciding if you’ll invest in the company?
  • How important is it for an entrepreneur to match the right source of money with the current stage of the business?
  • What validation points or milestones do you look for in a business that is pitching you on investment?
  • A question we hear you just got from your AskAlanEHall Twitter account, when an angels and or VC’s come to an entrepreneur wanting to invest in them, do you recommend the entrepreneur keep bootstrapping their business or take the investment to speed up their growth?

Tip:  I mentor a number of entrepreneurs and I always tell them to work backwards; listen to and understand the customer first and then build a product that you know they’ll buy and that will meet their needs.  This approach will ensure that you’ll have immediate customers.  The same approach can be taken with investors. Do your research and talk to them to understand what they need or expect from a company they want to invest in and make sure you meet those criteria and that they’re willing to be patient with you.  An investor wants to make money on his or her investment but as an entrepreneur you want to make sure you find an investor that will be patient with you and allow you time to grow your business.

Duration: 8:29

Alan Hall is a founder and a managing director of Mercato Partners, a top performing growth equity venture capital fund. Its focus is to invest in high growth technology companies that need additional funding and expertise in marketing and sales. Current portfolio companies include: Skullcandy, Fusion-io, Control4, Cymphonix, Mediconnect, CradlePoint and Stance.

Mr. Hall is also the founder, chairman and former CEO of MarketStar Corporation, a global outsourced marketing and sales company with a focus on assisting high technology companies increase sales through the small to medium business sectors. The company employs several thousand employees and generates billions of dollars in sales for its marquee clientele, including Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Sony, Intel, Verizon and Research In Motion (RIM). MarketStar is owned by Omnicom Group (OMC).

Alan Hall is the chairman of the Utah Technology Council, the chairman of Weber State University’s board of trustees and the chairman of the University’s capital campaign committee, a member of the advisory board of Wells Fargo Bank, and a trustee of the Intermountain Healthcare Foundation.

He is an Ernst and Young and Mountain West Capital Network Entrepreneur of Year recipient.

Mr. Hall is an author and newspaper columnist and frequent public speaker.

He and his wife Jeanne are the chairman and president of the Hall Foundation. The mission of the foundation is that “there be no poor among us.” Alan and Jeanne Hall are the parents of six married children and fifteen grandchildren.

Links: www.alanehall.com

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