“The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator.” – Ben Graham
As Heidi Roizan DFJ said one must understand its current investors if they are going to take you to your goals / ideas.
The team as a whole faced challenges which set us back a little from reaching goals set last week. Firstly, we struggle to get together as a group as some of us are only free on Thursdays and Fridays; Secondly, trying to organise and invite the public to attend our focus group meeting on Tuesday (26th July) was a nayhem: An email was sent to the reception at GEC on Thursday ( 21st July) for members who might like and want to attend the focus group for Tuesday (26th July) and we were all anxious as we were told we needed approval from the manager before the email can be circulated , this looked blink initially but before the end of Friday (22nd July), the email was approved. Thirdly, struggled with finding prototype products for focus group testing was a grapple. And finally, the group set up a survey on Facebook with 34 names for memory box rebranding, we picked the top 5 names, continued with process and we have a brand new name which will be revealed soonest.
However, aside from challenges faced, we had an interesting week with great presentation from Sean Judges (co founder of Unituition) on funding and how an idea he did not take serious developed into a business flourishing outside Ireland and how he had to resign from his job as a stockbroker. His presentation was particularly interesting to me as it is an eye opener to the types of grants available to new start ups. I was particularly taken aback with the entitlements from NDRC ( €30,000, office space for 2years and a mentor assigned). He made mention of the EU: horizon 2020 grant, Enterprise Ireland and SME.
The left side of the business model canvass was looked at in the past week which are: Key Resources, Key Activities, Key Partnerships and Cost Structure. Also Raomal Perera talked on how to raise fund and an insight on his journey on raising fund. “Without which, there is nothing” …….. Sine Qua Non
Key Resources: These are the most important assets to make the business model work. These could be finance (capital, credit resource), human, intellectual, physical. However, Eternal Whispers key resources would be finance (capital, financial advisor), physical (data security, cloud storage) and human and must thrive to keep human resources.
Key Activities: These are the activities to become experts. As Eternal Whispers will be classified as a problem solving mechanism, it needs activities such security standards to be high, profile / demographic of customers, needs and wants of the customers to be met.
Key Patners: What activities would be performed, when it will be performed and what could be acquired. In terms of “Eternal Whispers” would have to note that patners / suppliers might be different year in year out. We are hoping to partner with the Irish cancer Society, Irish Hospice Foundation, Funeral homes, Physical Box Suppliers, information sourcing, quality of information and a host of others who would be beneficial to the business and vice versa, in terms of acquisition and activities.
Cost Structure: This particular segment of the business model canvas adds up the key resources, key activities, key partners to make up the cost structure. It involves looking at the entire cost to run the business, not just the obvious such as the people, materials but the important, the expensive, the fixed and variable costs and what you might end up using to run the business. We have looked into cost of company registration, cost of physical box, cost of laptop/hardware, distribution cost, website maintenance and will have to looked into advertising/ business development, patnership deals and a few of other costs.
information + knowlegde = wisdom.
It is said knowledge has power and controls access to opportunity and advancement.
We looked at the types of markets and what the market type of our business might be.
- Clone Market
- Existing Market
- Resegmented Market
- New Market
However, “Eternal Whispers” could be said to be both a cloned market and new market because from the previous week, Wendy Coyle, the brain behind the business idea, sourced for competitors, found and realised most of our competitors are located mainly in America, as “Eternal Whispers will be the first of the kind in Ireland and Europe as it is a new market which will be creating a new class of product, also, there are business models that can be copied from these competitors moving forward.
When sourcing for fund, it is advisable to consider corporate banks, investors, mentors, lawyers and fellow entrepreneurs. It should be noted that investors seek to find integrity, passion for the business idea, knowlegde of the business and business idea in conjunction with other skills, knowlegde and values such as vision, leadership, commitment, experience and coach.
As mentioned earlier from Sean Judges talk of the different funds one may be entitled to as a new business idea, there is also what is called crowd funding: it is a way of raising finance by asking a large number of people for a small amount of money. Crowd funding could be donation, pledges, straight debt, specialist debt, equity or social enterprise.
It is advisable to have a plan B at hand and when sourcing for funds or investors not to make an offer first as this offer might be low to what investors or funders might want to offer.
Blog written this week by Oluwadamilola Sotade.
Here is an image of it being used in advertising for coke. It is pretty effective. It can be seen in any restaurant, bus shelter, publication. It is just everywhere.
maireadgibbons 