ORGANIZING

Organizing your business is the meat of the process.  Of course the main part of organizing a business is building a team of professionals who compliment your strengths. As you will come to find out, the team will become the most important part of your company.  Team building is an art as much as a science.  Building the right team of both direct employees and strategic partners is crucial to your business success.  In this section we begin with a discussion of your first team member who will most likely also become your first strategic partner, your attorney.  Engaging excellent legal counsel is a key part of starting a new business.  If you are successful in finding the right one, they will ultimately save you a great deal more money than they cost…although that might be hard to believe as you are paying their bills.  It is critical you find one who has expertise in your industry and who has been successful working with newly formed companies.  It is always best to find a good referral from someone who has used that particular attorney before, not just the same law firm.

We will discuss incorporating a business, and which type of corporate structure works the best if you want to raise money from venture capital investors.  Although there are several forms of incorporation, there are certain issues surrounding what investors want to see.  That said it is always best to follow the legal advice of your attorney.  They will be responsible for developing your legal documents, answering your legal questions and providing legal advice.

We will discuss hiring the key management, including Marketing, Engineering, Sales, Finance, Operations and Customer Support.  Marketing is usually a good place to start. But Marketing is a very broad category. To begin, find a good product marketing manager who can help you with the marketing research and development of the business plan and especially the marketing plan and marketing strategy, which is often the key to success.  They will develop the functional requirements and the product positioning.  We discuss the breath of the marketing category and provide job descriptions for the key roles in product marketing and marketing communications.

Next we discuss engineering and development and the process of developing a product.  We will discuss the relationship between the functional specifications and the design specifications.  Next we discuss the phases of and how they relate to fulfilling the customers requirements.

Following the product development, then becomes all about sales.  We discuss who to hire and when to hire them.  What to look for and job descriptions.  We talk about how sales and marketing interrelate and how to create HPRCs (Happy Paying Referenceable Customers).

Once you have customers and revenue you need to count the money so we go into finance and administration.  What to look for in a CFO and when to hire them, include a CFO job description.  We talk about accounting systems and what you need at each stage.

Finally in this section we address customer service.  This department is critical to your success.  It is hard enough to find, market, and sell in order to create customer base.  You definitely want to keep them and keep them happy.  HPRCs are the critical link to developing your brand strategy and thus the ultimate value of your business.

We discuss the other important key members of the executive team including Operations, Manufacturing and Information Technology and how they relate to the type of business you are creating.  In some types of businesses they are more critical than in others.  We discuss when you can outsource these functions and when you can’t.