What Is Venture Planning?

1. Venture Planning is a personal assessment of your feelings and the feasibility of a venture.

2. Venture Planning answers the question, should I be doing this and why?

3. The Venture Feasibility process examines seven key factors in any venture.

   1. The Founders' Compelling Interest:  The force that drives you.

   2. Customer Opportunities based on customer wants and needs.

   3. Customer Profiles defines the target market and potential customers

   4. Venture Concepts evaluates alternatives to filling those needs.

   5. Financial Resources identifies and evaluates the financial resources need to pursue alternative venture models.

   6. Entrepreneurial Assessment to find out if the entrepreneur and the venture are in alignment with respect to goals rewards, compelling interests and the ventures mission.

   7. Final venture evaluation of feasibility and comparison of alternatives.

4. What Venture Planning is not?  It is not about writing a Business Plan.  Sometimes a business plan is not needed.

5. Venture Planning does not require detailed funding source analysis, professional opinions, entity formation or detailed market analysis.

6. Venture Planning is development of a means of comparing various business models, usually through financial modeling to answer the six questions.

7. Venture Formation involves all of the following stages:

Idea  - Concept Development - Venture Development - Monitoring Progress - Initiating New Changes - Venture Feasibility Analysis - Business or Operational Plan - Budget vs. Actual - New Plans.

8. There are four keys to good venture planning:

   1. Focus on one venture at a time in one business area at a time.

   2. Discover the opportunity first, and then evaluate how to exploit it.

   3. Develop three cases good, bad & likely for each scenario of a venture concept.

   4. Identify what type of venture you want.  Each type has an entirely different model, implementation and end result.  Each demands a different entrepreneurial approach and each requires different management and style.  Do you want:

      1. a Lifestyle Business with $1 million in annual sales, 1-4 employees and a solo operation?

      2. a Smaller High Profit Business with $1-$20 million in sales, 5 - 50 employees, where partners are required?, or

      3. a High Growth Business with $20-50 million or more in sales with more than 50 employees, that requires venture capital, investment banks and a public company?

9. There Are 11 Keys To a Good First Venture

10. What To Do After the Feasibility Study of Numerous Concepts

    1. Pick three of the best with the "snap" of customer needs and pick the least costly concept.

    2. Decide to go or not.  If you decide to go forward, do a detailed business plan or operational plan and then start.

     

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