This post is really to provide a set of links to the various case studies presented in Beirut to the Bader creative entrepreneurs but of course it’s also a ‘help yourself’ moment for everyone else 🙂 DIY Kyoto – the Wattson energy monitor … and our case study Sugru – hack things better Concentrate – Read the full article…
Tag Archives: investment
Creative Industries Investment Case Study – Concentrate
Mark Champkins is a trained engineer and invents products to help children concentrate and be at their best to get the most of their time at school. Where did the investment come from?
Creative Industries Investment Case Study – DIY Kyoto
DIY Kyoto applied product design to make people think about the energy they consume and launched the wattson energy monitor. How did they find external investment?
Sunk costs ~ how to evaluate futher investment
It’s natural to want to recover costs already sunk into developing a project or idea, but if you’re having to make the decision to continue and invest further funds ~ should you free your decision making from the burden of money and time already spent?
Investor Series – what is your productivity like and what you should aim for
One of the criticisms levelled against the Creative Industries is that productivity levels are too low. In response, companies need to become expert not only in creating intellectual property but also in developing multiple income streams using the same property.
If you develop ideas for multiple income streams and build them into your mid to long term forecasts then you’ll be starting to get into interesting territory from a VC’s point of view.
Investment Readiness … using MyCake to help you prepare
If you’re preparing your business plan for discussions with investors, banks or other backers you can be sure that you’ll need to be able to show some quite detailed financial projections. Good news: you can use the data you hold in MyCake to do some scenario planning and ‘what if’ thinking before you start on the heavy excel stuff.
Briefing investors with your management accounts
One of the things that helps build trust and confidence with stakeholders is the ability to tell them how you are doing, especially vs. previous expectations or commitments that you’ve made. This is not to say that you should simply open your books to them in their glorious detail but instead you should be able to extract the relevant information and keep them updated…
Going for investment: demonstrating best in class performance
Investors can be a fairly demanding bunch when it comes to asking for financial forecasts, profitability and productivity information, exploitation of Intellectual Property for commercial gain etc. If you’re not prepared for it you can find yourself fighting with spreadsheets until the wee hours trying to extract information from a dozen different places. MyCake can help you with this…
Financing Your Dream: What’s the Right Path?
With the news full of stories about banks cutting back on lending to small businesses, here are a few alternatives to consider when choosing the path to financing your dream
R&D: standing in the investors’ shoes
If you’re looking for funding from investors, you need to take a step back and look at your business from their point of view. In the creative industry we are familiar with grants, but investment is a whole new animal. Here are some things to think about