THE BASICS OF A BUSINESS MODEL
Karl Dakin
I help you overcome challenges to raising capital. Take advantage of my Motivated Money Method to identify those investor candidates that are most likely to invest. Top expert in fundraising.
CONTENTS
?·?????? Quick Calendar
·?????? Funding Point
·?????? Capital Coach
·?????? Successful Funding
·?????? Don Cohen Show
·?????? Subscribe – Daily or Weekly Editions
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?QUICK CALENDAR
?I quickly list here upcoming opportunities where I will be sharing information, lessons in funding, or meeting in person or via videoconferencing.
?May 31 (change of date from Tuesday to Friday) – Successful Funding - Back Office – Justin Lowell
June 12 - SuperCrowd Chicago – Workshop on Crafting Crowdfunding Offers
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?FUNDING POINTS – THE BASICS OF A BUSINESS MODEL
?Everyone has ideas. Some of this have the potential to become a new product or service. Some have the greater potential to become the work of a new business. Somewhere between the formation of the idea and the launch of a business, work is required to progress the idea through a number of steps that should include the development of a business model.
?I define a business model as a minimal description of the steps to design, build and sell a single product or service resulting in revenue.
?Sometimes, products or services are offered for sale with no good understanding of market need, acceptance, valuation and pricing. Sometimes, products and services are offered for sale with no good understanding of all of the costs that will be incurred. Any investment offer that is made without this basic information may be inaccurate and may be determined fraudulent.
?I have seen investment offers where it is intended to figure it out later. If the investor fully understands they are investing in an experiment that may never become a business, then that is acceptable.
?Investments in pre-revenue or even pre-prototype businesses are commonly experiments. The disclosure that the business does not know everything it needs to succeed must be made to avoid later claims if the business fails. I have found that sharing the experimental character of the business will narrow the field of investors substantially but does not necessarily scare away everyone.
?I have found that the presentation of a business model within an investment offering helps investor candidates to more fully understand the risks of making an investment. Full transparency calls for pointing out everything that is not known about the business model. It cannot be assumed that the investor candidate will be able to fill in the gaps of unstated disclosures.
?I once took on the task of building a business model for a lemonade stand. There is a long list of materials needed to make and sell a simple glass of lemonade. As one might expect, at the scale of a single glass, the costs of materials and labor quickly exceed what anyone might reasonably pay to purchase the lemonade. A profit can only be obtained by scaling with all the additional complexities and costs. Yet more information is needed to establish a location where the lemonade may be viewed and sold.
?Too often, a business will start without a fundamental understanding of its model. Yet, it is a building block to determine all of the needed resources in the needed quantities within the needed time to realize a profit.
?It’s not too late to push the pause button and go back and ask yourself how much you truly understand your business model.
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SUCCESSFUL FUNDING
Friday, May 31st (not the usual Tuesday date), the next show for Successful Funding will feature as my guest Justin Lowell with Form Factor. We will discuss getting the back office of a small business in order to support a capital campaign.
?You may register to attend this show at:
?Emiliano De Laurentiis, the CEO and Founder of Knowledge Avatars , was a guest on my Successful Funding show earlier today where we talked about key questions about what is called artificial intelligence (AI). We demonstrated CAP by giving it prompts that generated responses out of proprietary data that I had provided and generated responses out of OpenAI’s Chat GPT 4.0.
领英推荐
?You can see all of my shows at the time of broadcast or recordings of past shows at my profile on LinkedIn.
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CAPITAL COACH
?I am now field evaluating the Capital Coach, an artificial intelligence learning management system avatar (AILMSA) that I have trained on the topic of funding. The Capital Coach is embedded as a widget on my Dakin Capital website at https://dakincapital.com/CAP . The Capital Coach represents a proprietary data set on the Knowledge Avatars learning management system with licensed access to Open AI. Could you give the Capital Coach a try and ask it questions about funding?
I am working with Knowledge Avatars to make CAP the ultimate tool to support small businesses and community projects in raising funding. Two current challenges are (1) training the AI avatar to match specific funding situations and (2) explaining that a highly personalized AI avatar is so much more than a chatbot powered by a Large Language platform. Unique, non-public information about an individual or an organization cannot be obtained through a chatbot. The recent advances in AI have narrowed the field of prospects who stand to gain from personalized AI to high-net-worth individuals, professional service providers, organizational leaders, and other similarly placed who work with fast-moving, fast-changing information that may never be public.
Please share your feedback. Karl Dakin at [email protected]
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DON COHEN SHOW
On Monday, I was a guest on Don Cohen’s show, where we talked about promotion – the act of sharing information to gain awareness and solicit action. You may see a recording of the show at:
I enjoy being a guest and engaging in conversations with other guests and with Don on building communities and using LinkedIn as a communication channel. Every show is its own adventure as we start with a word of the day and then see where the conversation goes from there.
Don is an expert on LinkedIn, particularly on the use of Live streaming to build brands and communities. We will discuss using LinkedIn as a social media platform for building communities that support raising funding.
All shows where I have been a guest can be viewed on Don Cohen's LinkedIn page under Posts.
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Karl Dakin, the Capital Coach
Dakin Capital LLC
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We transform people's lives through education, empowerment, and Integral Medicine: Classical Chinese, Functional, and Evolutionary.
6 个月Karl, you're on fire with all this outstanding content. Love the work you're putting in, and I've been sharing links with friends who are exploring funding options. Looking forward to more!
I help you overcome challenges to raising capital. Take advantage of my Motivated Money Method to identify those investor candidates that are most likely to invest. Top expert in fundraising.
6 个月Do you have a model for your business?