Create Ventures to Produce Value for Stakeholders

Whether in a traditional binder or a nine-box Business Model Canvas, entrepreneurs must clearly understand and articulate their venture’s core aspects—from markets and channels to revenue models and value propositions. The Business Plan is a living document guiding the organization, while the Business Model shows how the business creates, delivers, and captures value.

A Revenue Model (different from a Sales Model) explains how a venture makes money—through subscriptions, freemium, licensing, transactions, and more. Entrepreneurs need to choose the model that fits their product, market, and timing.

Entrepreneurial ventures engage markets through Marketing and Sales. Marketing raises awareness, defines segments, positions products, sets pricing, and chooses channels. Sales converts interest into paying customers, managing relationships and understanding decision-making and purchasing processes.

A Sales Model (different from a Revenue Model-see above) describes how a venture engages customers—direct, referral, inside, channel, web, or influencer sales, structured by market, geography, or product. Entrepreneurs must understand the pros and cons of each model and how to build and manage an effective sales team.

All ventures are, at some level, financial endeavors. From managing accounts receivable to bill payment, compensation to capital purchases, Entrepreneurs need to understand, manage, and create the appropriate systems to manage the flow of cash through their ventures.

Balance sheets, Cash Flow Statements, Income Statements, and Capitalization Tables are all tools that successful entrepreneurs need to be able to leverage for their ventures’ success.

Understanding the capital needs of a venture is critical to entrepreneurial success. Undercapitalized ventures struggle to make progress, while overcapitalized ventures can suffer from bloat and lack of urgency.

Structuring a venture for success includes understanding how ownership works, and how Equity can be used as a tool to align and motivate a team. Facilities with concepts like stock, dilution, option pools, strike prices, preferred shares, common stock, and fair market value all are part of an entrepreneur’s lexicon.

Appropriate deployment of copyrights, patents, trademarks, licensing arrangements, trade secrets, and non-disclosure agreements are all part of an Entrepreneur’s Intellectual Property toolkit. Deploying these to maximize competitive advantage is critical to a venture’s success

Money fuels the venture, allowing it to achieve liftoff and growth. Whether capital comes from the Entrepreneur’s savings, friends and family, professional investors, grant-giving agencies, customers, or others, Entrepreneurs need to understand the pros and cons, and tools, techniques, and tradeoffs with each to formulate the most impactful strategy.