I've often heard people refer to "my lawyer" or "my accountant" or whatever. Probably not in real life, but in books or movies or whatever. I don't believe any more in "my lawyer" or "my accountant". Now I believe in "a lawyer" or "the accountants". There's lots of good lawyers and lots of good accountants and within the group of good lawyers and accountants they seem to be, for the most part, fungible.

Raising money is a process. I've heard over and over that raising money is a very difficult, long and drawn out process and that every time you think it's over, there's another step that you have to do. Wow, is that ever true. Seriously. The best thing I think I can say to do is to know what all the steps are and prepare for them in advance, as much as possible.

To start off with, network like crazy to find prospective investors. Build a whole "network" (like a web) of people who all know each other, this is best because everyone's more comfortable and safer when there's a "web of trust" (heard that before?). Also, networking continues constantly, once you get started, you never stop. It becomes (or should ...) a habit and kind of automatic.

All of your initial networking and meeting prospective investors should be on a strictly (and up-front) informal basis. The best thing to do is to ask these people to help you build your business plan. That way, you don't run the risk of giving a "formal" presentation which is completely and obviously missing something because you're unprepared. At this stage, you are unprepared. You will not be prepared until you have met some one/people who are actually getting interested. Because the "prepared" shape of the plan will always have to be somewhat influenced by the prospective investors.

Now you can start drawing up documents and that sort of thing. I think it's best to draw up a business plan in stages. The first part should be what other people would call the executive summary. I don't call it the executive summary any more. It's actually the core of the plan. It's two pages, no more, no less. It says:

• What is your technology (1 paragraph)
• What is your history (1 paragraph)
• For each of your prospective markets, explain who will pay for it and why
• What work do you have to do to create a PRODUCT for each market
• Legal issues (1 paragraph)

Draw up this document with constant back-and-forth with you network, because they have done it before. Did I mention that your network has to include people who have done it before? The most valuable members of your network are people who have actually done some part of what you are planning on doing, successfully. Maybe they've started a tech company. Maybe they've worked closely with such people in some function like financial, HR, legal, technological, whatever. But mostly stick to the people who've been in charge and salt it with a mix of people who have been very close to the people in charge.

Anyway, that's the core document. Then you will need the "plan sections of the document" ... The Financial Plan (very detailed for first 6-12 months, looser beyond that); the Technical Plan (what are you going to do, step by step, who's going to do it); the Legal Plan (including a detailed description of all potential legal issues, big or small). I hope there aren't any more sections 'cause those are the ones I've got right now!

Now here's the function of each section. The core 2-page plan gets people into the room, excited about the prospect that this business could be really interesting, and profitable. Then each of the "plan sections" covers one area of the investors'due diligence phases. Financial, technical, and legal due diligence.

I guess that you probably ought to draw up the financial plan, at least, very early on. Since it's (to me anyway) the trickiest of the three. In fact, I started that at the same time as the 2-pager and spent as much time consulting with advisors, mentors and other network members about it as I did with the 2-page.

I'm supposed to give a talk at CUTC (the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference) next week on more or less this topic. I was actually good friends with some of the people who created this conference, so it's cool to come "full circle". Also, I think it should be pronounced "cutesy" but no one else agrees with me on that.

Also, it looks like I'm going to München (that's Munich) Jan 21-23 and probably a couple of days around that. If you want to get together, let me know.

And what the heck, while I'm spilling random beans, did you know I have another weblog? Simon Says (my "personal" blog) .