CompanyCrafters Resources

The Entrepreneur's Dictionary - Guide to Start-up Business Terms for Non-MBAs | PDF

The guide to business terminology for everyone in the start-up game: entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, startup executives, service providers, corporate new-business development specialists, university tech-transfer professionals, inventors and anyone else considering launching a new venture.

How You Can Benefit from Entrepreneurial Thinking

We explore how established organizations – corporations, research institutions, even nonprofits – can apply entrepreneurial thinking to become more innovative and successful.

The Seven Principles of Entrepreneurship (Part 2)

We continue the series in discussing how established organizations can apply the principles of entrepreneurship to become more innovative and successful.

Crafting an Innovative Business Model To Create a Sustainable Competitive Advantage

What happened when inexperienced entrepreneurs launched a business that conventional wisdom considered doomed to a quick and painful death? We explore how a simple yet brilliant business model innovation enabled Bright Horizons to, build a strong, scalable, sustainably profitable enterprise in an industry that others avidly avoided.

How Innovative Business Models Create Sustainable Competitive Advantages (Part 2)

We look at some startup examples where business model innovation – as opposed to technological or scientific innovation – served as the strategic keystone to the company's business success.

Does Your Business Model Present Opportunities for Innovation?

We look at an example to better understand how entrepreneurs – or, for that matter, established corporations looking to launch new business initiatives – can innovate around their business model in order to optimize their business success.

Why Do So Few Innovations See the Light of Day?

Less than one percent of all viable inventions or new-business concepts are ever successfully brought to market.  (We have no way of proving this bold hypothesis, but judging from extensive anecdotal evidence, it strikes us intuitively as being true.) Why do so few innovations ever see the light of day? We look at the excuses corporations use for not commercializing their innovations.

Building Shareholder Value With Internal Start-ups

Focusing on creating and growing shareholder value – something any business with outside shareholders ought to be doing – makes it clear why established enterprises should consider commercializing their new inventions and ideas more aggressively.

Venture Value Chain: Conceptual Framework for Building Successful New Businesses | PDF

Formally or informally, every successful new business venture – whether it's a standalone startup or an established corporation's new-product or new-market initiative – goes through a series of identifiable steps requiring significant and deliberate effort. Those steps are captured in a conceptual framework we call the Venture Value Chain. This new approach applies the paradigm of the value chain, well-accepted in other industries, to the process of conceptualizing, funding and building new technology-based companies.

What’s Your VQ? Understanding and Managing Venture Risk Using the Venture Quotient | PDF

Contrary to popular belief, the most successful entrepreneurs and venture investors are remarkably risk-averse people. It’s not that they shy away from risk. (Hardly... if they did, they wouldn’t be in the business-building business in the first place!) Rather, they’re simply very good at managing risk and mitigating risk. In fact, many will tell you that the key to building value in a new venture at each stage of development has to do with how good you are at controlling and steadily reducing business risk. The tricks the best startup folks use for navigating new venture risk can, as with so many things, be reduced to patterns and systems.This Executive Brief provides you with a straightforward tool for understanding and effectively managing the risks inherent in any new business. We call this tool the VQ, or Venture Quotient.

The Successful New Venture Development Process | PDF

This presentation provides an overview of the new venture development process as it progresses from the business planning stage, through launch, and into its high growth phase. The primary elements of the business planning process is presented along with how a consistent, repeatable methodology can help deliver superior results and reduce the new venture's overall risk.

Starting with the Customer First | PDF

Presented to the New Enterprise Forum in Ann Arbor in June 2006, this presentation discusses the key elements in go-to-market strategy, marketing execution, and reducing market risk.

Ann Arbor SPARK Special Forces Training

6 Week Intensive Business Planning Training, Ann Arbor SPARK, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Ann Arbor SPARK is teaming up with CompanyCrafters to provide a 6-week, intensive business planning training for high-potential start-up companies. This series of workshops and coaching is designed to lay the foundation of building great businesses and prepare the companies for the Michigan Pre-Seed Capital Fund and outside investor financing.

The SPARK Special Forces Training program focuses on creating a detailed business plan that can withstand the due diligence of angel and venture capital investors, and prepare the companies for Michigan Pre-Seed Capital funding. The goal of this program is not just to develop a business plan, but to lay the foundation of building a great business by making sure the company has a complete understanding of the market opportunity and needs, industry structure, business model alternatives, financial requirements, go-to-market plan, and risk mitigation strategy.

Through the “Science of Business Planning” process, CompanyCrafters will teach a structured set of analytical tools and take each company through the step-by-step process of constructing their business plan. Each company will develop key insights into their market, industry and business upon which they can develop a solid, well thought-out business strategy that is easy to communicate to investors.

What attendees are saying about Special Forces Training:

On the eve of our final Special Forces Training sessions next week, I wanted to thank both of you for the amazing transformation you’ve facilitated within the management team here at findatitle.  The positive impact you and CompanyCrafters have had on our company and our thinking at this critical point in our history would truly be difficult to overestimate.

I am a career entrepreneur nearly 30 years of startup experience.  I’ve been there, done that, and certainly utilized the professional services of a number of business consultants over the years.  But I have to tell you that I have never experienced anything quite like your “Special Forces Training.”  The practical, results-oriented methods and tools you have given us for stepping back and refocusing on our industry and our business are empowering us to see our future in a whole new light.  I shudder to think that but for the article I happened to see in the Oakland Business Review we might not have become a participant in your program.  As a business owner and resident of Michigan, thank you for this course and your contribution to the business community within our region.

- Jim Mooradian, Chief Executive Officer, findatitle, LLC

I came into the Special Forces Training pretty skeptical that I’d take much away. Coming from a top-5/10 MBA program (depending on the poll) and a stint at a top consultancy (where I’d spent 6 months in the Private Equity practice), I figured I’d be sitting through dry discussion of a lot of familiar frameworks. I was 100% wrong.

• You were able to expose us to a wealth of very practical, real-world entrepreneurial experience.
• You did a great job packaging it in a logical way so that flowed well and it wasn’t a set of disjointed anecdotes.
• You were able to give us help with our plan that has been specific, practical, meaningful, and creative.
• Finally, and not to be minimized, you’ve warned us of the emotional ups and downs of the process so that we’re better positioned to manage them.

In my opinion, we’re significantly farther along than we’d have been without your help. I also think we’re better positioned for eventual success than we would have been otherwise. And if the proposal doesn’t work out, the learning I’ve taken away will have made it more than worth the effort.

- Chad Johnston, Tuck class of 98 & Bain alum

A few thoughts to add from my vantage point (17 years in Big Pharma in varying finance roles; currently leader of Pfizer’s Michigan Research & Development Finance organization) on CompanyCrafters Special Forces Training:

• The Special Forces training is the type of immersion program that folks transitioning from Pfizer need.  Mike and Jim, through training and sharing real world entrepreneurial experiences, provide the bridge that is necessary to move from a Fortune 50 company to a mind set that leads to successful Life Science start-ups. 
• For successful outcomes, the Special Forces training is necessary to get “below the surface” and focus on what it really takes to create a team, business plan and the mind set that is takes to create a successful growth company 
• Jim and Mike rapidly moved up the pharmaceutical industry learning curve and taught us how to fully leverage our collective knowledge.  Their expertise in creatively building new business strategies, negotiating and partnering with investors and other key partners has positioned us for success.
• The Special Forces training goes beyond planning and launching a new business.  The program prepares a leadership team for success as a company moves through the various phases of growth.
• Beyond the classroom, Jim and Mike provided one-on-one coaching sessions and actively participated in meetings with key business partners (e.g. potential investors, etc)

Thank you for your personal commitment to our team and providing us with the opportunity to succeed!

- Gerry Cox, Senior Director, Pfizer

For information on the next Special Forces Training, please contact Skip Simms at Ann Arbor SPARK at 734-646-3173.

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