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Starting a Venture From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki Making the decision to enter entrepreneurship is one that sets you on a path strewn with risks and obstacles, but that can potentially offer immense rewards: a sense of freedom not to be found elsewhere in the workforce, the feeling of satisfaction and fulfilment at watching your business idea grow into a productive company, and the knowledge that your career is in your own hands rather than a boss or manager's. In the current economic climate, becoming an entrepreneur can seem particularly daunting; however, most established entrepreneurs agree that a recession is one of the best times to launch a startup. If the life that entrepreneurship offers is alluring to you and you are stepping on the path towards setting up a new enterprise, then it is important to gain an understanding of what is ahead of you – the challenges, the helping hands, the pitfalls, and above all, the goals. Read on to begin familiarising yourself with the process of starting up a venture. >>> Read more... >>>

Business Ideas If you are interested in entrepreneurship, the first thing you will need is to come up with and develop a business idea: What do you want to offer people? What do they need? What needs improving? How can you turn a problem into an opportunity for your venture? Look at some of the "hot topics" (such as Green Enterprises and Cloud Computing) to see if they offer any opportunities for you. >>> Business Ideas >>>

Opportunity Assessment It is crucial to be able to identify the best available opportunity by understanding the your market: you will need to conduct some form of industry analysis. You will also need to identify your potential customers and size up your competitors. There are different ways of approaching an analysis of each of these components. >>> Opportunity Assessment >>>

Team Who else is, or will be, involved in your business team: will you employ staff? Or will it centre more around a mentor? How will you approach a leadership role within that team dynamic? How will you manage your team no matter how you choose to structure your business? >>> Team >>>

Pitching If there is any skill that you as an entrepreneur would need to absolutely perfect, it is pitching. Whether it is a one-minute elevator pitch, or a presentation to potential investor, a good pitch can be what leads to the equity investment that helps get your business off the ground. >>> Pitching >>>

Business Plan A business plan is very important for potential investors, but also for yourself; it should provide a lot of information that is invaluable to both – your marketing and sales plan, financial projections, even your strategy for customer acquisition. >>> Business Plan >>>

Objectives and Strategy Any new business venture is going to need a clear vision for the future and a solid mission statement, but it is just as important to have well-researched strategies in place to help you achieve them. >>> Objectives and Strategy >>>

Finances and Funding If you know where to look, there is actually a wealth of sources for funding start-up businesses: bank loans and private equity investment, of course, but also grants, awards, and university schemes both locally and on a larger scale. >>> Finances and Funding >>>

Legal Issues Regardless of your business structure, the last thing you want is to put time, effort, and money into a new venture only to discover that you have forgotten about a crucial legal

concern. Make sure that you are familiar with the proper taxation procedures and any intellectual property rights or information technology legislation. >>> Legal Issues >>>

IT Services There is an overwhelming variety of IT Services which you can use to streamline your business, improving efficiency but often at a lower cost. However, finding out about these services, understanding the IT Terminology, knowing where to access them, and deciding which are trustworthy and which really aren't can be a difficult and confusing process; that is, if you don't have a starting point. >>> IT Services >>>

Growing a Venture From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki (Redirected from Growing Your Venture)

In order to raise your chances of continuing a successful venture, it is important to understand your business and all of the components that factor into running it. This includes not only the major events and key components, but also the crucial daily tasks which make up your venture. For example, Staying Strong in a Recession might require a different approach to running your enterprise, such as a change in Marketing, Business Strategy or Finances and Funding. You should not only familiarise yourself with the core activities of your venture, you should also make sure that you practice Networking and maintain connections which will lead you to success. These connections range from Venture Capital, Accountancy, and Legal Advisors all the way to the Recruitment of each employee involved in the Operations, Marketing, and distribution of your Product. Maintaining these connections involves a great deal of knowledge, motivation, and work on your part, but are essential to the success of your venture. >>> Introduction to Running a Business >>>

Strategy Just because you have gotten your venture off of the ground does not mean that you no longer need a Business Strategy. Your strategy should be continually evolving and you should be looking to innovate continually as it is this strategy that will enable your venture to change, improve, and succeed. >>> Business Strategy >>>

Sales, Marketing & PR The Sales, Marketing, and Public Relations aspects of your venture might seem like some of the more obvious components, unlikely to be forgotten or neglected due to their importance; however, just because they are remembered doesn't mean that they are being employed to their full potential. You should be continually involved in expanding your understanding and improving the Sales, Marketing, and Public Relations of your Product. >>> Sales, Marketing, PR >>>

Human Resources Although many entrepreneurs may start off on their own or in a small group or partnership (see Business Structure), once your venture reaches a point where you can no longer be responsible for the entirety of operations you will be required to build your Team through the Recruitment of additional staff. In order to manage your team you will need to focus on the Human Resources aspect of your business. >>> Human Resources >>>

Finance Raising Finance involves much more than Cash Flow issues; you may require further funding at some point in the life of your venture, and you will almost certainly need to track and manage the return expectations of your Venture Capital or interest payments on a Loans. You may require Accountancy services at some point, but you should also be familiar with Cash Flow projections and Financial Reports yourself. >>> Finances >>>

Legal Issues The importance of Legal Issues in Growing a Venture cannot be overstated; in addition to ensuring that you are aware of any Intellectual Property rights laws that are pertinent to your business, you should also be aware of the potential pitfalls or extra costs that Legal Advisors can incur, and how you might be able to avoid them. >>> Legal Issues in Growing a Venture >>>

Operations It can be easy to get caught up in the daily Operations of your business, and to find yourself trapped in a pattern of doing things. However, sometimes it can be beneficial to make changes to see what is most efficient and effective for your venture at that particular stage. You might also come across changes or events which may disrupt daily operations, such as the need to change Premises, improve your Supplier Management or streamline your IT Services. >>> Operations >>>

Suppliers You will have to decide which Suppliers can best provide you with the goods or services necessary to keep your venture running in the most efficient and productive way possible. You will need to think about Hardware Supply, Software Supply, perhaps even which Email Software to use or the most economical way to manage Printing; you might even require the Recruitment of specialist Software Engineers.

>>> Suppliers >>>

IT Services There is an overwhelming variety of IT Services which you can use to streamline your business, improving efficiency but often at a lower cost. However, finding out about these services, understanding the IT Terminology, knowing where to access them, and deciding which are trustworthy and which really aren't can be a difficult and confusing process; that is, if you don't have a starting point.

Team Management From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki Your team is an incredibly important aspect of your venture; even if you have not yet reached a point where you require a team of staff, it is a good idea to become familiar with points of team management. No matter how small your venture, you will have a team of people responsible for making it work, and even though they may not be paid employees, understanding how to work with that team will help make achieving success that much easier. Sometimes determining who is going to be involved in your team, how large it will be, and subsequently how to approach team management properly can be closely connected to the structure of your business, so when you are just starting out putting a decent amount of consideration into your business's structure is an important part of developing a strong, wellmanaged team in the future. If you are looking to start recruiting and hiring employees, then you are likely facing a fairly expensive and time consuming process; however, if it is done right it can offer your venture significant benefits. That said, even if you have managed to hire the perfect staff team, it is up to your team management to ensure that everything works smoothly, both on a daily basis and when facing more specific, one-off situations. There are some online services offering employee management for a cost, such as Employee Management Ltd in the UK, however with the right information, a small business or startup shouldn't need to pay money to manage a team that they can more than likely manage themselves.

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1 Employment Practice and the Law 2 Communication 3 Team Management Systems 4 Disciplining and Dismissing Employees o 4.1 Further Information 5 References

Employment Practice and the Law The best place to go to understand the employment laws in the country where you are setting up your venture is to the government website that outlines labour policies officially. For example, in the UK, Direct.gov offers UK citizens an official central resource for public service information, including information on employment terms and conditions.

Entrepreneurs in the U.S. or looking to expand to the U.S. would be advised to look at the U.S. Department of Labor website for information on employment law, while those in Canada can turn to the Human Resources and Skills Development Canada website. Of course, there are other websites that can help you understand Human Resource Management on a more international scale, such as HRM Guide International. If you know of a website or of contact information by which entrepreneurs can access employment laws in countries that have not been already mentioned, please add them. It is better to have an understanding of the employment laws and policies to which you must conform than to find yourself at the wrong end of a wrongful dismissal claim.

Communication If your team consists of a network of people who each require access to the internet and email, etc, then you may want to look into an applications and messaging server program such as Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Domino, which can offer you an internal e-mail service as well as other applications which can make managing communication within your team easier. There is also a freeware option available in the Unison Server, which may be the more appealing option for small businesses and startups that have teams that are still quite small. The Unison website also gives a more comprehensive outline of the benefits that the server offers and how it can help your venture.

Team Management Systems You may find it useful to turn to IT solutions and software to help you manage your staff or team. For example, you may want to use payroll software to reduce your administrative costs and speed up the payroll calculation process. If you are interested in finding out more about payroll software, BusinessLink offers a great deal of information on the benefits and drawbacks, including a guide to choosing the right software provider here. In addition, the HM Revenues and Customs website offers a PDF list of Payroll Standard accredited software products/services and suppliers. You may wish to consider options offered by providers such as Payroo, Iris, Accentra, and 12Pay. There are also time tracking software services which can help you estimate your project time, such as Magsoft, which offers its Timeless Time & Expense software to help users customise their time tracking to their particular venture. In addition, there are a number of Free Open Source Software (FOSS) options available to organise your small business or startup team, such as EGroupware, which offers, among other features, WebMail, an address book and calendar, ProjectManager, and TimeSheet, a time-tracker application. Another great available option is MindQuarry, which combines Team Management applications with task management, wiki knowledge management, and file-sharing.

Disciplining and Dismissing Employees Disciplining your employees is a potentially controversial aspect of team management; it is, again, important to be aware of your legal responsibilities in disciplining employees, but more than that, you should be familiar with etiquette and what is appropriate when it comes

to dealing with employee behaviour. Your main goal in disciplining your employee's conduct is not to punish them, but rather to improve their conduct or behaviour - you want your employees to come away from the experience with a recognition of what they have done wrong and a sense of how to adjust their conduct, not with a sense of injustice and a grudge towards you. Identifying when to discipline your employees is, in some cases, quite obvious, while in others the line of action to take can be vague. Out-Law.com suggests that "it is... essential to distinguish between capability issues which should be dealt with under a capability process and true disciplinary matters. Only allegations of misconduct should be dealt with by a disciplinary process." [1] However, it is also important that you address any issue of misconduct within a timely fashion. If you wait for too long, points out Robert Bacall of Conflict 911, you run the risk of "send[ing] a message that undesirable behavior will be accepted or even not noticed." [2] However, sometimes a problem with an employee reaches a point where progressive discipline has not had any effect and the misconduct has continued; sometimes the misconduct is of a nature that disciplinary action designed to improve the employee's conduct is not appropriate, such as theft. In such issues, you will have to consider dismissing the employee, and if this is the case it too must be done with sensitivity to both the law and to what is appropriate within the workplace. UK Employment law offers employers five reasons for fair dismissal of an employee: conduct, capability, redundancy, retirement, or a statutory requirement which the employee does not or no longer meets and which prevents them from continuing as an employee. However, keep in mind that these are only potentially valid reasons; you will be expected to show that you as the employer acted reasonably in dismissing the employee. You will also be expected to have familiarised yourself with appropriate statutory procedure for dismissal, and to have followed it directly. The same two expectations will apply to dismissals in any business in any country, not just in the UK.

Further Information For more information regarding the discipline and/or dismissal of employees, you can turn to one of the websites provided above to learn about employment law in your country, or read one of the following helpful sites. If you know of other websites offering advice, please add them here.    

Out-Law's Guide to Disciplining an Employee in the UK Conflict 911's Five Sins of Employee Discipline BusinessLink's article on Dismissing Fairly SmallBusiness.co.uk's guide to Firing Staff Legally

References 1. ↑ Out-Law.com Disciplining an Employee, 2005 [1] 2. ↑ Robert Bacall, Five Sins Of Discipline, Conflict 911.com