 
Entrepreneur GPS - How To Navigate An Idea To A Multi-Million Dollar Company Sale.

By Brad Paul

Copyright 2015 Brad Paul

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Market Research Your Idea

Chapter 2 - The Patent Application

Chapter 3 - Marketing Your Idea - Tell Everyone About It

Chapter 4 - The Accelerator Program Application

Chapter 5 - Your Funding Strategy and Attending the Accelerator

Chapter 6 - After the Accelerator and Launching of Your Product/Service

#

#

## INTRODUCTION

There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. We are living in a time like no other in our past, where an entrepreneur can take a simple idea to a billion dollar company sale in only a few years.

Here is what I am talking about; in 2015, Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer has no inventory, and Airbnb the world's largest accommodation provider owns no real estate.

And here are some examples of astronomical deals that went down in 2014; Facebook acquired WhatsApp – a messaging Smartphone app for $19 billion; Apple acquired Beats by Dre – a company that makes headphones for $3 billion; Google acquired Nest - a company that makes thermostats for $3.8 billion. And the thing is, WhatsApp, Beats and Nest didn't even exist 5 years ago

Let us take a quick closer look at Uber - Uber is a taxi booking Smartphone app. Uber has only been around for five years, and in 2015 Uber raised over a billion dollars in investment, giving itself a whopping $50 billion dollar valuation. Yes, that's fifty billion with a 'b'!

If you compare Uber to General Motors (GM) you can begin to get a clear picture of the sign of the times. At the time of writing in mid-2015, Uber had a larger valuation than GM – GM's valuation was only US$49 billion compared to Uber's $50 billion. Now here is where it gets interesting; GM has 212,000 employees, whereas Uber has 45 employees (although there are around 300,000 Uber drivers, they are not classified as employees). GM sells 8 million cars and trucks every year. Uber doesn't sell any products – it takes a commission on its taxi service. GM has 396 manufacturing plants and 21,000 dealers, whereas Uber has 90 offices.

This book is designed to teach you how to take a simple idea like Uber or WhatsApp and turn it into a multi-million dollar company in the shortest time possible. The unique feature of this book is its down to earth practicality. Here you are presented with simple, usable techniques, formulas and tasks, which you can easily apply - no matter what your background or skill level is. I urge you to study this book and apply the techniques and exercises outlined therein; and as you do, I feel absolutely convinced that you will turn your idea into a multi-million dollar successful company in a few short years.

Think of this book as your car GPS Navigation system, guiding you all the way to your final destination which is, 'the multi-million dollar sale of your company'.

Not only will you find directions in this book to help you along the way to your final destination, but you will also be supported by a 'driving instructor'. I have endeavored to explain the entrepreneurship journey, which you are about to embark on, in the simplest language possible – and that is why I have written in 'Dave the Driving Instructor'. Dave's voice pops up a few times a chapter to give you advice and tips in laymen's terms, so you can get to your destination quicker - and safely. Here is Dave the Driving Instructor now;

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

Hi I'm Dave, put your seatbelt on, you are about to go on quite a ride.

# WHAT TO EXPECT ON YOUR JOURNEY

In chapter 1 of this book we will show you how to take your idea for a test drive – it's called 'Market Research'. That means we will take you through some techniques to see if your idea has the potential to make you millions.

In chapter 2 we will show you how to write and submit a patent application to protect your idea. A patent will also give you confidence to tell others about your idea, without fear that someone else will rip it off and make millions out of it. You don't have to submit your patent application, but going through the patent preparation process will help you get clarity and detail on your product/service. You can choose at the end of the chapter if you actually want to go ahead and submit the patent application to a registered patent office somewhere.

In chapter 3 we will show you how to build and publish an awesome website in a few hours for free or next to nothing. We will also take you through some basic branding, and help you build social media accounts. Finally we will show you how you can register a US company in a few minutes for $180.

In chapter 4 we will show you how to find an awesome tech person and/or serial entrepreneur to join your team. If you are already a tech person – great! We will help you find a business person/serial entrepreneur. If you already have a team ready to go now – awesome! We will also show you in this chapter how to get the most value out of your team.

In chapter 5 we will show you how to prepare for an Accelerator – this is an entrepreneur education type of program that usually goes for three months, and run in thousands of cities around the world. Accelerator programs help entrepreneurs speed up their success – hence the name accelerator. The best part about an accelerator is not the fact that you will learn all about entrepreneurship, or even that they usually pay you between $20,000 to $150,000 to attend the program (in exchange for a small piece of your company), the best part of an accelerator is the mentors and networks you build during the program. These accelerator programs have only been around for around 10 years, but in the short time that they have been around they have had some amazing success stories. One particular accelerator program run out of San Francisco called Y-Combinator has a portfolio of companies that have graduated from their program with total valuations of over $40 billion dollars.

Graduates of accelerator programs with in excess of billion dollar valuations include Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe and many others. These companies will tell you that their success would not be possible without going through an accelerator program.

In chapter 6 we will help you raise money for your idea. We will run you through the variety of options you have to raise money from accepting investments from Angel Investors or Venture Capitalists, through to crowdfunding and government grants. We will also show you how to get your first sales in chapter 6. Then at the end of this chapter, we will explain how to grow your company as quickly as possible, and help prepare you for an exit – that is the sale of your company.

So now that you have an overview of the places you expect to stop at along the way, would you like to know next how long this journey is expected to take?

# HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO COMPLETE THIS JOURNEY?

Total time to get to your end destination – the sale of your company for tens of millions, is roughly two to three years. To get started with, to complete all the tasks and techniques outlined in the first three chapters, it should only take you between two to four weeks.

When you hit chapter 4 things are going to speed up a little. But at the same time it will take you a little longer to get to the destination at the end of chapter 4. That's because in chapter 4, all things going well, you will be attending one of those aforementioned accelerator programs.

So here are more details about how one of these accelerator programs works – and the formula is usually the same the world over, it doesn't matter what city it is held in. To begin with you apply for an accelerator on a website where they are all advertised, it is a bit like applying for a job; you answer some questions and fill out some forms. If you get accepted into an accelerator, an entity (company, trust, person, organization) will pay you a sum of money (usually around $20,000, but can be up to $250,000) to participate in the program for a set period (usually 3 months). In return you give a small percentage of your company to that entity (usually around 3-8%).

So yes, you get paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn about entrepreneurship for a few months. And as we mentioned earlier, you will also get immersed in the local investment and business community with past successful entrepreneurs teaching you 'all the tricks of the trade'. And all you have to do is turn up for three months, participate in the program's activities and events, and sell a small percentage of your company. Just to be clear, you are not giving up part of your company here, you are selling a part of it in exchange for cash, and priceless mentoring and connections.

In an accelerator the past successful entrepreneurs are labeled 'mentors'. Often these mentors have already completed all of the tasks and techniques we outline in this book. Many of the mentors have already sold their own companies for tens of millions of dollars too. Some mentors may not have sold their own start-up for large sums, but they may have risen to the top of the companies they work in. All of the mentors are keen to share with you that they've learnt from their personal journeys.

Once again here is the best part that we can't stress enough - mentors are valuable not only for imparting their wisdom and years of experience on you, but because they are also generally well connected. They are often connected to the biggest 'commerce movers and shakers' on the planet. The mentors in accelerator programs are connected to the people that will help you get to your ultimate goal – the sale of your company for in excess of twenty million dollars. The mentors will help you raise investment capital for you if you wish, or they'll introduce you to CEO's of massive companies, or they might even introduce you to the Entrepreneurship royalty like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak or Sir Richard Branson. If you sign a mentor to your advisory team, they will also give you ongoing advice on navigating the details of making deals, securing funding, and everything else you need to do on your way to the sale of your company

The accelerator programs are also full of stimulating and engaging stuff like weekly dinners at mentors' houses or workplaces; parties; pitch events; networking events; famous guest speaker sessions; public speaking courses, and so on and so forth.

We will go into more detail about the value of accelerator programs when we hit the accelerator program chapter in chapter 5.

# DO I HAVE TO ATTEND AN ACCELERATOR PROGRAM?

The thought of spending three months full time in one of these accelerator programs, possibly on the other side of the world to where you live, may sound like a big commitment to some (accelerators are not held in every city on earth – well not just yet anyway!)

Perhaps you have a full-time job and there is no way you can get three months off to attend this accelerator. Perhaps you have a young family, and you can't commit around 30-40 hours a week for three months to attend an accelerator. Perhaps you are a student now, and you only have six months left to complete your qualification, so there is no way you would stop your studies this far in, to attend an accelerator program.

Of course we are not telling you to give up what you've worked hard for in your life - you don't have to attend an accelerator program if you don't want to. However if you do want to get to your destination quicker, that is the sale of your company for at least eight to nine figures, then you will have to eventually give up whatever it is you do now, and devote yourself full-time to your company. By going through an accelerator program as your first step to a full-time commitment to your company, you will give your company the best chance of success.

To repeat - that full-time commitment doesn't have to start until you get into an accelerator program. When you complete all the tasks and techniques outlined the first three chapters of this book, and after you begin to see some traction with your business idea, and after you get into an accelerator you will be ready to commit to your company full-time then.

By the start of chapter 4, after you've been accepted into an accelerator, you won't need me to convince you that you should quit everything to focus full-time on your company - you will see this for yourself.

Without devoting yourself to an accelerator and to your company full-time you will have what's called a 'lifestyle business'. If you only want a lifestyle business, then that's fine. A lifestyle business might even make you some decent regular revenue, and earn you tens of thousands a year. Maybe your lifestyle business even runs itself with little effort from you. But if you want to scale your company to a multi-million dollar sale in the shortest time possible, at some point you will have to go at it full-time. But as we said, you don't need to worry about going at your business idea full time until you get accepted into one of those accelerator programs.

And here's another big thing you need to be aware of right away about accelerator programs - the accelerator program you attend should be in a start-up hotspot, and this could possibly be on the other side of the world where you live now.

By start-up hotspot, we mean a place where there is a vibrant investment and business community that supports start-ups. A start-up hotspot is also a place where Governments support companies with tax incentives, or funding programs or the like. Finally a start-up hotspot is a place where many companies have sold for eight to ten figures recently, and where there are lots of what is called 'Unicorn' Companies. A unicorn company is a company with a valuation of more than $1 billion. When someone came up with the phrase 'Unicorn company' about 20 years ago, there were only a small handful of companies with valuations over a billion dollars – hence the name Unicorn. Now there are hundreds of these Unicorn companies all over the world, but most of them are based on the West Coast of the United States of America. Unicorn companies are important for cities because it gives local investors and business people confidence in those cities to support and invest in other start-ups so they too one day can be a unicorn.

In addition to having Unicorns, investors, and big business movers and shakers, a start-up hotspot will have thousands of people immersed in the world of start-ups such as high powered lawyers, politicians and governments with support systems in place like grants, and tax incentive schemes. A start-up hotspot will also have high net worth individuals, and thousands of different companies of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds all trying to make a success of their ideas, just like you are doing now.

These start-up hotspots include almost anywhere in the United State of America, London, Israel, Germany and a few other places which you might not expect such as Chile, and Singapore.

By attending an accelerator program in area's outside of these start-up hotspot zones, your journey is most likely going to take you much longer. Think of these hotspots like they are the Olympic games host cities – if you want to win at the Olympic Games you have to go where the Olympic games are held and compete in them right? Similarly, if you want to win in the Entrepreneur games you are going to have to go to where the Entrepreneur games are held (that is start-up hot spot cities) and compete in them.

Do you agree you are not going to win a gold medal at the one-hundred metre sprint at the Olympics by sitting at home on your couch, or competing in the race on Skype or teleconference? Then this also applies to Entrepreneurship.

Although we have fantastic tools to facilitate communications such as the internet, Skype, Wechat, Whatsapp, email, and Smartphone's, the fact is the entrepreneur games are held every minute of every day in places like Silicon Valley, in London, in New York, and in Tel Aviv. And you have to physically be in these cities to compete in the games.

# TO SUPPORT YOU ON YOUR JOURNEY, THE MOST IMPORTANT TOOL YOU'LL NEED IS THE INTERNET.

The Internet is the number one reason why we are living in such good entrepreneurial times. Without the Internet, companies would never be able to grow so quickly and get their massive valuations and exits, and make millions of people millionaires!

Perhaps you've heard that the best form of advertising for a product or service is called 'word of mouth'. In the past, before the Internet and TV and radio, 'word of mouth' about a product or service spread slowly from village to village and city to city over a long period of time.

But hey it's now the roaring twenty teens! Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and many other online advertising/social media agencies, essentially enable 'word of mouth' to spread like a virus online in minutes. So nowadays, the best products and services can grow rapidly and sell tens of thousands in a very short period of time.

If you don't have regular access to the Internet, I might as well ask you to complete this entrepreneurial journey on foot. Can you imagine me asking you to go to New York, and enter Los Angele's on the GPS navigation system on your Smartphone, and then tell you that you have to walk the entire way? How long do you think it would take you to walk? Do you think you would safely arrive at your destination?

Not only is the Internet going to be your vehicle on this entrepreneurial journey, but it is also going to be your best friend, sitting right alongside you in the passenger seat, supporting you all the way. The Internet is also going to be your mother, your father, your siblings, your teacher, your lecturer, and your mentor on this journey too. Whilst you are on this entrepreneurial journey, you'll be able to 'call them up' at anytime for advice. Please do not be afraid to consult the Internet at anytime for advice and help about anything we raise in this book. For example if you want to see a current list of these start-up hotspot cities we mentioned earlier, then simply go to your internet search engine, and enter something like "what are the top 20 start-up hotspot cities".

If we raise a topic or subject which you don't know a lot about, then go to the Internet and look it up, and learn more about it. Use the Internet to learn and discover more, anytime, anywhere. Here is another example of how you should use the internet to support you whilst you are reading this book – in chapter three we will take you through a quick branding exercise. We will tell you why it is important at this time to do some basic branding, and we will help you form a branding board, and give you a bunch of examples of good branding versus bad branding. But we won't go into much detail about the science behind branding, and how all the different parts intertwine with each other. That's because a lot of the time, there are plenty of good videos, books or websites out there, that can explain the 'how to do something' part better than we can. Remember we are providing you with a navigation system here, we are not providing you with a history of every building, or landmark or sightseeing attraction that you pass along the way. And we are not providing you with the car either. Put simply, if you want to learn more about anything we pass on the way, then "Google it!"

You can use whatever device you want to get your Internet access, a desktop PC, a laptop, a Smartphone or a tablet. Any will do. If you don't have internet at your home or work place that you can easily access at anytime, then do whatever you have to do to get it!

So if you have the internet (which like we said is your car, your teacher and your companion), and you have this book as your navigation system, then you are ready to begin this entrepreneurial journey.

But don't you want to know a little bit first about all the wonderful places you will stop at along the way?

After all this is not just a drive up to your local shops for a loaf of bread. This is a cross-state, cross-country and for some, possibly a 'cross continent journey' of a lifetime we are about to embark on here. Your life will never be the same again after you've read this book, and carried out the tasks and exercises we outline herein. Of course your life will never be the same after you get tens of millions into your bank account after you sell your company that you are about to begin with from one small idea!

Begin now, today, start your engines, and declare your entrepreneurship games open! All you need is one small idea to start this journey of a lifetime.

## CHAPTER 1: MARKET RESEARCH YOUR IDEA.

It's time to begin your entrepreneurial journey. Right now you are parked in your driveway with an idea. You are not even sure if your idea is going to get you to the end of your driveway, let alone out on the street and on your way to a multi-million dollar company valuation and sale.

Before you embark on your entrepreneurial journey here, the first thing you need to do is enter your destination into the Entrepreneur Navigation System.

Here is the city you are to enter; 'The sale of your company'.

The street address is '50,000 sales of your idea every month'.

Or in other words, to get to the sale of your company for in excess of $20 million dollars, you are going to have to move 50,000 of your product or service a month (based on your idea) for up to one year.

If you have an idea for physical product, that is something you can hold and touch, then your goal is to sell around 50,000 units a month consecutively for up to one year.

If you have a non-tangible idea, such as software, or apps or a service, then your goal is to get users - lots of them- 50,000 of them a month for a year. Your goal is to grow your user base exponentially for a year up to at least 50,000 and then hold it for at least 6 months in a row.

So the magic numbers here are 50,000 a month for a year – whatever your idea is. Remember the magic number now – 50,000 a month. Repeat it, write it down on a piece of paper and stick it up above your work desk or on your fridge. You could even turn the words '50,000 sales a month' into your mantra for your meditation if you like. The point is you need to remind yourself every day that this is your ultimate goal.

So why 50,000 sales a month? We have studied thousands of companies acquired by global giants in the last ten years, and we have noticed some similarities. The majority of companies acquired early on in their life cycle (that is between 2-5 years) for in excess of $20 million dollars, were moving around this 50,000 figure a month for at least six months prior to acquisition. And they were growing these figures month on month by 10 per cent or more. Many of these companies moving these large monthly numbers had also raised investment capital to help them get their large valuations and sales, but not all of them. We'll go into more detail about raising investment in Chapter 4 as an aid to push up company valuations, and to help you get a quick sale. Right now we want to keep the focus on the 50,000 a month sales figure.

Moving 50,000 product or services (users) a month might sound a bit impossible right now, but that's the point of this book. If you follow the advice, techniques and tasks herein, then the impossible will soon become possible - within one to two years you will find yourself on a path moving 50,000 units a month, and growing this figure month on month.

Then, as you approach the magical 50,000 a month numbers, big companies will begin coming at you to make offers to buy your company for tens of millions of dollars. The toughest part of your job will then be deciding which multi-million dollar offer to take.

So now that we have entered your destination on your navigation system, it's time to introduce Dave the Driving Instructor –

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

ADJUST YOUR SEAT AND CHECK YOUR REAR VISION MIRRORS, THEN GET YOUR INTERNET READY, IT'S TIME TO GET MOVING!

At this time we assume you already have an idea of what you want to pursue on this entrepreneurial journey. If you don't have an idea yet, then please get one before reading on.

Of course without an idea you can still read on. But this book will take on more purpose if you have a clear idea of what it is that you want to navigate to your twenty million dollar plus payday.

If you are struggling with an idea to pursue right now, then there are plenty of books out there that will help you to think of one.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

TRY GOOGLING, 'GOOD ENTREPRENUER BOOKS', OR 'THE LEAN START-UP' AND SEE A LIST OF BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS LIKE THE 'LEAN START-UP' TO HELP YOU WITH YOUR IDEA GENERATION.

If you don't have an idea yet then; 'find a problem and solve it with your idea'. This might sound a bit simplistic, but it is how most entrepreneurs start out on their journeys to success.

There are so many problems in the world today that haven't been solved yet. When you stop and think about a lot of things in your life, you might be surprised why 'we haven't thought of that yet'.

For example why can we lock and unlock car doors with key fobs, yet we can't do this in our home?

Why can we receive letters to our homes with letterboxes, but we can't receive large parcels to our homes when we are not there?

Why do we have to go to a mechanic or tire shop to change our tires – why can't they come to us?

Sure, maybe you've heard of a solution to the above, but unless it's gone mainstream, and it hasn't been adopted in a big way, then it's most likely that someone hasn't got the solution perfect just yet. But you can get it perfect!

When you think of an idea, it really helps if you're passionate about your idea too. For example if you don't like cars, and if you're not passionate about cars, then there is no point pursuing a mobile tire shop franchise. You are going to need passion to keep you motivated on this journey we are about to begin.

So if you have an idea, and you're passionate about that idea, then let's get moving. The first obstacle to get past so you can take your idea out for a test drive, is your friends and family.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

CONSULT YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY ABOUT YOUR IDEA AS PART OF YOUR FIRST STEP IN MARKET RESEARCH.

Your friends and family are honest, caring and helping people right? So they should be able to help you out with your new idea. But the other characteristic about your friends and family, which you're interested in exploring right now, is their natural ability to be CRITICAL of you.

Right now you need people to be critical of your idea for a few reasons. Firstly you are going to have to handle plenty of criticism on your entrepreneurial journey, so you might as well start getting used to it now with your friends and family.

Secondly your critical friends and family may give you some ideas on how to improve your idea, or on how to address your idea's problem in a completely different way. Maybe your friend will say; 'that's a fantastic idea'; or; 'perhaps you should speak to my friend 'so and so, he does this and that, and he might even be able to help you. Maybe a family member will say, 'have you thought about having this or that to help with your idea'. Or your friends and family might even say that they read about an idea like that in an online journal or newspaper last week, or something like that.

Your friends and family may cut you down immediately, they may be rude and blunt, and they might even think you are bonkers if you are interested in following your idea for one reason or another.

So if you can get past your critical friends and family about your idea, and still feel confident that you are onto something, then you have actually passed your first entrepreneurial test.

When you approach your friends and family about the problem you want to solve with your idea, tell them in a subtle way. Ask them what they think of your idea as a means to solve a problem. But don't own your idea yet. Don't go boasting about your idea, saying it's going to be 'the best thing since the Internet', or you are 'going to make millions out of it' or anything like that. Just be really casual about the idea as a solution to a problem, and ask for your friends and families opinion about it.

For example at a BBQ or at dinner you might want to say to your family or friends, "oh I had this experience today that's so frustrating, I was thinking wouldn't it be great if we had (insert your idea) as a solution.

What you are doing here is a little market research exercise with the people you trust the most - your friends and family. As we mentioned, perhaps they will be helpful, perhaps they will be critical - perhaps they won't be either. Whichever way you look at it, not only are friends useful for market research for your entrepreneurial idea, but they may also be helpful to build your confidence too - your friends and family may give you suggestions about how to improve your idea too – and some of them may even give you plenty of encouragement.

Remember, the last thing you want to do right now is tell your friends and family that you are sure you are going to make millions or billions out of your idea. You don't want to tell your friends and family that your idea is your own personal brilliant idea and you are going to give up your job to pursue it. And you are going to be super rich, and the next time you see them, you will call them from your massive yacht in the Bahama's or Monaco harbor, or something like that. Remember be subtle and casual about your idea at this time. You don't want to give away too much about your idea yet either – in the next chapter we'll show you how you can write a patent to protect your idea, and to thrash out all the details – and then after that you can tell the world about your brilliant idea.

After you have discussed 'the' idea with your friends and family, then you are ready to leave the driveway and get out on the street and put your foot down. Your Navigation system or your Entrepreneur Global Positioning System(EGPS) is talking to you now.

# EGPS SAYS;

AT THE END OF YOUR DRIVEWAY, TAKE A RIGHT DOWN; 'MARKET RESEARCH ONLINE' LANE.

Whilst you are asking friends and family about your idea over a couple of weeks, start researching it on the Internet too.

Before we go too far on this journey there are a few important things you need to discover online right now. The first one is 'has your idea been done before?'

Now 'has your idea been done before' is a very sweeping statement as there is a good chance that someone on the other side of the world has already thought of the same idea as you before. But the big question here is 'have they acted on this idea yet?'

If you ask any successful entrepreneur anywhere around the world, or anyone that teaches in Entrepreneurship about 'new ideas', then they'll probably tell you that there are 'no new ideas anymore'. They will probably tell you that everything that could possibly be thought of before has actually been thought of already. But the entrepreneurial journey is all about acting and executing on an idea, rather than simply coming up with one.

For some people, these statements about "no new ideas left in the world" may come as a surprise. Maybe you have had this idea in your mind that you want to pursue right now for a few a years, and that's why you are reading this book – because you finally want to act on your idea, and you have already been quietly researching your idea online for the last year or two, and you are one hundred per cent convinced that no-one has thought of this idea before. But as we said, 'thinking' of an idea, and 'acting' on an idea are two very different things.

Here is the thing - thousands of people have probably already thought of your idea before, but you are going to be the first one to act on it! And most importantly, you will be the first to act on the idea successfully and make a lot of money out of it!

So spend at least ten hours searching online over the next couple of weeks to try and find people or companies that have 'thought of your idea before' (or something similar). If you find something online similar to your idea, it means that someone has already and acted on that idea by putting up something on the internet in some shape or form'. For example you might find a short video on YouTube with a similar idea to yours. Perhaps you will find a website from a small business on the other side of the world with a similar idea to yours. Maybe you will find an online journal article with reference to a published patent that is somewhat similar to your idea.

If you do find someone or some company that has thought of and acted upon an idea similar to yours, then you want to try and improve on it. You want to show how your idea is different - most important you want to show how your idea is better than theirs.

For example if you find a similar idea online, start asking yourself these questions - how could your idea make someone else's similar idea;

•cheaper

•faster

•more reliable,

•lighter

•more effective

•more convenient

•more user friendly

•more fun

•safer and so on and so forth.

These differences you think of now are important for you in the next chapter – the Patent application chapter – so write the answers down now, and keep asking yourself these types of aforementioned questions. Think of other questions you can ask yourself right now that can make your idea better than anything similar. And as you think of answers to the questions above – did we mention before - write them down!

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

IT'S SO VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU DOCUMENT EVERYTHING ABOUT YOUR IDEA RIGHT NOW. WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN! TAKE NOTES IN A SCRAPBOOK; TYPE INTO A WORD DOCUMENT; RECORD YOUR THROUGHTS AND IDEAS ON A SMARTPHONE VOICE RECORDING APP; DRAW PICTURES; BOOKMARK WEBSITE LINKS WITH SIMILAR IDEAS – JUST GET IT ALL DOWN NOW!

Now is a good time to get some sort of documentation process going for your idea! If you have some drawing skills, sketch your ideas in a scrap book. Scribble notes in a scrap book. Cut website stories into a scrapbook. Start an Excel spreadsheet – which could be in a scrapbook. If you have studied at University before, then write a research paper about what you find or anything you can think of.

Write down sentences with more questions, such as 'what if we added this <insert technology/button/page> here, would it make the product/service more <cheaper/easy to install/run faster>, and so on and so forth.

Record everything in a way that you feel comfortable with right now. Jot down whatever inspirations or ideas come into your mind. Don't be afraid to write it down, no matter how silly or strange it might seem at first. Think of it like a personal diary if you need to. Just get it all down!

One reason to write down ideas is to encourage your brain to keep thinking of more new ideas. The other reason you want to write down your ideas now is that as quickly as an idea comes into your head, you can forget it in the same amount of time.

As you carry out market research on your idea through friends, family and the internet, you are giving real energy out to the universe for the first time to your idea.

Before now your idea was just in your mind, now it's being released to the universe through documentation. And when you give energy to an idea through documenting it, it's a bit like you have just turned up the heat on a boiling pot of water, and more related ideas are bubbling up above the surface now. You need to capture all these new bubble thoughts about your idea', especially ones that you'd never considered before, and write them down - before they pop!

Yes, you could be taking a walk, having a glass of wine or sitting in the bath, and suddenly you get an idea for how to make your product/service work better. Perhaps you want to put a notebook and pen next to the bath tub so you're ready to record your new thoughts and idea. Or maybe you want to get a waterproof phone and record your ideas by talking into an app (this may be a worthwhile expense if you get all your ideas in the bathtub!).

It doesn't matter what method you prefer for documentation – just get it all down – we can't repeat this enough.

If you find a video on YouTube, or a Chinese company with a similar idea to yours, or if you meet a person with a similar idea to yours at conference or at a bus stop, or wherever, then this is generally a good thing. You are already naturally using the 'Rules of Attraction' concept in your mind to pull similar thoughts and ideas to your idea.

When you do find a video, or a website, or person with a similar concept or idea to yours, then take note of all the words they use when they talk about the idea. How do they describe their product/service? Take these new keywords and enter them in your internet search engine and see what more new things you can find out about them. And keep on researching online and with friends and family at the same time.

Perhaps you found a website trying to solve the exact same problem as you are trying to solve, but with a completely different product. This is good, as you can use their material (e.g. tag-lines, benefit descriptions, keywords etc) to help you think of more ideas. You can also use this material for your patent application in the next chapter. If you find any website with similar idea's to yours, then ask yourself the following questions;

•How have they described their product in their tag-line (their short one sentence description of their idea)?

•What parts are they using in their product/service that is similar to your idea?

•How is everything laid out on the website?

•Does everything line up and make sense to you?

•Can you determine where they got the parts/other ideas from?

•Are their screenshots for apps or software lame or great? (if your you have a software or app idea).

•How could anything be improved?

Remember to bookmark/add to favorites all the website/video links you come across right now – even if they are remotely related to your idea. You will need them later for your patent application too.

After a few hours or a few days of your market research asking questions repeatedly in your mind, and documenting everything, you're likely to reach this point where you feel more inspired than ever to make your idea a success, or perhaps you may even feel completely the opposite – that is uninspired, and ready to give it all in.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

DON'T LET YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND GET THE BETTER OF YOU IN THIS MARKET RESEARCH PROCESS WITH NEGATIVE THOUGHTS.

It is completely natural for your mind to be negative and critical of what you are doing right now. Perhaps you're having negative thoughts such as, 'I know nothing about the industry I'm about to get into, and I'll just be wasting my time trying to pursue my idea'.

Just remember this is your natural subconscious mind trying to stop you - you need to be aware of this, and don't allow your subconscious mind to get the upper hand. Your subconscious mind has taught you not to take risks in your life, especially when it formed when you were a kid so that you can survive up until now. For example, when you grew up you taught your subconscious mind to not cross the road until there were no cars. You taught your subconscious mind not to leap off cliffs/hills without looking what was at the bottom, and so on and so forth. So your subconscious mind is trying to tell you now not to take a risk with your idea right now as it 'could be dangerous'. But that is the whole point of why you are on this entrepreneurial journey - you want to be different from most other people, and you are prepared to take a risk. And most importantly, unlike others, you are prepared to act on your idea now.

So don't accept your unconscious mind telling you that it will be impossible for you to make your idea a success. Maybe you are thinking some of the thoughts below – and you have to work hard to block them out;

•There must be a law or something like that that will restrict my idea becoming a success. And that is why nobody has ever had success with it before.

•I just spoke to an IT person and an engineer and they seem to think that constructing my idea is pretty much impossible.

•It might take 50 brilliant engineers working full-time for 2 years to turn my idea into a product I can sell. And I'm going to need millions of dollars to pay and find those 50 brilliant engineers.

•I am going to need a massive marketing and publicity budget to get my idea 'out there', and 'off the ground'.

•I just read this online journal article with a description of a patent application from Google or Apple from ten years ago who attempted to build my idea, but they failed, so how in hell can I make it a success?

•If Apple or Google couldn't build it then with infinite resources and billions of dollars behind them, or they can't even build it now, then how on earth am I going to do it?

If after two to three weeks of market research, you get of any of the above thoughts, or something similar, or you are simply feeling uninspired, or overwhelmed by it all, please just say to unconscious mind, "I don't accept any of this", and keep pushing on. Now is the time to let your passion come into play.

This is also your first test in developing the skill of 'persistence'. Persistence is one of the most important skills you are going to have to learn quickly on this entrepreneurial journey to make your idea a success. Most successful entrepreneurs will tell you one of the most important attributes for success is persistence. Without going into too much theory here about the reasons for why persistence is so important, listen to a quote from Steve Jobs Apple Co-Founder;

"I am convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is persistence".

Now there could be a perfectly good reason why no one has turned your idea into a successful product or service before. There could even be thousands of reasons why no-one has made a success of your idea, or something similar before. But it's not your mind's job to figure out the why this is so. Most importantly it's not your mind's job to tell you it can't be so either.

If you are still not convinced about some of the reasons why nobody has had success with a similar idea to yours before, then here are a few suggestions below;

•In this day and age big companies and Universities are finding it more and more difficult to be innovative. They are so wound up in their culture, and in their current sales processes and/or meeting Key Performance Indicators(KPI), and/or saving money, that often research and development and innovative activities get left behind.

•Often one of the biggest challenges when building a product or service is making it user friendly and simple to use. It is very easy to complicate things. Quoting Steve Jobs again,

'you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple'

•Maybe the formula wasn't quite right for others before you. Sometimes Hollywood movie studios can have what appears on paper to have the perfect formula for the success of a movie (e.g best script based on a best-selling book; best crew; best actors; huge budgets etc), but it turns out to be a flop. Often it's hard to put your finger on one reason or another of why something hasn't worked out in the past, other than to say 'the formula wasn't quite right'.

•Perhaps it just wasn't the right time for a similar idea to yours two years ago, or five years ago. But now the time has come for your idea. Look to the words of Victor Hugo here, he once said,

'all the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come'.

•Many new ideas that have the potential to make millions or billions are often hidden from the world and not acted upon, because the ideas may actually cannibalize the company that thought of them. A classic example of this is the digital camera. We won't say too much here about this, other than Google 'Kodak history of digital cameras' if you want to read an amazing story about how the digital camera invention was hidden inside Kodak for about ten years, as the executives knew that the invention could make them lose business. And of course they were right because Kodak ended up going bankrupt in 2011 as it failed to capitalize on the emergence of the digital camera.

If after reading this section, you are still convinced that your idea has been done before, and you really don't want to run with it anymore, and then let your passion about the idea decide if you want to abandon it. If you are not feeling passionate about your idea at this time or if you find a completely different idea in your market research that you are suddenly feeling more passionate about, then go back to the start of this chapter and start again with your new idea. Now is the time to reboot and try new ideas before you get too deep into it all.

So how do you know you are passionate enough about your idea? One of the best ways to determine your passion is to hear it naturally in your voice and defense if someone criticizes your idea. For example if a family member says to you, "that is the most stupid idea I've ever heard of", and suddenly you find yourself raising your voice, and really defending your idea, then you may have enough passion in you already to make your idea a success - so hold on to your idea and keep going with it!

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

AS YOU CONTINUE ON YOUR MARKET RESEARCH, START NOW TO COMPILE DETAILS ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT IN YOUR DIARY OR DOCUMENTATION.

For example, how much do you think you are going to charge for your product/service? How much is it going to cost to make? If it's an app or software, are you going to charge a download fee? What is your business model? How are you going to make money from your idea?

You may need to go to the online app stores and research what similar apps sell for. Perhaps if you have a Smartphone app then it's going to be free and there is another revenue model for your app such as advertising, or online affiliate commission programs. Google 'business model examples' to learn more.

A good way to get an idea of costs for a physical product is to go to big ecommerce websites like Alibaba.com or Amazon, and enter the name of your part and see what comes up. It's not much point solving a problem with a product or service that nobody can afford. Alibaba or Amazon or online stores like them, will help you with rough ideas of the costs of the parts of your product (if your idea is a physical product). Your idea could simply be a similar idea already on the market but for say a tenth of the price.

But don't be tempted to buy any of these parts right now, or build your product – we will go through building your product in detail in Chapter 4. You may change your ideas, or develop your idea a hundred times over the next month or two, and so if you order all the parts or attempt to build the idea at sometime before you get to Chapter 4, then you would have wasted your time and money.

Just keep being focused on asking lots of different questions to yourself now about your idea - if you have a technical product or service, what are the technologies you are going to use?

Often some of the best ideas are combinations of existing ideas or technologies. If you are fascinated by a technology, a concept or a service, or even a few different technologies, then great – in this day and age there is a good chance you could combine the different technologies together to solve a real world problem.

If you find yourself excited by a particular technology, get online and learn more and more about it now. Learn what the technology can do, and how it may fit into your idea. Ask yourself - what can you combine this technology that I'm excited by, with something else to make my idea better? How has the technology been used in other products?

Should you perhaps be joining online forums, meet-up groups, attending start-up events, writing questions to people/companies/hackers online to learn more about the technologies in your product?

Once again, we repeat - as you continue researching your product, please don't attempt to make your product at this time. By all means, draw, sketch, join bits and pieces together on paper, write stuff down and gather information, and think about how it's all going to work, but whatever you do, don't build it yet, and as we mentioned, you will probably change your idea at least a dozen times before you are ready to build it. That will come in chapter 4. We don't have time to build your idea yet either. We have to hurry to get you ready for your patent application in the next chapter – you have to protect your idea, before anyone else beats you to it.

There is a common expression used in the world of entrepreneurship to describe what we are doing now, and that is we are building a picture of your idea, so that you can, "fake it till you make it". We are essentially going to show you how to fake it, like you've made it, right up until the start of Chapter 5. If you attempt to make your product or service now, then, like we mentioned earlier, you will just waste your money, and you will also be wasting your time. Both your money and your time are very valuable resources on this part of the entrepreneurial journey – you need to respect your time and money at all times.

Now we are nearly at the end of our destination for this the market research chapter, but we have one last street to turn down before we can move to 'write your patent chapter', and so your Navigation system says;

# EGPS SAYS;

AT THE NEXT SET OF TRAFFIC LIGHTS, TURN LEFT DOWN 'LEARN ABOUT YOUR FUTURE POTENTIAL CUSTOMER STREET WITH SURVEYS.

You need to work out right now who your customers are going to be, and if they are actually going to pay money for your idea. You may not know who your customer is right now, so you are going to talk to who you 'think' it is right now.

When you think you know who your customer is, then you need to go to them and ask lots of questions about your idea. In the world of entrepreneurship this is called the 'Market Research your idea by getting out of the building and talking to your customers stage', or the 'Primary Market Research stage'.

Think about who is going to eventually buy your product. Is it going to be a company or a person? Who is your end user? Who will pay you? Who will you send the invoice too? Who has your money temporarily in their pocket, and how are you going to get it into your pocket? Maybe the end user is not actually going to be the person who is going to pay for your product/service?

You can ask questions to your potential customers in a formal or informal way – it's totally up to you what you feel comfortable with right now.

Often this entrepreneurial journey will be about getting outside your comfort zone, and taking some risks, so if you're feeling brave right now, and ready to give it a go, pick up the phone and make 100 phone calls to your potential customers, and ask them questions – just chat to them.

If you want to be more formal - you can write up a survey sheet of a dozen questions or so for your potential customers, and get a clipboard, and go around and knock on the doors of your potential customers and ask them for a couple of minutes of their time to answer some survey questions.

You can go on a website like surveymonkey.com and prepare a list of questions and email your friends and family and ask them to forward the survey link on to your future 'potential customers'.

Or if you are not that comfortable in getting out of your comfort zone, but you are a social person, then perhaps you could strike up a few questions in a conversation at a party to someone that could possibly be your future potential customer.

You could stand out in a shopping mall and ask people questions walking past. If you need to break the ice, then you could say you're a doing a course in business management, and you are doing an assignment on a business idea, and you just need two minutes of their time to ask them some simple questions.

It's up to you how you approach your future potential customers. The main points of this exercise it to find out things from your potential customers like;

•How much would your customer be prepared to pay for a product/service like yours?

•What are they paying now for a less superior service?

•How do they think the problem could be solved?

•Have they thought about some of your ideas before? (Remember to not give too much away about your idea until you have finished chapter 2 – write the patent).

•Does the problem you are trying to solve keep them up at night?

•Is it dangerous?

•Is it costing them lots of money on a regular basis?

•Is it just inconvenient?

•If your customer was living in a perfect world with access to unlimited cash, what would they do/build/subscribe to?

After talking to ten, fifty or a hundred potential customers, you may start to see some sort of patterns emerging. For example your potential customers might all tell you a similar problem with a piece of software they are currently using. Write these patterns down. If you like doing graphs on Microsoft Word, maybe you want to a little analysis report about your surveys.

The most important thing right now is to have all the notes compiled in some organized way, as you are going to use them in the next chapter for your patent application. You will also use these notes in Chapter 4 when writing your business plan Executive Summary, which you will use for applying to accelerator programs. And by having the notes organized, it might help you get more new ideas about your product/service too.

When you reach a stage where you feel confident that you've got enough material from your surveys and your market research to write two paragraphs about your idea, without thinking too much about it, then congratulations you have reached the end of your market research stage.

Try it now – write two paragraphs about your idea without thinking too much based on all the exercises and tasks from this chapter– just let it flow.

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Set a goal for your idea – that is moving 50,000 units a month for one year. Write it down somewhere and review it every day.

Get an idea that solves a real world problem

Consult your friends and family about your idea, but don't "own it" yet.

Get online and carry out searches about your idea, or anything related to your idea.

Document everything – write everything down that you learn, see, find.

Don't let your negative unconscious thoughts get the better of you.

Carry out market research surveys to your potential customers.

## Chapter 2 – The Patent application

YOUR LOCATION – Finished Market research on your idea

DESTINATION AT END OF CHAPTER – completed a draft patent application and you have considered submitting it to a registered Patent Office

DIRECTION OPTIONS - via Google Patents search; a patent attorney.

TIME TO TAKE TO GET TO DESTINATION END OF CHAPTER - 2 weeks without traffic.

# EGPS SAYS:

START NAVIGATION

So you have just finished performing the role of a market researcher - now it's your time to be an inventor!

You should consider submitting a patent application of your idea to the US patent office (or a patent office in your country) as soon as possible so that you can get peace of mind in telling others about your idea. From here in we will refer to your idea/product/service as 'your invention'. If you don't think your idea is patentable, then this chapter will be useful to help you draw down on all the details of your idea.

You will also need a patent as a back-up plan – that is, if someone takes your idea and steals it and makes millions from it, you may be able to enforce your patent at a future date and time for tens of millions of dollars. That's if your patent goes all the way and becomes granted. If you follow all the steps and exercises we outline in this chapter, then you should be able to have a patent submitted in a patent office in the USA or your home country for between $100-$1,000 (we'll cover fees and patent attorney costs later in the chapter).

Another reason you need a patent right now, is because you are going to need it to get into an accelerator program. A patent will also help you if you choose to raise capital from investors, but we will discuss funding strategies more in chapter 4.

Patents can be a controversial topic in this day and age - there has been significant debate over their value, and if they are even necessary with the current rate of change of technology. For example Bill Gates is famous for the quote;

'Patents have a shelf life of bananas'.

Many people also consider patents actually restrict innovation rather than supporting it.There is also another sensitive debate about patents, centered on this thing called 'patent trolls'. A patent troll is a company that buys patents and then simply goes around suing people, or in law speak 'enforcing the patent for infringement'. And one of the big reasons why these trolls are so controversial is that they seek money without even attempting to make the product that the patent is intended for. Due to all this publicity about patents (often negative), many people consider them as immoral. Others simply think patents are a waste of time and money. Even investors and experienced entrepreneurs often get caught up in debates over whether anyone should even bother with patents or not.

Perhaps you're not convinced about the benefits of the patent application process? Maybe you think patents are a waste of time or they are immoral or whatever. If you are thinking this way, we encourage you to read this chapter and carry out the exercises, but you don't have to submit the patent application at the end if you don't want to.

By going through the process of putting together a patent application right now it will help you get clarity about your idea. If you carry out the exercises we outline in this chapter, you will be essentially preparing a blueprint of your idea and all the details of what it is that you actually want to build. Think of this patent application process like preparing the architectural blueprint plans for a house you are about to build. You can't build a house without plans first right?

You will also be able to use parts of your patent application for your website – which will help you build in the next chapter. Further, you can use a lot of the text and drawings from your patent application in a future business plan – which we will go into more detail about in chapter 4.

When you get to the end of this chapter then you can decide if you actually want to go ahead and submit your patent to a patent office.

But hurry - we don't have much time. We want to get through this chapter as soon as possible, so that your idea is protected, and you hopefully beat everyone else to it, and then move on to more fun stuff like actually building your product or negotiating with investors. So let's get moving on writing the patent application, your Entrepreneur GPS is talking to you again.

# EGPS SAYS:

AT THE NEXT INTERSECTION TURN DOWN, 'PRIOR ART SEARCH' STREET'.

A patent application is generally made up of 6 parts;

1. The abstract

2. The drawings

3. The background

4. The description of the drawings

5. The claims.

6. The prior art search

We are going to start at the Prior Art search. So what is a Patent Prior Art Search? According to Webster's dictionary;

'Prior Art is any body of prior knowledge related to your invention'.

You need to refer to prior art in various sections of your patent application. You also need to find ways to 'get around' prior art in your patent application. That is, you will need to explain how your idea is an improvement on the prior art. If you ask a patent attorney how long it will take to do a prior art search they'll answer with "how long is a piece of string?" Yes, a prior art search could go on for months.

But we are suggesting that you spend around a day or 10 hours or so to get through this Prior Art Search section. A good place to start is Google Patents. Go to the Google search engine and type in 'patents' Google has an entire search engine devoted to patent applications only.

Begin by typing in words to Google Patents related to your idea/product/service. For example if your idea is about doing, let's say, 'bronze casting of kangaroo paws as a new type of more efficient curtain railing, controlled by a Smartphone app', then you are going to want to enter search words like 'kangaroo paws', ' curtain rails', 'rolling up', 'winding', bronze', 'Smartphone app', 'touchscreen control' etc.

You could find something similar to your idea immediately, or it might take you a few hours of searching like this with all the different keywords.

Each time you find a patent application remotely similar to your idea jot down some of the words they use in their abstract. The abstract is usually a paragraph summary of the patent application – it's always at the top of the patent application. Enter the words you jot down from these other patent applications into the Google patent search engine, and then see what comes up.

Don't forget to bookmark any prior art that looks remotely similar to your idea. Use this time to start reading other parts of the patent application too. Start studying the drawings and see how all the drawing parts intertwine. You might find a drawing that is similar to your invention, but your invention might have another part or screen or some additional part or screen.

As you continue on your search, you may even find something that is almost exactly the same as your invention. This is a good stage to reach as you will now be able to use all the prior art from the similar patent as your own prior art.

The similar patent will have citations or references to other patents before them that are remotely similar to your invention too. Remember the main idea of the patent application process is to show improvement on past ideas (and to capitalize on them).

Also after you've found that application that is very similar to yours, you should take all their prior art numbers (that is, the number assigned to the patent applications) and enter them into the Google Patent search engine and begin to read them all thoroughly.

Sometimes there may be ten to twenty applications on this prior art list, sometimes only three or four. If there are twenty or thirty there, then you don't have to read them all if you don't want to. It might get a bit boring or tedious after a while. But perhaps you might even find it interesting reading.

After you have read a few of these what's called 'cited' patent applications from start to finish, you will start to get a better feeling for what you have to achieve with your application, and you should start to notice points of difference between what they've discussed in their application, and what you want to put in your application.

One of the best ways to see points of difference is to read the abstract of a similar patent you find, and then study the drawings, and read what each number means in the drawings description. It might only take you a minute or two of studying the prior art application to determine that it is very different from your idea. Sometimes you might have to read the application a few times to understand what is going on.

So your aim now is to gather at least five to ten prior art applications that you can give to a patent attorney so they can use these applications to write your 'patent claims'. We'll go into more detail about the role of patent attorneys and claims shortly. So for now just keep on bookmarking and searching for prior art.

You might want to start printing out some of the 'cited' applications and go to them with a highlighter and a red pen and take notes about what is similar or different. The text you highlight may form part of the paragraphs of the background of your own patent application.

Start taking notice of some of the other parts of patent applications too, such as the priority date, and the publication date. The priority date is the date when the patent was first submitted to a patent office. Google the terms to learn more about what they mean.

See what the status of the applications are too – have they been granted? Have they lapsed? Are they in application stage?

The publication date is the date that a patent was published online and in official patent office journals. It is usually published after a search report was carried out by an official in a patent office. If you find two applications with similar priority dates that both haven't been granted yet, have a read to see if you can clearly notice any differences.

After you are satisfied you have found about five to ten patent applications similar to yours, and after you have taken notes about how your invention is slightly different, and/or how your invention is an improvement on these, and you've recorded all the patent numbers for your patent attorney, then you are ready to move onto the Drawings section.

# EGPS SAYS:

AT THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS TURN DOWN 'DRAWINGS DRIVE'.

If you can't draw, don't despair – there is a cheap option for you to help you to prepare reasonable quality drawings for patent applications and that option is called fiverr.com and/or freelancer.com

Fiverr.com is a website where for $5 as starting price, you can pretty much get any service done from someone designing you a logo, to doing a voiceover recording of a love letter for your girlfriend, to doing a drawing of your invention.

Freelancer is a website where you can list your project/job/task on their platform, and people from all over the world with skills in the domain you want, can submit their proposals, and you engage them to carry out your job – which of course in this situation is drawing your product/service for a patent application.

So for example if you want some Smartphone app screenshots made up to go into your patent application, you could go to fiverr.com or freelancer.com and write details of what you want on the screenshots, and then you can find someone with graphic design skills to make up your screenshots.

If you are going to use fiverr.com to get your drawings done, first of all do a search for 'patent drawings' in the fiverr.com search engine. Next, ask a question to the person offering the service if they can do a similar type of drawing for you and ask how much. If you want a detailed drawing done with 3D graphics you might have to pay up to $50 for it. If you went out and got this service done from a professional graphic design agency, you might pay up to ten or twenty times this price.

When you engage with a fiverr.com or freelancer service provider, you may need to send them the images you have saved from other past patent applications with your scribbles on there, or any notes you have just taken about how to design your product/service.

But before you instruct your Fiverr drawer or you do it yourself, or before submit a project on freelancer, or if you get your Mum to do your drawing or your best friend or whoever, or even your ten year old daughter, start listing all the different parts of your invention with little numbers.

Take an A4 piece of paper, and stick bits of your idea on it from images you have found online, or try drawing it in block shapes, and then add little lines pointing to the parts, and add numbers to the end of all the lines. Refer to drawings in other patent applications to get a good idea on how to layout the drawing and arrows and number.

Start with 101 and a little line on the drawing to part of the drawing and write what 101 does. Then move on to 102 and so on and so forth. Don't be afraid to have a real scraggly image, or images at the end of this exercise.

What you are doing now is starting to build a story behind the drawings of your idea - you are now explaining how it works – or in patent speak 'a detailed description of the drawings'.

You aim here to get at least three or four good quality drawings done. Each drawing should have between five to twenty numbers on it. Each number should have at least a sentence explanation of what the part does. These individual sentence explanations are now starting to form the detailed description of your patent application.

Start with simple bullet point notes, but look to expand on them as you go. For example going back to 'our kangaroo paw for winding window curtains with a Smartphone app' example, you might have a drawing with the following:

101 - kangaroo paw

102 – brackets where kangaroo paw joins to the window frame

103 - window frame is screwed to a wire.

Then as you go you can start to draw out these sentences to make your idea sound like a story. Going back to our kangaroo paw example:

101 'the kangaroo paw has five toes, with toe number 5 joined by a long rod to a window frame with brackets 102 holding it together. When you pull down on the wire screwed to window frame at 103, the curtain will begin to move upwards.

If you are designing apps or software, then you should put numbers and little lines on the screens and the buttons to explain what they will do.

Keep going back to the prior art patent applications that you now have to get more ideas about how to use words and sentences to join your parts together.

This is where it might be handy to have a prior art patent application printed out and next to you on your desk. This way you can easily see the drawings and the description sitting alongside each other, and so it might be easier to follow. Otherwise you'll find yourself endlessly scrolling up and down on your screen to look at the patents and the patent description at the same time.

When you are satisfied that you have done all you can to do your drawings and you have described them with numbers, congratulations, you are ready to move onto the next patent step – the 'Patent background'.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'WRITE THE PATENT BACKGROUND SECTION STREET'.

This section can be up to ten or twenty pages, or sometimes it can simply be a paragraph or two. It is up to you how detailed you want this to be. The point of this section is that it shows to the patent office examiner (when they come to examine your application/carry out a search report) that there is a real need for your product in industries around the world. It also points to what industries your invention is applicable with – so the examiner can search these industries when they do their search report.

This is your chance to write a little essay (just like you did back in school) to explain why your idea is going to make the world a better place. We suggest you put this book down right now, and have a go at writing this section yourself without looking at anything else. Just let this section flow to begin with.

Just start by writing some sentences as to why your idea will make the world a better place. Write why you are pursuing your idea. Who will your idea help? How will your idea make people's lives better? Write in the third person. Also include in this section information about the problem you are solving. Give details. Don't worry about sentence structure or grammar here - just write as quickly as you can for say five minutes.

After you have completed this exercise, which may take five minutes, or it may even take one week (off and on), you will need to go back over all the prior art you collected once again (you should have the numbers or printouts of the patents handy) and see what they wrote in their background sections. Try not to copy or look at what they have done until you have had a chance at doing this section by yourself without any help, otherwise you could be plagiarizing.

You might find that the background sections in your prior art are somewhat similar to your background section. Even if the patent priority dates are ten to fifteen years different, then this section may still read as if they were written days apart. That's because all the prior art essentially has been trying to solve the same problem as you, in the same industry or markets as you – but perhaps the prior art have not got the formula right just yet. And of course your invention will get the formula right!

You will also see in the background to patent sections in your prior art, that many sentences begin with 'Much of the prior art has been concerned with <information entered here>'.

This is your opportunity to apply what you learned from the prior art search you found. Remember when we asked you to take notes on the prior art about how your idea improves this part or that section in red pen? Then add these notes into sentences now into your background description.

You might find whole paragraphs from the prior art search that are applicable to your idea, so you can simply cut and paste those paragraphs into your background description, but please use common sense here and rewrite into your own words as otherwise you will be plagiarizing. Perhaps treat it like the old English comprehension exercises you did in school – that is, read this section and 're-write in your own words'.

Don't spend too much time on this section. Like we said it can be the least challenging and most enjoyable section, but it is not the most important in your patent application. The most important parts are your claims – more on that shortly. And then the second most important part is your drawings and the description of the drawings.

If you found any patents from massive companies like Apple and Samsung, who have thousands of patent applications, then you might have noticed that their background sections are often short and precise.

Sometimes Apple has background descriptions which are only two or three paragraphs; whereas their description of the drawings will be say one hundred paragraphs. This is because these massive companies have patent attorneys or professional patent writers employed, and they have mastered the patent application using a technique called, 'economy of words'. 'Economy of words' is about using the least amount of words to communicate what it is you want to say.

But you don't need to worry too much about 'economy of words' at the moment. If you find a good patent attorney (which we will discuss later), then they should do a quick read of your background for 'economy of words', and tidy up this for you. It doesn't matter too much at this time if your background description is five pages and your drawings description is only half a page. Your patent attorney will step in soon and do what they do to bring your application up to scratch (and as we have said they will also write your claims for you too).

So if you are satisfied with your background description of your patent application, then it's time to write the abstract. This is the summary of your drawing. Often in business circles this is called 'the Executive Summary' – that is a summary of a longer document for executives who don't have time to read everything else.

# EGPS SAYS:

AT THE NEXT INTERESECTION, TURN RIGHT DOWN, 'WRITE THE PATENT ABSTRACT/SUMMARY' LANE.

Executive Summaries are often left to the end of the writing process, so that you don't miss anything out. But at the same time a summary is all about leaving things out, and putting everything into the shortest amount of words as possible.

If you haven't written many Executive Summaries before, or since high school, then please look over prior art abstracts for this section for help. Your patent attorney will also help with this section – so don't worry about it too much.

Just have a go at trying to capture everything you've done so far into one or two paragraphs.

Don't worry about coming up with a title of your invention yet - this is not your job. This is the job of the patent attorney which you will engage shortly. A patent attorney will come up with your title which may be different to what you had imagined.

Often your patent title will also include the words 'System and Method'. Many new patent applications these days are called 'System and Method' applications. That is you are inventing a new system and method for solving a problem, rather than inventing a new product or service.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT DOWN, 'FIND A PATENT ATTORNEY' ROAD.

You may have noticed in all patent applications there is a section at the end called 'claims'. This is usually a list of around 10-30 sentences, and as the name suggests, it is a list of what you are claiming you have invented. The claims are actually the most important part of your patent application. It is the part of the application that the Patent Office Examiner will look at the most.

Unless you have studied patent law for a couple of years or done loads of patent applications before, no matter how hard you try you are not going to be able to master the art of the claims on your patent. Patent claims are a taught science and an art form at the same time. For example, patent attorneys are taught to use the most general language possible so as to try and protect and cover as much as possible for you now and into the future so you can get granted your patent application.

One way of looking at patent applications is like an umbrella. The bigger the umbrella, the more you will cover underneath it. Without a patent attorney you may write a patent application that is like the size of a little cocktail umbrella, in a large desert – not much will be protected underneath it.

A really good patent attorney could build you an umbrella the size of circus tent, or even a soccer stadium, in a really expensive area like Notting Hill in London.

And anything that happens under that circus tent or stadium, like making a lion jump through a hoop of any sort, or flipping over in a special way sideways to kick a goal, could be yours and it could be protected, and enforced.

The patent attorney's job is to cover the largest areas in your claims, so if anyone steps on your turf and attempts to do something even remotely similar to what you are doing, then you could enforce your patent against them for significant amounts of money. If you are granted a patent, then it's a legal right similar to legally owning a home – that is you can legally control who steps onto your turf.

Unfortunately, the patent examiner in a Government registered patent office will probably be able to tell in the first sentence of your first claim if you have not engaged a patent attorney to do the claims. And if the patent examiner can tell immediately that you haven't engaged a patent attorney then they'll most likely feel that you are wasting their time. And without patent attorney written claims, you are going to make the examiners job difficult and frustrating, and it could be difficult to get granted the patent.

But wait, how much is a patent attorney going to cost me?

# EGPS SAYS:

YOU HAVE A TOLL ROAD COMING UP, YOU WILL NEED BETWEEN $100-$1000 TO GET THROUGH THIS TOLL.

If you haven't followed the EGPS and Dave the Driving instructor's instructions in this chapter, then you could pay up to $10,000 to get a patent attorney to work on preparing patent application for you, and have it submitted to a registered patent office

It is common for big companies to pay tens of thousands of dollars to patent attorneys to prepare and submit patent applications. Many big companies have patent attorneys on their payrolls as internal staff. If you have plenty of money, and dropping $10,000 for a patent attorney is not an issue for you, then you could skip all the exercises we have already outlined, and just go straight to the patent attorney and ask them to do your application for you. But the thing is, even with loads of cash, your patent attorney may have to spend months working on your application – and in this time, someone might submit a similar application to a patent office on the other side of the world. Further, if you just go straight to a patent attorney with a bucket load of cash, without following Dave and GPS's advice here, then the patent attorney may also not capture everything in your idea correctly, and your chances of ever being granted a patent application may be reduced – especially if you have never been through the patent application process before.

The question you have to ask yourself right now is 'can you submit your patent application yourself online in your own country, or do you have to pay a patent attorney to do this for you?'Finally you have the most important question of all, 'do I have to submit the patent application to a patent office or not?'

The application process for patents will vary from country to country; for example in Australia you can submit a patent application online by simply attaching only a powerpoint presentation or a pdf with only a few paragraphs on an online form and paying $110 Australian dollars. You can then come back within a year and submit a more professional application, or change the application if you wish, and keep the original priority date of when you hit the online submit button (and paid the $110 fee).

Of course if you want to have a good chance of getting your patent granted, you should consider approaching a patent attorney now to polish up your application, to write the claims and title, and to submit it for you to the US patent office (or the patent office in your own country).

As you know, engaging any attorney/lawyer is not cheap and patent attorneys are no exception. Their starting rate is usually around $250 an hour, and the best ones usually charge between $500- $1,000 an hour.

Our goal is to get your patent attorney to only spend a maximum of two hours polishing your application for economy of words, writing your claims and submitting it to a registered patent office.

If any patent attorney anywhere around the world is reading this, they will most likely say 'you must be joking! There is no way we can do all the work you need to be done for under $1,000 or a couple of hours'. But you have already done the bulk of the work, and all you are asking is a patent attorney to spend two hours on it to essentially write your claims and your title

Of course the patent attorney you engage is not going to like you when you approach them (or us suggesting this method to do a super cheap application), but they will at least appreciate the possibility that you will pay more money to them over the next couple of years to progress your patents to get them granted.

So where are you going to find one of these good, but cheap patent attorneys from? If you don't have a broad professional network, then simply Google 'patent attorneys' in your local area, and see what comes up.

If you have a good professional network say on LinkedIn or on Facebook then just put the word out, 'can anyone recommend a good patent attorney?'

When you find a patent attorney through a recommendation or online, do a little research on them before contacting them. Go to their website. You could Google some of their customer testimonials if you wish. Call up some of those companies on the testimonial list if you want too. If you're satisfied that the patent attorney your considering approaching looks reasonable, then you need to call their office and make an appointment for the 'first thirty minutes free session'.

When you call the patent attorney's office and speak to the secretary, you need to be clear and concise and say something like this;

"Hi, I'd like to speak to a patent attorney, do you do first thirty minutes free, if so can I please make an appointment?"

Here are some more things to note about patent attorneys before you meet with one or call one up;

Most patent attorneys (or any attorneys for that matter) will not deal with you by phone or Skype. You will need to physically go into their office and talk to them.

Most good patent attorneys will offer the first thirty minutes free (there are over 12,000 patent attorneys registered with a peak global professional organization called the Licensing Executives Society International that offer this service). Generally a patent attorney on this list will be worth engaging, and they should also give you the first thirty minutes free. Try to find out if there is a local patent attorney in your town or city on this list. You may want to ask the receptionist at the patent attorney's office if anyone in the office is a member of the Licensing Executives Society before proceeding.

When you go in to meet the patent attorney, watch the clock. You may find yourself talking to them for 45 minutes, and suddenly find yourself with a bill for $250. This may or may not be deliberate by your attorney, but it can happen, so keep to your free thirty minutes, and thirty minutes only.

So in your thirty-minute free interview, what you need to do is find out if your patent attorney can do the work you need done (write claims, polish everything else, write your title and submit your application) in the shortest time possible and agree on a price – that shouldn't be more than $1,000.

You will need to be upfront with the patent attorney and tell him you don't have much money, and all you can afford is say $1,000 (including Patent Office application fees).

The patent attorney might tell you that you're crazy! He or she might say that they can't do anything for that price, or they might actually bargain with you.

So hold back the exact figure until towards the end of the thirty minute interview. The patent attorney should in theory take your work as there will be plenty of opportunities down the track to advance your patent application, and get plenty of more money from you in the future. When the time comes to pay more fees in around one year's time, you will be earning significant revenue and/or raised capital, or got a government grant, so it won't be an issue paying them.

In the free interview you want to give the impression to the patent attorney that you have done the bulk of the work (which you have) and you want them to spend only one or two hours of their time reading your application, polishing it up, writing the claims, and submitting the application to a registered patent office.

If the first patent attorney you talk to says they cannot do what you want done for under $1,000, thank them and leave.

Then arrange another interview with another patent attorney. If you think this attorney you are talking too has a brilliant track record and they come highly recommended and you really want to go with them, they want to charge three or four thousand dollars, and if you can afford it, then go for it. If you can't afford more than $1,000 move on to the next one.

In the first thirty-minute interview you want to show to the patent attorney that you have done your prior art research, and that your application is almost complete. So make sure you have all your work with you printed out, and in order so you can show the attorney.

Your main job in the first free thirty minutes is to convince the patent attorney that there is not much work left for them to do.

You will also need to be confident about your prior art search. As we said before, the patent attorney will tell you that a prior art search is like the expression 'how long is a piece of string', and they may try to convince you that they have to do a lot of this work themselves.

A patent attorney may even suggest the minimum they want to spend on the prior art search is say five hours, and their hourly rate is $300 an hour. They might even convince you that they'll get an associate to do the prior art search for you for only $150 an hour (by associate they'll probably mean a student straight out of law school), and if they did it themselves it would cost $500 an hour.

But whatever they say, don't let the patent attorney convince you that they need to do a prior art search. Tell the patent attorney that you have spent around one week full time on a prior art search yourself, and you don't want them to spend any of their time on this – no matter what.

In the initial free thirty minute meeting, bring a printout of a list of the patent application numbers you consider to be prior art, and show this to your patent attorney in the first interview.

Of course, it's up to you to decide if you actually want your attorney to submit your patent application to a patent office in your country or to the US patent office. There are plenty of pros and cons for submitting in certain countries over others. For example perhaps you are planning to only sell your product in one region such as Europe, so you might want to submit your application in a European country. Perhaps you've read recently about the US patent office is broken, and the government is working to fix it. Whatever you have heard or read, or whatever your sales strategy is, one thing to consider is that there is a good chance that the accelerator program you are going to apply is in USA. Therefore it may be a good idea to submit your application to the US patent office, for no other reason other than you are most likely going to be playing in the Entrepreneur Olympics in the USA in the near future (remember our discussion about the Entrepreneur Olympics in the introduction of this book?).

So it may be sensible to start with a patent application on US soil (it will make things simpler later on down the track too - for example you may eventually need to assign the patent to a US company for the accelerator program, but we will discuss that more later). And the US Patent Office is also most likely to be more thorough in doing what are called 'International Search Reports', when the time comes for that.

An International Search Report is pretty much what it sounds like – that is a Government official, called an examiner, sits in a patent office somewhere around the world and does 'international searches of other patents and published material' to see if your invention is like anyone else's. Or in simpler terms, to see if anyone has thought of your invention before and put it together in a patent application.

The examiner will search under categories such as 'novel', 'industrially applicable and 'inventive' - each category having its own specific definitions that the examiner must abide by. It's a bit like a tick box process. They will read over your patent and see if meets the criteria for each tick box.

The patent examiner goes through a bit of a process like we outlined in chapter 1 – the market research chapter – that is, they will use all these search tools and techniques to try and find if anyone else has claimed the same thing before you.

You have up to one year to request an international search on your patent, and to progress your patent application to the next stage. In some countries you will have an opportunity to modify your application before that one year deadline. It generally takes around one and half to five years to get your patent granted, with many different stages and costs along the way. But we're not going to go into detail about this process now – if you want to learn more about the next stages in the patent application process, then we discuss it more in chapter 6 as the deadlines approach, and your financial situation will most likely be significantly different by then too.

Right now we just want you to get your patent application completed in the shortest time possible, at a 'pass standard', and get it submitted to a registered patent office.

Also don't worry about the costs now for progressing your patent to the next stage – as we mentioned in around a year's time you would have raised capital, received a grant, or sold enough of your invention to afford these fees – well that's if you keep following the advice of Dave the Driving instructor and our Navigation System here in this book.

As we are limited with time, your patent application does not have to be perfect right now. You will have a few opportunities over the next few years as your patent progresses to polish your patent application, resubmit it, and possibly alter the claims after International Search Reports come back. But most importantly you will still be able to hold onto the original submission date – in patent speak this is called the 'Priority date'. Or in other words, if the examiner finds ideas similar to yours in their search, you have an opportunity to alter parts of your application, but hold the priority date.

On average, to get your patent granted in at least one country/region over a few-year period, a patent attorney should take between $10,000 - $100,000 from you (partly for fees, partly for their work, partly for referring on to their patent attorney friends in other countries, partly for the mark-up in fees in getting your patent translated if you apply to non-English speaking countries). The more countries you choose to get your patent granted in, the more it will cost you. Remember, at the moment, you are probably best off only applying for a patent in the US (or in your own country).

If you agree on a price around $1,000 with your patent attorney, then he/she will tell you that their secretary will send you a letter of engagement, and ask for a cash deposit (which will probably be 50-80% of the agreed fee).

You will need to sign their letter of engagement and send it back to the attorney and pay the deposit. Finally you will need to email them all the work you have done so far. Then it's simply a matter of waiting for the attorney to get back to you.

Your patent attorney may call or email you several times with questions over the next week or two - be prepared for this.

Just be as honest as you can with the patent attorney's questions, and try to be straight to the point. Sometimes the patent attorney's questions may sound a little unrelated, or maybe the questions might sound obtuse, as if they're not getting your invention at all.

But please persist with the questions and answers - and as we said, try to answer in the shortest, most precise way possible. Remember the patent attorney's time is expensive, so you don't want to rave on.

In the end all the questions your patent attorney asks will help them to write your claims so that you are not infringing anyone else's claims and especially the ones you have already found in your prior art search.

The patent attorney may take a week or two to do their job, depending on how busy they are. They may even take up to a month to do their job, as they are likely to push you to the bottom of your priority list as you are not paying them much. So just be aware of this.

If your patent attorney has not gotten back to you with some communication after at least two to three weeks, then something could be wrong – you will need to call them up, and find out what's taking them so long.

After a bit of back-and-forth with your patent attorney, the day should soon come when they will submit your patent application to the US patent office (or your local patent office if you desire), and then you can call yourself 'an inventor!

Well you can sort of call yourself an inventor. When you are officially granted a patent application, in a couple of years time, then you can officially call yourself 'an inventor'.

The last thing your patent attorney will probably ask you is "do you want the patent application in your name or your company's name?"

You answer is – you want the patent application to be in your name (for now).

We have not even gone through the registration of a company yet, although you may already have one, but if you do have a company or a business, we recommend you still put the patent application in your name, and your name only. This way there can be no doubt that you are in-fact 'the inventor'. If you have a business partner that has made a real significant contribution to your application, and your invention, and you have a good relationship with that person, then you may want to put their name down as an inventor too.

At a later date you may want to assign the patent application to your company name – there are many reasons for this. The main reason is that an investor or a Government grant won't provide you with money to your company until the patent is assigned to a company. But don't worry about this for now. It's a really simple process that just involves signing a document and sending it off to the patent office where you submit. But for now just use your name for the patent application.

When you get the confirmation letter from your patent attorney that your application has been submitted to the US Patent Office (or another patent office), then it's time to celebrate the completion this chapter!

Do something to celebrate this successful milestone right now - you have made a major achievement in your life. But don't celebrate too much, as you have more work to do in the next chapter – the 'tell everyone about your invention' chapter.

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Acknowledge that the patent process, rather than the final outcome, is important for clarity to develop details of your idea, and for potential investors and your business plan down the track.

Carry out a Prior Art Search

Do patent drawings and a description of the drawings

Write the patent background section

Write the patent abstract section

Find a patent attorney and negotiate a reduced fee to write your patent claims, title, and submit your patent application, preferably to the US patent office.

Engage a patent attorney, follow their instructions and work with them to officially submit your application to a patent office.

## Chapter 3: Marketing your idea- tell everyone about it

YOUR LOCATION – you have just submitted a patent application at a registered patent office.

DESTINATION AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER – you build a minimum viable product, you begin to tell the world about your product/service.

DIRECTION OPTIONS; via build a minimum viable product; build a website; build a brand; build social media account; blog; register with investor network websites; register a company.

TIME TO TAKE TO GET TO DESTINATION/END OF CHAPTER - 2 weeks.

# EGPS SAYS:

START NAVIGATION

The first task to get you to your next destination is building a website about your idea. Put simply, 'you have to build a website about your idea so that everyone knows about it'. If people know about your idea and how awesome it is, they will want to get behind it, support it, and eventually buy it when you launch it as a product or service.

Your website will also be there for anyone to contact you and get more information about you and your idea, especially as you build traction. Your website is also your online brochure to explain your idea as you approach potential customers or partners.

Your website is designed to show your idea off to the decision makers at accelerator programs that you will apply for in the next chapter. Finally your website will be valuable to help you on your fundraising campaign – which we will discuss more in Chapter 5.

Of course now that you have submitted your patent application, you have no fear of anyone copying your idea from your website. So you can go ahead and tell everyone about your idea with confidence. If someone does copy your idea from this point onwards and goes on to make tens of millions then if your patent is granted, then you may be able to enforce your patent for tens of millions of dollars at a later date. And if you are still worried about someone stealing your idea, then listen to the words of Howard Aiken, the original designer of the IBM computer;

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats".

If you have never built a website before, or if you don't have any graphic design skills, then that's fine - there are many website template builder sites out there nowadays that make building a website so quick and easy –no matter what your background or skill level is. We have done the research to recommend the best ones to you.

If you can use Microsoft Word and insert a picture into a document, or upload a photo onto Facebook, then you can build a website yourself using a website template builder site. These sites are also really cheap too. Some give you hosting and technical support and use of their templates for only a few dollars a month, or even for free.

If you want to pay someone to build your website, then great, go for it. But we recommend doing it yourself, as it's going to take less of your time, and the process will be more rewarding. You will probably come out with a better result too if you do it yourself at this time.

Also by building your website yourself on the template builder site, you will easily be able to update it at anytime in the future. If you pay someone to do your website now, they might not give you access to content management software, and every time you want to update your site, you might have to go back and make arrangements with your contractor and pay them a premium fee.

So the website we are building right now is called a 'landing page'. A landing page is basically a one page professional looking 'summary brochure' of your invention, and most of the hard work about branding, and layout and text size, and image size, has already been done for you in the template.

The website template will provide you with a professional one-page website to explain your idea with headings, images, punchy tag-lines, short paragraphs, icons, and contact forms. And you can add your contact details there so if people like your idea, or if they want to pre-order your product/service, they can get in touch with you.

Often many landing pages have videos too. Adding a video to your landing page will be an added bonus for you right now as you prepare to apply for an accelerator, but we will go into that in more detail in the next chapter.

You may also require a short video to explain how your product works, and to explain things like how to install it. If you have never made a video before, then we have written a section about how to make a video in the next chapter.

But first things first, you are building you a 'one-page' landing page website right now with only a few paragraphs and images - you don't need a five or ten page website yet. You don't need to build e-commerce facilities (that is accept payments), or to build your product and have it fully operational on your website either. All you need right now is the professional 'landing page site' to begin with to explain your awesome idea to the public. You're website will also have a pre-order form, so that people can leave their emails if they are interested in buying your product when it's ready.

In this chapter we are also going to show you how you can give the impression on your website that you have already built your product/service, when you actually haven't built it yet. You might remember we mentioned the expression in chapter 2 called, 'fake it until you make it'. Another common expression about what we are doing here is a 'smoke and mirrors' exercise.

This 'fake it to you make it/smoke and mirrors' idea might sound all a little weird or fickle to some, or some might even find this concept a little immoral – that is 'why would you put a website up showing a product/service is available and take 'pre-orders', but you don't actually have a product/service available yet?'

The answer is simple - you are not ready yet to build your product, and believe it or not, this is common practice in the world of entrepreneurship to 'fake it to you make it'. The other reason why you want to fake it now is that you might change parts of your idea as you begin to show it to your potential customers. You don't want to waste any money now building your product/service if you are going to change it after you have launched your website, and suddenly you get all this awesome feedback to make your product/service better or more sellable.

You will actually build your product/service when you have support around you in the accelerator program which you will learn how to apply to in the next chapter. Also when you get to the accelerator you will have a little bit of cash in the bank to pay people to help you build your product/service.

# EGPS SAYS:

TAKE A RIGHT TURN AT 'GET A DOMAIN' LANE.

Now we want to get your basic landing page up as soon as possible. But the first thing you are going to have to do is to get a domain name. What will be the address of your website? ie www dot what?

Perhaps by now you have already thought of the best domain and/or product/service name, so we are not going to spend too much time on this. What we will say is that the name of your product/service is so, so 'very' important. You can change it later, but if you get your name really wrong, and we mean really, really wrong, then you are going to be slipping and sliding all over the place and you are going to really struggle to get to each destination at the end of each chapter from here on in.

There is an expression that marketing guru's use for a product name, that is also used by wine tasters called 'mouth washability'. That is your product name/domain name has to be easy to pronounce and roll off the tongue – it has to be easy to wash around in your mouth. Many companies or products these days are usually combinations of two or three words. For example: DropBox; CoinJar; PinInterest; Snapchat; Flipkart.

Often good product/company names are misspellings of other words, for example Moderna; Lyft; Powa. Many companies also like to use a foreign word which best describes their product, for example Alibaba, or Uber. Uber is a German word that means, "over; above; across".

Try also to find a name that's "cool" or "hip" or "trendy". This might sound like a bit of stereotype or generalization, but calling your product a long complicated technical name like the 'Mechanical Engineering Technical Drawings Database' is not going to cut it.

Sure you can use these technical 'industry words' or sentences in your tag-lines, but not in your company or product name. You product name has to be short and sweet, and as we mentioned, easily wash around in the mouth.

Your domain name doesn't have to be your product or your company name, but often it is. If you are not sure yet about your company name, or your product name, or what your tag line is, and if these words could actually be your website domain name too, then that's fine. Think of a good domain name first, and then perhaps use that domain name for everything else – i.e your company name, your product name etc. Before you do anything else, you need to snap up your domain name before someone else does.

At this time you might want to also start thinking about the 'trademarkability 'of your domain name/product/company name. Trademarks and Trademark applications could form another lengthy chapter like the patent application chapter, but we don't have time now to discuss trademarks at length. Just like patent applications, it is arguable in this day and age about the value of trademarks – some people think they can be a good investment, or some people think they may be a waste of time and money. If you think you have a super catchy tag-line, or if you have found a domain name that is available and you have googled the tag-line, and no one is using it, then you may want to consider getting a trademark. Google 'trademarks' to learn more to see if this is something you want to pursue right now.

The only thing we will say about trademarking names at this time is that if you have one or two non-generic words for your domain name/product name/company name, that is words that are not generally used daily in the English language, then you are going to have a better chance of getting a trademark than if you simply joined two commonly used words together.

Domain name registration sites such as GoDaddy.com are a good place to start to do your 'domain name' search. Simply enter the domain name you want to use into the GoDaddy search engine and see what comes up. If the .com is gone, then that's fine, perhaps the .co or some other dot something else is available.

Dot com is still the commonly accepted domain name, and the one that is picked up mostly by search engines. But there are so many new dot something's domains becoming available these days such as dot li or do guru, or dot pet, or dot NewYork, or dot io, or dot whatever.

So if the dot com is taken, don't worry - simply choose another dot something. Ideally with all these new domain name opportunities opening recently, you can begin to search now for shorter domain names. Generally the shorter the domain name the better for people to remember and search engines to pick up.

It will only cost you around $5 - $30 to register your domain name for at least a year (depending if there are specials on and which website you use to register your domain name).

When you are happy with your domain name, register it (if you have to set up an account and you don't have one yet at the domain provider, then follow their instructions and do it!)

Try and complete this task as soon as possible. You don't want someone else to steal your brilliant domain name if for example you check on GoDaddy that it is available at the start of the week, but you want a week to sleep on it and think about it, and when you come back the next week the domain name is gone.

If you can afford it, and especially if there is a special on at GoDaddy or other domain name registration sites, then register five to ten domain names. Register them all at once, or register them in the middle of the night or in the bath tub when you think of them, or wherever. You don't have to choose the one you want to use until you have finished building your landing page, so have some fun and go for it and register away. Who knows maybe one of the domain names you don't use could be worth something one day!

The template website will explain you how to connect your domain name when you are ready to publish it, so don't sign up for any other services when you register the domain name (for example GoDaddy might want to sell you email addresses, server hosting, and registration to search engines – just skip all that – you don't want any of it).

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'FIND A WEBSITE BUILDING TEMPLATE SITE'.

So now that you have your domain name locked away, we have recommended below some website building templates sites. Some offer free services, and others offer partly free services. You need to choose what level you want to take your website to – if you need lots of functions such as photo sliders, then you may have to sign up for a paid service. If you sign up to paid service, then select to pay monthly, as you don't want to lock in for an entire year at this stage, as down the track you may want to pull down your landing site and make it bigger and better site with a professional web development company/professional brander.

Also by paying monthly and having the option to opt out at anytime, it means that if you choose to rename your product after you pivot your idea to something else in a month or two, then you can easily pull the site down and start again. So here is a list of template websites we recommend;

•Strinkingly.com

•Wordpress.com

•Wix.com

•Launchrock.com

•Squarespace.com

When you first arrive at these landing page website template sites, look at all the other examples of websites people have built with their templates so you can get a good idea of what you are about to achieve.

Some of the example sites that others have built on these template websites might look really fancy and professional. You might think, "I can't do a website like this", or "I'm not an artist", or "I'm not a graphic designer". But that's the whole point of these websites – that is anyone can produce a professional site with the templates provided in a really short time - no matter what your skill level or your background is.

Also at this time you might want to take a look at the websites of Apple and Samsung, or Microsoft or Uber, or your favorite websites you use often, to see how their sites are laid out to get some ideas about what you are aiming towards.

Compare the examples on the template sites like strikingly.com or squarespace.com with the Apple and Microsoft sites or any sites you really like. Are they similar? Another good thing about these template sites is they are built to be mobile friendly. So take a look at the mobile websites too of the big companies you like or products you use, and jot down what you like.

After you have registered and/or paid the first months fee for your website template site spend an hour or two looking over their list of available templates. Before you choose a template however, we are going to do a little exercise on branding.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'BRANDING' STREET.

Perhaps you have heard of the term 'branding' before? Or you've heard the expression,'building a brand', or perhaps someone has said to you 'you need a brand'. Maybe someone has said to you that Coke and Apple have such wonderful 'brands'. But what does all this branding mean? Well here is the short Webster dictionary meaning;

"A brand is a name, term, design or other feature that distinguishes one seller's product from those of others".

Unfortunately branding is not an easy task. On the surface it might look fairly simple and straightforward. But that is exactly the beauty of branding - there is so much below the surface going on, so that it appears simple and effortless on the surface.

Branding can be a four year University course, or there are hundreds of thick books and thousands of websites out there you can read on branding. All successful companies go through a very thorough and in depth branding process at many times during their existence. And there is no way around it. You have to do branding for your company.

If branding is done poorly, it can be a big turn off for customers or potential investors. If branding is done correctly, your brand will trigger an emotional response to customers, they will associate you with something very positive, and they will feel obliged to buy or support you. The good news is that we are going to do a quick five minute branding exercise with you right now, and then the landing page template will take care of the rest.

Our branding exercise will help you decide what it is you want to communicate about your products/services right now. For example is your product service fun? Is it luxurious, or cool, or innovative, is it stylish, is it goofy or is it trustworthy?

Right now, you just need the bare minimum of branding to show on your website landing page, so that people are not instantly turned off from your website. Like we said, the template has done the majority of the branding for you, but you just need to make sure you line up your material with the provided branded template.

Your brand is also supposed to represent your companies values and identity, and the 'why' you are doing 'what' you are doing. But you haven't even registered a company yet, or even built your product, so how are you supposed to know what your companies values, missions and identity are right now? We will address company values, missions and identity and all of this stuff in chapter 5.

Down the track when you have money, you can get a professional branding company to do a branding exercise for your product/company. Or perhaps you'll find a University student studying branding in the accelerator program (which you'll apply for in the next chapter) that will want to put you and your product/service through a 'branding exercise'.

The first step to branding is identifying what it is that makes you special. What is it that you do different to everyone else? If you completed all the exercises in the Patent Chapter, then you should know this by now. It's basically your abstract from your patent application, but it needs to shorten into one sentence called your 'tag-line'. The tag-line is the one sentence after the product name – for example Nike's tag line is 'Just do it'. One of Coca Cola's famous tag-lines is 'the Real thing'.

When you have the words of your tag-line in front of you, it will then be clear what it is you want your brand to communicate – does your one sentence brand vision have 'fun' words in it, does it have 'luxurious' words, what about cool/hip young words? Does it have innovative technological words in it? Does it have stylish, goofy or trustworthy types of words in the sentence?

Also do you remember in chapter one when we asked you to bookmark similar websites to your idea when you were first researching if your idea had legs? Now is the time to go back to those websites and really pull them apart and study them to see what they are doing for their branding, what words are they using in their tag-lines?

When you are looking at your competitor's websites, or the websites with somewhat similar ideas to yours, ask yourself the following questions;

•What are the main colors on their website, do I want to use these colors?

•What do different colors mean? Google them and find out.

•What images do they use? Are they stock photos of happy people? Or are they technical drawings?

•What are the headlines they use?

•What do you like about their site, and what don't you like?

•What icons do they use?

As you answer these questions, jot down notes. Now we are going to use those notes and create 'a branding inspiration board' with all the items as outlined below. Get a big piece of paper (A2 or A1 size is good), and write the headings done below somewhere on the page (leave a space underneath for you to fill out the details). This big piece of paper is called your 'branding inspiration board'.

# Screenshots;

These are images of app screens or software screens. If your idea is an app or software, then you are going to have to put screenshots up on your landing site. If you don't have graphic design skills or computer software for graphic designers, then you could go back to fiverr.com now or freelancer to get screenshots made for you.

# Stock Images

These are images you can buy or download from free from websites. Many companies these days don't bother to pay for photographers to photograph people using their products or services. Instead they'll simply download what's called a "Stock image". Google 'royalty free stock images' for more information and example websites where you can download free stock images.

# Icons

These are the cartoon - like or simple outlines of certain things like actions, or explaining how your product works. The template website should have plenty of icons you can use, however you might want to get some special ones made up for your product/service with fiverr.com, and download some online.

# Headline titles

These are the catchy titles about your product in less than a sentence. The template will tell you where to put these, and it will automatically choose your text style and size, so you just need to think about what you are going to write for your headings.

# Colors

What are the color themes you are going to use? Again the color schemes and layouts will be automatically chosen by the template, but you might want to think about which colors you like, and how you can be consistent with the template and your images/screenshots with all the aforementioned things like screenshots and titles and icons.

# Description title

For example; 'My product is awesome' What is the text under each headline title?

# Images of your invention

You have images from your patent application, remember all the drawings you did or had made through fiverr.com or you did yourself for your patent application in chapter 2? You are going to have to polish these up now, add some color to them and use them on your website. So once again now is a good time to go back to fiverr and pay someone to make them colorful or tidy them up a bit – if you have some Photoshop skills, great – go into Photoshop and delete all the numbers and the little lines, and add some color.

# Tag Line

For example Coke's tag line is "do the real thing". As we've already mentioned, these are the sentences that describe your competitors products, and which usual sit under your headlines, or your logo - what is the one sentence that best describe your product?

# Logo

What patterns represent your product? For example Amazon has an arrow on their logo that shows that they deliver from A to B. Do you need to get a logo made? Then once again there are plenty of people on fiverr.com that can do great logos for $5

# Video

If you don't have the cash now to make a professional video about your product/service, then you can make a short animated video by going to fiverr.com. For between $50-$250, you can get an animated video of up to three minutes made with your product in it to communicate what your product/service does, and what makes it unique.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

NOW FILL OUT INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE UNDER EACH HEADING, AND TRY TO ARRANGE EVERYTHING SO IT ALL BLENDS TOGETHER.

As you go ahead and prepare your branding inspiration board, it might start to feel a bit like a project you did in elementary/primary school about 'dinosaurs' or perhaps even like the 'planets in the solar system'.

You might remember in primary school for your project about dinosaurs, you cut out pictures of different dinosaurs from photocopies of a book, then you stuck them on a big A2 colored piece of paper. Then you colored the dinosaurs in and you wrote their names underneath their photocopy pictures, and then you wrote if they were meat eaters or herbivores, or something like that. Or perhaps you did a big poster with all the planets drawn out and colored them in, and wrote a sentence about how big each planet is or how many moons they have.

This is exactly the point of the branding inspiration board you are doing right now -you want to be able to explain everything about your concept in the simplest way possible, just like you did in elementary/primary school.

You want other primary school kids to understand your idea. If your idea sounds too complicated and difficult, then people will switch off and look to another idea.

There is a famous expression from Pablo Picasso, the great artist of the 20th century, that applies to what we are doing right now – Picasso said in his late eighties, a few years before he died;

'I spent most of my life working out how to draw like a child'.

Nobody is going to buy your idea, if they don't 'understand' it or if they simply 'don't get it'.

When you are satisfied you've started to see patterns and consistencies with your competitor websites, and you have applied what you have seen and learnt about branding in this section, to help you build your inspiration board, then you are almost ready to go back to the website template site and start adding it all in.

Just be aware that you don't want to do exactly the same as your competitors with your branding content – the point of this exercise is to not only find out what works in branding in relation to your idea/market/industry, but at the same time, you want to show what it is that is different about your idea. So you'll need to find a balance here.

If for example a competitor uses lots of stock images of people smiling holding mobile phones, and you want to also use stock pictures of people holding mobile phones, (because say your building an app), then don't use the exact same images. Maybe you want to do a photo shoot yourself with your friends in front of more interesting backgrounds holding mobile phones. Or maybe you want to spend some time on some good stock photo sites and find that perfect image for your website, and pay a few dollars for the high quality image.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'MVP' STREET.

At the end of this branding exercise, not only will you have everything ready to put up on your landing page website, but you have also just completed what is called building a 'Minimum Viable Product (MVP)', albeit a faked one. Minimum Viable Product is a common term used in the world of entrepreneurship and is defined as;

"Which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort".

The concept behind the MVP is simple - that is you don't want to spend thousands of dollars building a product only to learn that when you take your product to market (that is when you attempt to sell it) nobody wants it.

By building the absolute minimum now, you have something to your potential customers, and you can attempt to sell it – even though it's currently 'faked'. If you customers don't like your product, or suggest changes, you haven't lost tens of thousands of dollars building your product.

A classic example of the MVP is that of the electric car. Let's say you want to build an electric car. The final product is the electric car itself. So what is the minimum viable product in this example?

Is one or two of the wheels of a car?

OR

Is it an electric skateboard?

So what is the next stage of development?

Is it the front of the car, and the engine?

OR

Is it an electric skateboard with handles, ie an electric scooter?

What's the next stage of development?

The interior of the car?

OR

An electric motorbike?

If you said the electric skateboard, come scooter, come electric motorbike, then you are right.

That is you want to try and get your product working from day one, so your customers can trial it, rather than giving them bits and pieces of a machine that doesn't work until they've all been put together at the final stage.

So in our branding exercise above we have built a MVP ready to put up on your webpage, and to ask customers to consider it, but we have actually faked building it. You have many other tasks that you need to complete now to get you ready for an accelerator, rather than actually building your MVP. As we've said before, you'll have the opportunity to build your MVP when you get to the accelerator program.

So now it's time to go back to the template website and choose the template that is consistent with your branding inspiration board.

If you have chosen green as your main branding color, then find a template that lets you choose green as the main color for titles, text, buttons etc.

By now you should have done all the branding hard work, so all your text, titles and images should be ready to insert in the spaces provided on the website template.

Start from the top of the template, and work your way down. If there is a text box that only has five sentences of their example text, try to keep your text to five sentences too. You want to make sure everything is balanced and lines up as suggested by the website landing page template.

Often the first thing a template will ask you to insert is a screenshot of your app. That's because a lot of the people that sign up to the template websites have apps. If your idea has an app, great, you will need to insert it now, if it doesn't, then find the number one image you have created about your idea, and put that in. As you have done all the hard work and prepared all your branding content in the inspiration board, you might be able to finish preparing the entire site in only an hour or two now.

If you are not comfortable with some of the headings, or perhaps you are worried the text has grammar errors, or if some of your images don't look so good when they are inserted into the template, then perhaps you can ask a friend, or relative to have a look at it for you, and tidy it up and/or give you some advice if it's 'working or not'. Save some screenshots of a draft of the website and email it to your friends before you publish it.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'PRE-ORDER AND TRACTION' STREET.

One thing you may have noticed on many of the website templates was a 'pre-order' or 'buy now', or 'sign up' form. Sometimes these pre-order sections are called 'action buttons', or 'calls to action', or 'submit email forms'. So the big question for you right now is, 'do you want to start taking pre-orders for your product/service?'

The short answer is 'yes'.

Remember this is a 'PRE'-order form. An order you take prior to taking real orders. You need to have these forms for people to enter their email addresses at the top of your website. You want to call people right at the top of your website to sign up, rather than having them scroll down to try and find the 'sign-up form' at the bottom of your website. By the time a potential customer gets to the bottom of your website, they may not be interested in signing up anymore.

These action buttons/Pre-orders forms are important right now for what is called 'traction'. Traction in the entrepreneurial world is defined as;

'Showing 'popularity and acceptance' of your product/service'.

Maybe you could get 1000 people writing their email address into the pre-order form within a few weeks of publishing your website. This is good traction. You might only get one email, but it could be from a big company interested in partnering with you. This is also good traction.

Whatever emails or messages you collect on your website, you should compile them together in readiness to use in the next chapter – the application for accelerator chapter.

For example in the accelerator application forms, there will be a question like 'do you have any traction'. You could answer this question with 'we received 1000 pre-orders within a month of launching website'. Or you could say 'we have been negotiating with so and so company since they approached us earlier this year.

You might get one or two emails over the next couple of months, or you may get none, or you may even get five thousand. Perhaps the more social media marketing you do, the more pre-orders you may get – but more on social media later.

By setting up these pre-order or submit email forms, what you are really doing is 'fishing for interest' - you are throwing your line out in the water, and hoping that someone in going to bite.

But by actively engaging in social media, you are not just standing there on the side of the lake waiting. With social media it's like you have an expensive boat, and high tech radar beneath your boat and you can track where the schools of fish are, and move to the best spots. Social media also provides you with information about the right bait to use, or the right times to go fishing.

To increase your chances of something/someone biting, you might want to add a sentence above or below the pre-order form that offers a compelling reason to submit their email address/message for example;

"Sign up now for a chance to WIN one of the first <insert your product/service name>

<Insert your company name> will be taking orders soon, sign up now to reserve your spot on the limited pre-order list and get updates/receive newsletter.

Remember at this time you are not asking for credit card payments, or asking anyone to enter into legal relationships/contracts or to buy anything off you. You are simply asking for anyone to enter their email address on your website form so that you can keep them updated about your progress, and to show the accelerator decision makers later that you already have 'pre-orders' or 'negotiations with significant people/decision makers'.

Now is the time to start thinking about and researching other ways to get traction too. The pre-order form is only way, but there are plenty of others. Traction is one of the most important things for your company over the next few months as you prepare to get into an accelerator, and then as you prepare to launch your product/service. But getting traction could also be one of the most challenging things for you to do right now too.

Traction could also be very time-consuming and you may not get any outcomes until you are in an accelerator program, or even after you have graduated from an accelerator.

At this time we just want you to give some thought about how you can get traction for your product/service. Google 'how do I get traction for my product', to get some ideas. Perhaps you want to do a little trial and error exercise and try out some of the suggestions you find online about how to get traction. You never know where it could take you.

Unfortunately there is no simple formula for getting traction, and you might even find from your online research that there isn't a simple definition of what traction is either.

And if all that is not confusing enough, you may also find that there is no set limit to the amount of traction you need to get now, and how you evidence it, and how you even document it. For example you could say that you got 10,000 pre-orders from your website, but how is anyone going to believe you, unless you actually printed all the emails out, or published them online (of course you don't want to do that – you want to be respectful to those emails you do get and not give them out to anyone).

Here are some ways you can get traction, but as we said earlier please Google 'traction' for more ideas, and 'Google' how to get traction on each one of these suggestions below;

•getting customers

•getting sales

•winning awards

•completing trials

•bringing in revenue

•getting big newspaper stories about your company

•raising capital

•winning start-up competitions/prizes/start-up weekend/business plan competitions

•lots of downloads of your free app from the online app stores

•getting lots of visitors to your site

•getting a lot of page views on your social media accounts

•signing business relationship agreements with big companies

•getting reputable people making public endorsements in a video, or statements

•getting government grants

Maybe you have decided that you want to go after just one traction idea right now, and that could be for example, 'you want to enter your idea into a business plan competition'.

Well go for it. If you win the competition, or if you say get into the finals, then you could say that this is your traction, and this could even be enough to tick the traction box in the next chapter when you apply to accelerator programs.

Your traction is also going to be very useful for your Business Plan which will support your fundraising strategy – we will discuss more about Business Plans and fundraising in chapter five.

If you choose one or two methods to get traction, you could incorporate this into your website design right now. For example you may be at a stage where you have an app that you want to launch in the Google Play store, and you want to use 'downloads of the app' as your proof of traction. So if this is your case, put a button at the top of your website that says 'download app now from Play store', rather than having the 'sign up' button form. We will go into more detail next chapter about traction, right now we need to publish your website and promote it, before moving onto the accelerator application chapter.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'PUBLISH YOUR WEBSITE ONLINE' STREET.

Follow the instructions provided from the website template company to hook up your domain name to the website that you should have just finished building. These instructions are usually straightforward. If you are having trouble doing this, there is usually a technical support email – don't be afraid to email the technical support email addresses provided. Hopefully they will reply to your 'help questions' within 24 hours.

When you are happy with how your website looks, then it's time to publish it. When you go to publish your site the template builder may give you some advice and examples of how to market your site - that is how to get your website you have just built "out there!"

Examples include putting the domain address in the signature of your emails and others. Usually their tips are great and free so go for what they recommend.

But don't overdo it – try not to be worried too much at this time about getting viewers or visitors to your website. Like we said this website is mostly about getting some traction now, and preparing for applying to an accelerator.

Also don't worry too much about this thing you might have heard before called SEO, or "Search Engine Optimization". SEO is a bit like branding. That is on the surface it seems fairly simple, but below the surface it's an art and science with constant moving goalposts.

It could take you months of trial and error for you to get your head around SEO. There are also many companies out there now claiming they have mastered SEO and they might try and convince you to sign up with their service and pay them cash. You don't need this now, and a lot of these companies could be scams too, promising the world, and delivering nothing. The thing is with SEO if you study it for a while and do lots of trial and error, and if think you've figured it out, the search engines may change something in the back end the next day, so that everything is different again.

There are thousands of websites and books, and theories out there right now about SEO. But remember the point of your website at the moment is really to influence just a few key decision makers – mostly the decision makers of the accelerator programs you will be applying for in the next chapter, and of course as we've said plenty of times before, your website will help you get traction.

Once again, the idea is not to get your website into the number one position for the most common search terms on Google like the SEO companies promise you. The idea is not to get you millions of visitors, views or hits right now.

Finally your website is also going to help you to draft your team and find co-founders. But we will discuss your team more in the next chapter.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'SOCIAL MEDIA' STREET.

So what we are doing next might sound a bit contradictory to what we have just said about SEO, and that is 'we are going to show you how to set up social media accounts to promote your website'. Social media should be seen as a tool to support your traction, not to get you tens of thousands of viewers to your website.

Also please don't view your social media accounts about helping you to "go viral". It might be crucial for your product/service's success to go viral at some stage, especially after you launch during the accelerator program, but you are not ready for going viral yet – especially when you don't have a sellable product/service yet. You will learn more about marketing and going viral when you get into an accelerator program.

There are dozens of social media accounts you could set up if you want. If you have never used the main ones before, then we suggest you get online now and learn a little more about them. The main ones you want to have a look at include;

•Facebook

•Twitter

•Instagram

•LinkedIn

•YouTube

•Pinterest

•Blogger

•Wordpress

•Tumblr.

You can actually use your social media to demonstrate to the key decision makers at the accelerator program that you have traction. For example if you have say 10,000 followers on Twitter, then your product obviously resonates with people, and you may be able to easily sell a lot of your product when it is officially launched. And you can easily put this information into your accelerator application form.

Also if you get a lot of followers, it will show that you're product is interesting to people and it's not lame. If you have only say 30 likes on Facebook, and 20 followers on Twitter, you are going to come across as somewhat "lame".

These days you can fake your popularity on social media, such as buying thousands of Facebook likes or Twitter/Instagram followers. Just go to fiverr.com and search for 'twitter followers' and you will see thousands of people offering to give you a 1000 followers for $5 or something like that. Buying followers and likes for social media can be a bit like a two-edged sword. By buying likes, you may not look lame, but at the same time it may affect your Facebook marketing campaign down the track as none of those bought likes will not look at your content - and for content to appear in people's news feeds it needs to be viewed.

Also the accelerator key decision makers may be trained in being able to recognize if you've simply gone out and bought likes/followers too, so the idea of showing that you are "not lame" by buying followers might actually backfire on you. So the best thing for you right now is to strike a balance between bought followers and real organic followers.

Let's start with bought followers - once you have set up your social media accounts, consider going back to fiverr.com and buy yourself around 1000 followers/likes etc for your site for $5. There are thousands of people offering these services these days, but be careful with some of them outside of fiverr.com as they might take your money and you get nothing in return. At least if you buy your followers through fiverr.com, you can see that the followers are there, and the job is done before you release the money.

Perhaps you could look at Social media accounts a bit like adding skills to your resume – that is Social media will strengthen your accelerator application if it is done right. You need to have a bunch of listed skills on your resume to get an interview. Having 'lame' Social media accounts with only say 20 followers is like not having a list of skills section on your resume.

The other thing that the key decision makers in accelerator programs like about you using social media, (other than showing you are not lame), is that it can 'show how you interact with your potential customers'. For example 'are you respectful in your responses to people on your social media?' Do you promote your product passionately? Do you interact with customers with good sales processes? Do you interact at all with people? Are you likeable in your comments/responses?

As you go forward and set up your social media accounts, here are some tips;

•be consistent with your wording and images, and names of all the accounts. Remember the branding items we did earlier in the chapter, use them. Find one image from your website, that you will use as the background image on all your social media accounts. You also want to use your logo as the 'avatar' of all your social media accounts too. Of course remember to have your website address in all of the description parts of your social media accounts.

•Be positive with all your social media replies (that is don't criticize anyone, don't be controversial, don't get mixed up with heated debates).

•Try to post content relevant to your industry, your market, your product.

•Aim for around about an equal number of followers and following in your social media accounts. Use 1000 as the pass mark, that is 1000 likes/followers and 1000 likes/following you.

•Get into the habit of say spending ten to thirty minutes a day adding content to your social media accounts. This content could include linking to websites/news stories/tech journals with interesting stories related to your product and start posting those links to your social media accounts.

•If you are struggling for relevant content to post about, then find the hash tags relevant to your product, and start following people posting in those hash tags, and re-post what they are posting. Don't just hit the re-post button - try to craft a sentence in there relating the story in the link to your product. If you don't know about hash tags, Google it and learn more. Set up 'Google Alerts' with keywords related to your product/service, and post whatever comes in that's appropriate.

•Before you start following people, wait until you have added at least 10 to 20 posts, so that you have something there for people to see what you are all about before they start following you back. If for example you have 1000 likes you've bought from fiverr.com and you've only posted two posts, and you follow one-hundred people, hoping they will follow you back, then they probably won't follow you back. People like to have an idea of what you are all about by quickly skimming some of your posts before they follow you back, so give them something there to look at.

Social media is what you make of it. You can be as creative as you want. It's totally up to you. You can post 5 times a minute for five hours straight. You can like/follow everything you see. But try to enjoy your time on social media too. And try not to get too obsessed with it at the same time. We recommend perhaps scheduling in social media time for say 10 minutes every day, or twenty minutes every two days as a minimum.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'BLOGGING' BOULEVARD.

Now it's time for you to start a blog! If you have never blogged before, then you may find it challenging at first. But after a few posts, you'll probably find it a useful exercise to learn more about your competitors, or your industry, or you might even find it therapeutic or even fun!

Some of you might think blogging is a waste of time, or nobody cares what you write anyway. Some may even think, 'what if I write something stupid', or 'my grammar is terrible' 'or I might say something that is really embarrassing'.

If you are not comfortable with writing, or if you don't think that you can write a blog, then perhaps you might want to consider a video blog – that is you talking on a video and posting it to YouTube on a regular basis.

Just like other social media, try to think of blogging or vlogging like fishing – that is by publishing blogs it's like have your line out in the water, waiting for something to bite. You want someone to come across your site that gets excited by what you're building, and they want to support you in some way.

You might go fishing/blogging on dozens of occasions and catch nothing. Then on the other hand you might do one blog post, and someone might retweet the post you put up on twitter about your blog, and the CEO of a large organization might see it and request a meeting with you to learn more about your product/idea, and want to place a bulk order or sign a deal with you.

Blogging is important not only because you might catch new relationships with companies, or hook in new potential customers for your product/service, but blogging is also important for your reputation.

Blogging is also important as you apply to accelerators, and attempt to raise capital for your company (that is if you choose to raise capital – but more about raising investment capital in the next chapter). Blogging is great in the eyes of the accelerator decision makers as it shows that you have knowledge of your product/industry and that you are passionate about your product/industry. Key decision makers at the accelerator programs love to see passion in applicants.

If you are not sure what to blog about, start cutting and pasting parts of your 'background from your patent search' into your blog, and use that as content to begin with. Make sure that you are only cutting about 500 words each time though. Each blog should be around the 500 word mark. Anymore than 500 and people probably won't read it.

Also it's a good habit to have at least one or two images in each of your blog posts. Get images and links to other sites into your blog to help get you more search engine recognition so that you can get activity up in all your other social media sites too.

Try to be consistent about your blogging – once a week on the same day each week is enough to get you going. It's probably going to take you around one to three hours to blog each week or possibly longer if you have never blogged before. A lot of your time could be spent reading other blogs or journals, and linking to them. On the other hand, if you doing a video blog, it might only take you ten minutes to complete. Of course, it's totally up to you how much time you want to devote to your blogging.

Sometimes it can be hard to come up with content for your blogs each week. As an example, try to think about three or four points that you want to focus on in each blog, and then expand on each one in a paragraph or so. If you see an interesting story about your industry in a journal or a news story somewhere, and the journalist makes a point that you don't agree with, then perhaps you might want to blog about that. If you get stuck for ideas, once again Google 'idea's for blog content'. Eventually blogging should become a fun and rewarding exercise you do once a week. It can even be therapeutic too! Most importantly blogging is a great chance for you to see what your competitors are doing, and see what trends are happening in your industry.

Every time you blog post about it on your social media accounts. You will find that it will take time to get lots visitors to your blog. You might get disappointed if you are checking the statistics all the time and you only get say 10 or 20 views a week for months at a time.

Over time the search engines will pick up your blog keywords and pictures, and you will start to get more traffic. And people are probably not going to comment on your blogs for a while either, but that's fine too. Comments about your product can be helpful if they are from your direct customers, but don't get too hung up on getting comments on your blog's.

Remember the main aim of your blog is no different to the aims of your website and social media accounts – and that is, you are not trying to get hundreds, or tens of thousands of people to come over and see your product/service. The point of all social media and blogging is about building up that 'skills section' on your company resume, and to build a good reputation, and to help convince key decision makers in the accelerator program to get behind you and your product/service.

As we said blogging can be challenging, and it could take months before you see any results, if anything at all. So try not to think about blogging as having results. Like we said try to think about blogging as if it is ongoing market research which is useful for you to learn more about the happenings in your industry, and stay on top of what your competitors are up to.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'PRESS RELEASE' STREET.

Getting media/press coverage about your idea, just like social media and blogging, are important for your accelerator applications. Media coverage can be quite tough going on your own without any media contacts. And if you've never done press releases or spoken with journalists before, then it can be bit of a fruitless exercise at times. On the other hand trying to chase media stories could turn into negative publicity for you or your company too.

But having the media do a story about you right now is important and its worth some effort. It's a form of traction you should have a go at. What you are aiming for here is to have three or four websites, journals or media outlets to publish a story about you, so that you can stick their logo on your website and then link to the story they have written about you. Key decision makers for the accelerators like to see that the media are interested in your product, as this will help you get press coverage later on when your product is ready to launch. Press coverage can dramatically help with your sales too.

When you are ready to launch your product and chase sales, stories in the press can be the cheapest form of marketing. For example it has been estimated that the 5-15 minutes that each participant has on the hit US TV show 'Shark Tank' is valued at around $7 million dollars. Shark Tank has about 7 to 9 million viewers each week, and if you wanted to get the same airtime in front of 7 to 9 million people, such as adds on TV, or adds in major newspapers, then that's going to cost you around $7 million dollars – which of course you don't have yet.

So the point of getting a few news outlets to do a story about you now is to show that you are newsworthy to the key decision makers at the accelerator programs. When the time comes to launch and sell your product/service, you can get media coverage and move your product/service more easily.

We are not going to go into too much more detail here about getting media coverage for your product or company as Public Relations(PR), like branding, and SEO, can be complicated, and you may have to complete a four year University degree to get your head around it all. Or you may have to do a lot of trial and error to find what works for your product/service and your industry. And there are also thousands of websites, video's, blogs and books out there that can help explain to you about PR better than we can.

So the final tip we are going to offer here is this – to get your first bits of media coverage, it might be a good investment to engage a PR company. There are some good PR companies that will guarantee that you get a story for a set reasonable price, say $150, and then there are others that might charge you $1000 and get you no coverage.

Unfortunately there is no magic formula here to getting Press Coverage or finding the right PR company that will guarantee you a story in the Wall Street Journal or the Huffington Post, or even a small blog, or newspaper in your home town.

Generally the simple rule of thumb here for engaging PR companies is that know journalists personally, often as friends, and when you engage the PR company, they will ring or email their friend and ask if they'll do a story about you. To find a decent PR company, you might want to put the word out to your networks, post in Twitter or Facebook or your LinkedIn 'Can anyone recommend a good PR company for getting tech or health or financial tech related stories' or something like that.

Often journalists are like an old boys club. They generally only like to do stories if they know someone that you know, or if you know them personally, or if they think you are worthy of joining the old boys club. So knowing this, find the old boy "the journalist" that you think is most appropriate to do your story, and then find a PR company that is good friends with this journalist, and then pay the PR company to get you the story with that journalist.

If you've never done Press Release's before, and you want to have a go at one yourself, by all means, Google "how to write a Press Release" and have a go. You might find it interesting to learn and write and experiment with Press Releases. You can even post your Press Release to your blog and try promoting it in your social media circles too.

Another method you can try to get press coverage is Googling your competitors, and then seeing who the journalist is that covered a story about them, then follow them on Twitter/Facebook etc, and then send them messages to links to your blog that has the Press Release published and asking them to do a story about you.

We can't really recommend one method or another with PR as it's an art form and not a science – and it often varies from industry to industry. Of course in science one method can be repeated time and time again and you come out with the same result, but it doesn't quite work like that in PR.

You might find websites that encourage you to send them your Press Releases with pages on their websites titled "send us your press release', or you might find a site that publishes Press Releases for cash, say $50, and they might have hundreds of testimonials of others like you who have had stories run about them in the New York Times from posting your Press Release with them. Like anything in PR this could be a fruitful exercise, and your story could get picked up by the mainstream press, or on the other hand it your Press Release may simply get lost in the thousands of other Press Releases on the website - and nobody picks up your story.

PR, like Search Engine Optimization, like blogging, and going viral is about so many factors, and circumstances, and even luck - often being at the right place at the right time is what can make it successful too. Getting media coverage can sometimes be simply be all about luck – that is the journalist had already written a story, and they were looking for a quote, and then you send an email to them at this moment they are looking for a perfect quote, and it is right there in your subject line. Often media outlets put 'call-outs' in social media for content for stories they are working on – so perhaps you want to follow all the media 'call-out' twitter accounts too.

If you do manage to get a positive story published about your product/service, immediately update your website with a logo of the press outlet that published the story, and link to it. The website template will most likely have a section for logo's and link to press stories in there, so this should only take you a minute or two to update.

If you can't find any media outlet to pick up a story about you to begin with, perhaps you might want to start writing to other bloggers and ask them to do a blog post about you.

If other bloggers have got a "cool and hip media type of name" for their website/blog, such as 'Tech Street Journal', and their blog is laid out like the Wall Street Journal or the Huffington Post, or the blog just looks neat, then most people are not going to know that this 'Tech Street Journal' might only have a few readers.

The decision makers in the accelerators aren't going to know every single news outlet that exists in every single city everywhere around the world, or if it's just a blog by someone like you, so give it a go writing to other bloggers to ask if they can write a story about you.

If you spend weeks and weeks on this and you get no coverage, then don't despair. It's not the end of the world if you can't get any press now. When you get into an accelerator program, you'll probably be introduced to local reporters who are friends with mentors in the program, so you will most likely get press coverage then.

So if you have satisfied with your website, and all your social media accounts are set up, and you are making a habit to try and post a couple of posts a day in some or all of your social media accounts(maybe one at lunch time, and one or two in the evening during the commercial breaks of your favorite TV show!), and if you are blogging once a week, and you are trying to get press coverage then the next task involves you finally setting up a company.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'REGISTER A COMPANY' ROAD.

Registering a company might sound like a big step to some, and something that involves a lot of work and money, but we are going to show you how you can register a US company online in five minutes from anywhere, and pay only US$189.

So what do you need a company for now you might ask? Why not set up a business or some other entity? Well the simple answer is you need a company so that you can start trading. But you might be thinking, we haven't got anything to trade yet, (that is you haven't built your product/service etc) so why do we need to do this now? Or some of you might even be asking, 'why have we waited this long in this book to set up a company?' Others might be thinking, 'we are not even close to trading yet, so why do we need to set up a company now?'

The simple answer is this- having a company registered is another thing you need to have ticked off your list so that you can apply to get into an accelerator program. The accelerator needs you to have a company so they can sign the acceptance legal documents/agreements with you when you get accepted into their program. As we have said before, the accelerator program will most likely write you a check for $20,000 \- $250,000 in return for a small percentage of equity in your company (usually 4-8%). And of course, if you don't have a company yet, then you can't exactly sell the accelerator any equity in your company can you?!

It doesn't matter where you live in the world, what we suggest is setting up a US company in the USA State of Delaware for $189 in 5 minutes.

Why Delaware, and why USA? Remember when we told you about the Olympics for Entrepreneurs' are held in USA, London, Tel Aviv etc? Well this is just the simplest registration process so you can get on over to the Olympics trials – the US accelerator programs. If you are not planning to get over the USA for an accelerator, and you already live in a start-up hot spot zone, then please investigate online how to set up a company in your region.

But then on the other hand, the Delaware USA company might not be appropriate for the accelerator you get accepted into in the USA, as they may also demand you set up a company in their state, or they may require you to set up a special type of company such as a C-Corp. As we don't know yet what the accelerator will require, and what country you currently live in, and where you want to do your accelerator, we're just going to suggest doing the bare minimum here, in the quickest time possible, for the least amount of money, so that it's done, and we can move on. But before you go ahead and register a US company called a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the State of Delaware, there are a couple more things that you need to be aware of.

Firstly you need to ensure that your business name is available by searching for it in the State of Delaware business name search engine (Google 'Delaware company registration').

Secondly if you set up a Delaware LLC company now, you will need to have a USA friend or USA family member that you can list on the company registration documents as a 'member' so you can set up a bank account. The website incnow.com will ask you who are the members in your company, or if you register in another state or country, you can Google what company documents you need.

You can't accept any money yet into a US company, until you link it to a US bank account. And to set up a bank account in the US and tie it to the company, you will need to be a US citizen and/or have a Social Security Number (SSN) and/or Employment Identification Number (EIN). If you are not a US citizen, to get the SSN and/or EIN you will generally need to have some specific form of a US VISA.

By putting a members name down on your company registration documents who is a US citizen, they don't need to have any special rights in the company – such as voting rights or equity in the company or to be a director, they just need to have their name and address listed on the registration documents. And then that 'US citizen member' will need to take those registration documents and their ID down to a bank in person, and open up the bank account for you.

So if you don't have friends or family in the USA, you may want to actually wait until you are accepted into the accelerator program, before registering your company, and then put one of the program organizers name down on the registration documents. The accelerator organizers will be very helpful and support you with this.

You might be better off simply registering a company first in your home town, and tell the accelerator organizers after you have been accepted into the program that you are prepared to register a company and open a bank account as soon as you arrive for the accelerator in their state, or the state of Delaware.

After you have been accepted into an accelerator you can ask the program organizer what type of company they require of you, and if a Delaware one is fine, then you can ask one of the program managers to put their name and address down as a member, and then in the first week of the program, go down with them to a local bank with the registration documents and set up a US bank account for your company. In the first week you are at the program, you can also sign all the necessary paperwork to give the accelerator the equity they require.

When you are ready to register a US company with a US citizen to help you open a bank account, all you have to do is go to this website https://www.incnow.com/ and sign-up for the $189 LLC company package. Then this company will send you all the information you need. And then whola, you will have a US company!

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'REGISTER YOUR COMPANY AT ACCELERATOR APPLICATION WEBSITES SUCH AS F6S.COM AND ANGELLIST.COM

The final task on the accelerator application checklist (which you need to complete before you start sending off applications), is setting up accounts with portal like websites that enable you to apply to accelerators.

Most accelerators only allow you to apply to an accelerator through portal websites such as www.f6s.com or www.crunchbase.com or www.angelist.com.

These portal websites will show lists of hundreds of accelerator programs around the world that are open for applications at anytime, and the application forms will be right there in the portal too.

By now you are probably getting really good at setting up accounts and publishing information about your idea on all these different social media websites, so let's keep it going here. In order to apply to get into accelerator programs, you will need to have accounts set up at the following websites; Angelist.com; F6s.com; and crunchbase.com.

Just like you did in setting up your Social media accounts, it pays to be consistent with uploading the same images, and text/information from your website to your page on f6s and Angelist and Crunchbase.

You will also find that these websites sort of look and feel a bit like a website landing page crossed with social media accounts. Don't worry too much about following people or getting people to follow you here at this time. Once again, like we have done with many tasks in this book, we just want you do to the bare minimum and then move on. So fill in all the boxes and forms and upload the images they ask for, such as your logo or picture of yourself.

Of course like the social media sites, if you have lots of followers here you will be more respected, and have a better chance of being accepted into accelerator programs. So please explore followers on these websites when you have time. If you have followers who are well respected in the investment and business world, then your reputation will be even better, and your chances of being accepted into an accelerator will be further increased. So once you have your company page set up in f6s, Crunchbase and Angelist, maybe you want to write to all your LinkedIn or Facebook connections and ask them to follow you at the aforementioned sites. Put a link in your email to your new account address, and maybe you could even ask for a recommendation.

Many accelerators accept that you are a company just starting out, and you may not have many followers from the business and investment community in their city.

Further, many business or investment leaders may not have their own f6s and Angelist accounts anyway (especially if you live outside of the US), so don't worry too much about 'followers' for now - simply use these portal accounts so that you can apply to accelerator programs.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

START THINKING NOW ABOUT WHERE, WHEN AND WHAT TYPE OF ACCELERATORS YOU WANT TO APPLY TO.

Before we go onto the next chapter and before you begin sending off applications to accelerator programs, we suggest you spend some time now thinking about what types of accelerators you want to go for; where they are held; and when they are held. For example many accelerators nowadays are specific to certain industries such as Fintech, or Hardware, or Internet of Things. There is even an accelerator called Disney Accelerator for Disney related products/services.

The 'when' you attend an accelerator, that is 'time of year', can be very important too. If you are applying in the first half of the year, i.e. the northern hemisphere winter/spring, you will see many accelerators advertising for summer programs. On the other hand you won't see too many applications calling for submissions for winter programs.

Further, if you don't like cold weather then don't apply to do an accelerator in New York for their Winter Program. If for example you have twelve weeks to go to finish your University degree, look at what accelerator application closing dates are after you finish your degree.

Finally, ask yourself the question, 'where do you want to attend an accelerator?' Do you want to attend an accelerator in your home city, or do you want to apply to accelerators in start-up hotspots. You may remember in Chapter 1 we discussed the value of doing an accelerator in a start-up hotspot. We encourage you to visit the list again of entrepreneur hotspots from a recent online journal article, and familiarize yourself with the cities on the list. Please be aware though that if you do get into an accelerator in a foreign city to where you live now, you have to commit three months to attend the accelerator program, but the commitment should also extend well beyond after the program finishes.

You need to think about the possibility of living in that city for at least 6 months after the program finishes so that you can get full value out of attending the accelerator. You can't simply attend the three month accelerator program, and jump on a plane back to your home town the day after the program finishes. Well, you can do that if you want, but then the whole accelerator program could be a waste of time. That's because the accelerator program is essentially about setting your company up for growth and success in the city in where it's held. Often accelerators or investment firms related to the accelerators are funded by local governments or state governments so as to ultimately improve employment and growth in the home town it is held in.

Another reason why you have to live in the town where you do the accelerator is because of the 'Entrepreneur Olympics' notion we discussed in chapter 1. Remember when we said that you can't compete in the Olympic Games by sitting on the couch and skyping or vibering in? All the people who will help make your company a success will be around you in the three months of the accelerator program, and they will also need to be around you physically in person after the program finishes to help you launch your product. All the mentors you meet in the program, or all the potential customers or potential partners you are introduced too in the program, are not going to help you that much from the other side of the world by skyping or teleconferencing in all the time if you leave town.

If you need to investigate VISA's for the start-up hotspot cities, then start doing it now. Many countries allow you to live in foreign countries for up to three months at a time on a tourist visa, and then you can leave the country briefly and come back again for another three months at a time. So this may be an option for you.

What about doing an accelerator program in a non hotspot area? By applying to accelerators outside of the start-up hot spot zones, may actually hinder your company's success rather than helping it. If you do an accelerator program in your home town, then be warned that your journey towards a multi-million dollar exit within three years is most likely going to be longer and more difficult.

An accelerator in your local town and outside of a start-up hotspot could, however, be a great stepping stone to get into an accelerator in the entrepreneur hotspots at a later date and time. But also be aware that each time you go into an accelerator, you will need to sell 4-8% equity in your company.

Maybe this accelerator program in your home town or home country has all the best mentors in the city/country. Maybe they're even bringing in all these international mentors/experts/investors too. Maybe your local accelerator has this wonderful reputation to for raising money for companies going through the program, and so you are not interested in doing an accelerator program anywhere else. Maybe all the local press raves on about how successful your local accelerator program is. Maybe you have met some graduates of the program, and they've talked about how valuable the program was, and how they have raised all this money afterwards or they have gone on to sell a lot of their product, or raise their company valuation or whatever. Maybe you desperately need the $20,000 investment now that a local accelerator is providing. Maybe it's impossible for you right now to move to another town or city for whatever is going on in your life right now.

Well all those arguments points above are fine – and you will certainly get a lot out of an accelerator program in your local city or town, but the reality is, you are going to get your destination of a multi-million dollar sale of your company in the shortest time possible only by attending an accelerator program in an entrepreneur/start-up hotspot.

Please take some time once again to read over the lists of Entrepreneur hotspots from a recent online journal article, and study all the statistics to learn why the cities and towns on that list are in fact hotspots.

You will see that San Francisco/Silicon Valley is essentially the biggest entrepreneur hotspot on the planet right now. It's the centre of the world for new companies starting out, and launching innovative products/services. Perhaps you could say it's the centre of the world of technology, commerce and capitalism, just like Rome was the centre of the Roman world 2000-3000 years ago.

On the other hand as San Francisco is the centre of the world for technology and commerce, there may be a few dodgy accelerators outs there taking advantage of the hungry entrepreneur. So you might want to see a list of all the best accelerator programs in the region by simply Googling "Top San Francisco accelerators or top US accelerators' or 'list of best accelerators in Silicon Valley' or something like that.

So when you see an accelerator in a city that lines up with your current plans/life situation/comfort zone, then start researching about that city to see if that is where you want to go to live for the next year or two before applying.

Finally after you have given it plenty of thought and looked into the accelerators you want to apply to, then it's time to move onto the next chapter where we will give you some tips on filling out your accelerator application form.

Before you move on to the next chapter, Dave the Driving Instructor wants to give you a final warning.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

BE CAREFUL IF YOU GET APPROACHED BY INVESTORS, MENTORS, COACHES, VENTURE CAPITALISTS, ADVISORS, CONSULTANTS AFTER LAUNCHING YOUR WEBSITE (WHETHER THE APPROACH COMES FROM AN EMAIL FROM YOUR WEBSITE, OR LINKEDIN OR FACEBOOK OR TWITTER)

As you put your product/service/company out there through Social Media, and by simply having a website presence, you might find that people start emailing you, calling you, messaging you on LinkedIn asking you for appointments or meetings. You might receive emails or requests in social media from people saying 'they want to help you'.

For example, you might get an email from someone saying they are an accredited investor or a coach or an advisor and they want to help you/invest in you/set up a meeting with them or someone they know. Perhaps you will get some emails from people saying their world's experts in SEO, and they'll guarantee you number one of the Google search engines for any search word you want.

So here is a word of warning – just like putting anything out there on the Internet these days, such as on dating sites, or on Facebook, you have to be careful about jumping into real world meetings with people you do not know. Even if they suggest you meet on skype or on the phone. Some people simply cannot be trusted to do what they say – and they may actually be trying to rip you off and take advantage of you.

But we are going one step further now, and instead of simply saying 'be careful', we suggest you don't make any real life meetings at this time at all. You are simply not ready yet.

During the accelerator program, you will learn how to talk to anyone that may be interested in getting behind your product and "honestly helping you" such as investors or coaches or consultants tied to the program.

During the accelerator you will learn to recognize a genuine approach and one that is just trying to scam money out of you. The accelerator will also teach you how to speak to potential investors, or Venture Capitalists, or potential coaches. Well also give you some tips in the next chapter too.

Other than the notion that there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there that may want to take advantage of you 'the young entrepreneur', the other things is, at this time you're simply not ready to talk to anyone. You are not ready to raise capital, to take on advisors or get coaching from anyone, or let alone meet a company CEO, or to discuss SEO with a consultant or anything like that.

We suggest that you be upfront and polite to anyone who approaches you in your written or telephone responses. Thank the interested party for their interest, but tell them you are not ready yet for whatever it is they are offering, but you will get back to them when you are ready in the near future. Or you could simply ignore them.

If on the off chance you get approached by someone of very significant stature in your industry, for example a famous investor, then unless you've already a serial entrepreneur, or graduated from an accelerator you are not ready to talk to them either. You will be wasting your time, and their time, if you talk to them before going through an accelerator - and you could possibly hurt your reputation if you do talk to them.

Especially look out for people offering the world to you. You might find people approaching you telling you they could be the best coach ever with a 'proven track record'. Or perhaps someone might say they helped Mark Zuckerberg get Facebook off the ground, or they could be the best marketing company in the world, or whatever, but what they're really looking for is a fee's such as a monthly retainer of $10,000 or equity in your company. These people may even say that they are an accredited investor, and they love your product, and they promise to set you up on a phone call with famous investors – such as the first Facebook investor, world famous Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz or Peter Thiel or someone like that. But the thing is you are still not going to be ready to meet with these people until after you have graduated from an accelerator program or at least until you have been accepted into an accelerator program. So just give them a quick no thank you response, or ignore them.

The only person you really want right now is an advisor to join your team who is a former president/CEO/top level executive from a company you might want to partner with, or who is a top influencer in your industry that might be able to open doors for deals, partnerships and sales. And if by the off chance you do get approached by someone like this, then you only want to be offering them a maximum of 1% of your equity in your company. Also, unless you have money now for a lawyer, then you probably won't have the necessary paperwork to sign up this person. Maybe this person will send you a contract and ask you to sign it. If these things happen, you should seek advice immediately from a commercial lawyer. You will get more advice about this and access to legal documentation during the accelerator program. You may also get 'free advice' from lawyers during the accelerator program to help you out with advisor agreements, or any other agreements.

We suggest you should wait until you get into an accelerator before you sign anybody up to your team. The mentors in the accelerator program will most likely know someone that knows the person approaching you too, and they can recommend if it is a wise idea to bring this person on board your team.

So you have now finally reached your destination and you are ready to apply to accelerators and move onto the next chapter, so let's go!

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Register a domain name for your website

Register an account at a landing page template website

Brand your product/service with a 'branding inspiration board'

Build your website on the landing page template

Prepare for pre-orders

Chase traction

Publish your website

Set up social media accounts, and tell everyone about your website

Set up a blog/vlog and start blogging/vlogging

Write a press release and try to get publicity

Register a US company

Set up accounts on entrepreneur network websites so you can apply to accelerators

Be prepared for enquiries/approaches from unscrupulous individuals/companies

## Chapter 4: The accelerator program application

YOUR LOCATION – you have just finished marketing your idea.

DESTINATION AT END OF CHAPTER – you have been accepted into an Accelerator Program.

DIRECTION OPTIONS; via get a team/write a business plan executive summary/submit accelerator application/decide on fundraising strategy; arrive at accelerator program.

TIME TO TAKE TO GET TO DESTINATION/END OF CHAPTER – 4 weeks to a year

# EGPS SAYS:

START NAVIGATION

Before you can send off your application to any accelerator program you have to assemble a team. And your team has to be top class. A team has to be you and at least one other person as the bare minimum.

Most accelerator program decision makers, and the mentors in the program, and all the people you will meet in the future in the world of entrepreneurship/start-ups/business that will help make your company a success, are not going to work with you unless 'you are a team'.

You might be thinking 'I don't need to be a team – I've done fairly well so far by myself, why do I have to bring others on board my team?

Perhaps you are confident that you can go at this alone. If you are attempting to run a small to medium sized business, or a lifestyle business in your local area, then perhaps you might do fine by yourself. But if you are looking to have global scalability of your product/service, that is to 'scale it up' and increase sales quickly globally, (to reach your goal of '50,000 units moved a month' figure which you set in chapter 1) then you have to accept that you need a team.

It's a proven fact that a team of co-founders have a greater chance of scaling their company, and making a success of it, than that of single co-founder. It's as simple as that. Or as the old expression goes, 'two heads are better than one'.

There is not much point exploring the above proven fact anymore here - you just need to accept that you have to find a team member now to keep moving your company forwards to your ultimate goal.

Over time your team will grow to include an Advisory Board, a Board of Directors, a Management/Executive team, and most likely other co-founders too. Then as you start getting revenue into your company, or if you raise capital, your team will expand to include employees too.

But our focus right now is about finding just one-other co-founder to join your team so that you can get your accelerator application submitted. If you have already found someone to join your team, or even if you already have two or three people for your team, then that's great. You might want to consider perhaps adding a third or fourth member, based on the advice we're about to provide in this chapter.

There is no rule of thumb for how many team members you need right now, other than the fact that it has to be a team – that is two or more. Some accelerators may accept only one co-founder into their programs, and some may accept a minimum of three. But most accelerators want at least two co-founders to be present for the entire duration of the accelerator program.

Now finding at least one other person to join your team may be one of the easiest things you've done so far on this journey - maybe you already have someone, or you've thought of somebody you want to ask. But on the other hand it could be the most difficult thing you will have to do so far on this entrepreneurial journey. Unfortunately there is no simple way to find a top class team member. And the reality is, if you are building a software, app product, or technology start-up, then there is currently a global shortage of IT people (IT people can be called a variety of names such as developers, engineers, coders, programmers, hackers, tech heads, geeks and others).

Before you go off and find yourself at least one team member here are two points to consider;

•Your choice of team member(s) is going to be one of the most critical factors to help you progress from here. If you choose poorly, then your company may not get into an accelerator, and it may fail. If you choose wisely, your success will be accelerated beyond anything you could imagine in a very short space of time.

•Most of the people who will help make your company a success (whether they be mentors in the accelerator program, CEO's of companies you may partner with, or Angel Investors of Venture Capitalists) will back the team, before they back the product. Or as they expression goes, they will 'back the jockey more than the horse'. You could have the best idea in the world, practically guaranteed to make billions, but it is likely no-one will back you if you don't have the right team behind it. This might sound ludicrous or fickle to some, but just remember we don't make the rules here, this is just how it is. So you just have to accept this and roll with it from this point on, and get the team right now. Think of it this way - would you back a horse to win a race with a jockey that is over 7 feet tall and over 150 kilograms, that has never even climbed on top of a horse before, even if the horse had already won the world famous horse race the Kentucky Derby?

So what are the characteristics of top class team members in the world of entrepreneurship?

We have made a list below of the characteristics and we have ranked them from the most important to least important. This list was compiled after endless conversations with key players in the world of entrepreneurship.

List of characteristics you desire when looking for a team member (in order of priority);

1. Your team member is a serial entrepreneur.

You want to find someone who has taken their idea to a sale/strategic exit before (and by sale or strategic exit, we mean someone that has sold their company for millions, or had their company listed on the stock market, or was acquired for a sweet deal). That is you want someone to join your team who has completed this journey we are doing right now in this book.

Unfortunately there aren't that many people on the planet who can boast they are successful serial entrepreneurs, and perhaps the majority of the people who have done this, are now living on big boats and big mansions somewhere in the Bahamas or in Monaco or wherever, and the last thing they are interested in doing is getting back into starting up another company.

But on the other hand entrepreneurship can be somewhat addictive. Often after someone sells their company, they like to get back into it again. So the serial entrepreneur is out there – you just need to find them and convince them to join your team (we'll explain shortly how you are going to do that).

2. Your team member is a tech person – if you can't find a serial entrepreneur, then your second best bet is to find a tech person to join your team.

If you are already a tech head, then you want to find a business/marketing/sales expert (but more on that shortly). The reality is, even if your product has nothing to do with technology, every company these days is a software company. Think about it – you need accounting software programs to do your bookkeeping. You need the internet to market your product. You need Customer Relationship software to record and document your sales. You need Microsoft word to write reports, you need Microsoft Powerpoint for presentations, and so on and so forth.

If your tech head is a serial entrepreneur too, then congratulations you have hit the jackpot!

So what is a tech head exactly? Well ideally a tech head will be somebody that has University qualification in Computer Science, or IT, or electronic engineering, or Computer languages, or some sort of University qualification related to technology/computing.

Naturally the better the University the tech head has been to, the better chance you have of becoming a success. Many people in the world of entrepreneurship will tell you that you don't need a University educated person on your team. And there are thousands of stories out there of successful start-ups who have team members that drop-out of University, or never even finished school. What we are saying here is just a general rule of thumb – and that is someone who has got into a University and graduated in a technology related field is going to be of high quality. If they have graduated from a top global University like MIT, then they are going to be even higher quality.

If you can find someone that has University qualifications in technology related fields from Stanford University, or MIT, or Yale University, or other leading global or "Ivy League" Universities, then that's a real jackpot.

It's not crucial that you're tech head has University qualifications, if they don't have University qualifications, then they'll need to have skills in a number of computing languages, and have some 'runs on the board'. And by 'board' we mean 'online', and by 'runs' we mean past IT projects/start-ups.

So your tech person needs to have delivered tech related projects/worked on start-ups before, and published their work online. The accelerator program decision makers and anyone that wants to help you make your company a success will want to be able to have a look at some of the tech heads projects online. Or in other words, you need to prove that your tech head knows tech by pointing to some of their past work published online.

Here's another thing you look for in a tech head – you want their skill set to be related to your product/service. It's not much point finding a hardware electronic engineer tech head for your team, if you are building a Smartphone app for online shopping. Or there is not much point getting a tech head who has done hundreds of apps if you are going to build security systems with devices such as camera's, alarms, etc. So before you go off on a search for your tech head, you need to determine what skills your tech head needs to have.

If you are building a tech product, and you have never worked in tech before, then you are going to have to quickly learn 'what are the tools/skills you will need to make your product?' Perhaps you have already done this exercise in the market research chapter of this book.

You don't have to learn how to use the tech tools yourself, just know what they are. For example does your product need to be built in the computing languages such as Java or .NET or PhP? Does your product require someone to design it in CAD?

To get a rough idea of what the tech tools/skills you require from a co-founder, you can visit an IT consultant for thirty minutes just like you did with the patent attorney in Chapter 2 and ask them for a quote to carry out your work. Google IT consultants in your local town, and ask them for a quote to do the work you want done, and go in and meet with them to see if they can do your work. How much are they going to charge you?

You aren't ready yet to engage these IT people, but it could prove to be a valuable exercise for you to get an understanding from a tech viewpoint about the work involved, and the costs too, to build your product/service.

3. Your team member must have had some experience in working for a start-up before.

If you can't find a serial entrepreneur or a tech head to join your team, then the next best thing is finding a person who has had some experience in working in a start-up before. If they have had some experience working in a start-up they'll sort of have some idea what to expect in this entrepreneurial journey. A person who has worked in a start-up before, will know what's likely to be coming up in the months and years ahead so there won't be too many surprises along the way. You don't want to getting a co-founder who is risk averse, and at the first sign of trouble, they run for the hills.

So now that you know the type of person you are targeting to join their team (a serial entrepreneur, a tech head, or a person with experience in start-ups), here are some characteristics below that you are going to look for in these people. As you look at these characteristics, you might want to ask yourself the same questions too. Also as you read these questions, try imagining yourself as a job employer, asking a potential job employee if they want your job.

# LIST OF CHARACTERISTICS OF A CO-FOUNDER

Does your co-founder have domain expertise?

Have they worked in the market/field of what your product/service is in? Do they have experience dealing with customers like you're looking for? Do they understand your problem and solution and your product/service? Do they really get your product/service?

Does your team member have leadership skills?

Are they passionate about your product/industry? Do they have a history of getting stuff done? Do they seem driven? Are they a team player?

What are their achievements to date?

Have they won any awards at school or at University? Have they achieved anything significant against the odds? Are they popular in their local community, or volunteered to get things done in their local community?

Are they a risk taker?

In the world of entrepreneurship, you have to be prepared to take risks to move your company forwards. So you can ask a potential team member or even yourself the following types of questions about risk taking; have you packed up your life and moved to other cities to live? Do you often step out of your comfort zone? Have you taken any financial risks in your life? Have you taken any risks regarding your health? Can you think of any times you have been courageous; never gave up; continued against all hurdles?

How do you balance your time?

You want to learn what your team member is juggling and doing in their life right now - do they seem like an organized person that can make deadlines?

These are just some examples of the characteristics you are looking for in a co-founder. Now that you have a good idea of the type of person you are looking for to join your team as co-founder, here are some tips about how to find them.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

PERHAPS YOU CAN FIND A CO-FOUNDER AT MEET-UPS, START-UP EVENTS, CO-HAB SPACES, UNIVERSITIES; FRIENDS OF FRIENDS, SOCIAL MEDIA/ONLINE FORUMS; ADVERTISING ON FACEBOOK, COLD CANVASING COMPANIES OR THE LIKE.

Unfortunately there is no set formula here on how you are going to find a co-founder with all the skill sets we described above. It's a bit like asking 'how do I find a really beautiful girl to be my girlfriend?' Just like meeting future boyfriends or girlfiends, you could meet your co-founder in a bar, at University, on the street, at online meet-up event, at a Church, or an online 'introductions' website. And yes, there are online dating type sites for co-founders – Google 'find a co-founder' to see some examples.

To find a co-founder with the right attributes, we suggest you start getting active in your local start-up community. Go along to start-up events like Startup Weekend, or any other events held in your local town for start-ups such as local accelerator program demo days, or conferences, or weekly meet-ups, or guest speaker events, or University open days (hang around the Computer Science building on open day if you must!)

Perhaps there is a local start-up incubator in your home town, or at your own University that you could go along to and meet the organizers to put the word out about your product/service/company and that you are looking for a co-founder.

Maybe you want to advertise on your LinkedIn profile that you are about to apply to a leading accelerator and you are looking for someone to join your team and attend an accelerator program with you.

You might want to put up a poster at your local University, or troll through the hash tag #startups on twitter, or join a bunch of online chat forums or Facebook groups. Perhaps you might want to post in Facebook that you are looking for a co-founder, or put up a new thread in Reddit or something like that.

We could go on and on with ideas about how to find co-founders, but there are no perfect formula's here. It's up to you to be creative and to get out there and seek, mingle, mix, talk, convince, and recruit.

If you find someone that looks to be a good fit for your co-founding team, then you are going to have to give them something in return for joining your team right?

So what you will be offering your co-founder is some 'equity' in your company'.

Unfortunately there is no simple formula or straight forward advice about what the right amount of equity is to give to a co-founder – it could be 3% or it could be 30%, it may simply be split straight down the middle 50-50.

Maybe it's going to be tied to some ongoing consulting work too. Unfortunately, as we mentioned before, there is a real shortage out there of decent tech heads. And many in the industry are saying this is not likely to change in the short term.

So if you find someone who is perfectly skilled, and has all the right attributes like we discussed earlier, then perhaps you might want to offer them a decent amount of equity in return. We can't say the exact amount you should give to your co-founder, because we don't know who they are, and what their capabilities and skill set are. Go to the website www.slicingpie.com to learn more, or to download a book with ideas about how you should split equity with co-founders.

If you ask a hundred different people what the right amount of equity is to give to a co-founder, you might get a hundred different answers. As you get yourself involved in the local start-up/entrepreneurship community you might want to ask the question to other people you meet such as; 'how much equity did you give to your co-founder(s)'? You might want to also research this on the internet more too.

If you get desperate and can't find anyone that wants to join your team, then you can consider approaching a cousin or a friend to see if they are interested. Maybe your friend or cousin has just started a science or marketing degree at University, and they are doing a computing subject, and they might be interested in coming on this entrepreneurial ride with you - and they may be of significant value.

A short word of warning here though, often your friends or family might not be the best person to join your team. There is a lot of discussion online about why friends/family are not always the best person to join your team. You might want to Google this so that you learn more before signing off equity to a friend/family to be a co-founder. We are not saying don't do it – we're just saying be aware of the consequences if you get a friend or family member onto your co-founding team and what happens if it doesn't work out. Be aware of 'co-founder horror stories' – Google 'co-founder horror stories' and read some of the stories - that's all we want to say about this.

If after a couple of weeks you have tried every trick in the book and you cannot find someone to join your team as a co-founder, then perhaps as a last ditch effort you might want to consider offering equity to a local IT consultants. Like we mentioned earlier, look up IT consultants in your local area, like you looked up patent attorneys in chapter 2, and get them to give you a quote to build your product. Whilst you are meeting with the IT contractors, if you think they could be perfect for your team, perhaps you want to ask them to be 'quasi' co-founders. And by 'quasi', we mean offer them a small amount of equity, let's say 2-5%, and all you ask in return from them is the right to use their name as co-founder in your team (and refer to their past work and projects online). You might not expect anything else from them, other than essentially "using their name".

There are of course pro's and con's in this approach, and we must warn you that this really is a desperate last stand. It might not work (many IT consultants may not be interested in joining start-ups) and you might not get anything more in return from the IT consultants ever again, and they've just taken 2-5% of your company for doing nothing. They might even agree to put their name to your company, and then a week later demand that you take their name off it, or demand you pay them a bill. But if you trust this person, or if they come highly recommended, or if they have done this sort of thing before, and you have talked with others that have engaged them like this before, then perhaps it could work. The minimum thing you want out of this tactic is to put up the IT consultants picture and bio and links to their work on;

•your website

•in your social media accounts

•in your accelerator application forms

•In your accelerator application portal websites like we discussed in the last chapter that is f6s.com and angellist.com and Crunchbase.

When you have found someone to join your team as co-founder then you will need some sort of signed written agreement with them. Also be prepared to give your new team member the title 'co-founder'. Be aware that you will no longer simply be founder; instead your new title will also be "co-founder".

Once you have negotiated the amount of equity you are going to give to your co-founder, then you're going to have to sign what's called a 'shareholders/co-founders agreement' stipulating the equity they are expected to get in your company.

Google "shareholders agreements" to see if you can find a template for this. The agreement doesn't have to be a too complicated document at this time, but it does need to be a written legal agreement between you as the President of your company signing off with your company (which you registered in the last chapter) and your new-co-founder.

As you Google 'shareholders agreements', you will find lots of information and technical jargon which you may or may not want to include in your agreement such as 'vesting schedules', 'tag-along' rights, 'dispute resolutions' and so on and so forth.

You could make this agreement as complicated as you want, and you could engage a lawyer to help you out here. We recommend engaging a lawyer to do this, but if you don't have the money for this right now, then have a go at doing it yourself with templates online. Something in writing is better than nothing. It's up to you really about how detailed the agreement is at this time.

Once again, as we have done numerous times in this book, we are just advising you on the bare minimum you should do right now, in the shortest time possible for the least amount of money(or for free!). You may be able to polish up the agreement later when you get into the accelerator program, and you may have access to lawyers for free. Free access to lawyer's services is common in accelerator programs nowadays.

You could spend days and weeks reading over all the legal definitions of all the terms and clauses of a typical shareholders agreement that you find online, and still not understand it all. You could even negotiate for weeks with your co-founder about all of these terms and clauses, and minor details. But we recommend you try and keep the agreement as simple as possible for now. We also recommend trying to lock something in writing as soon as possible, so that you don't lose your co-founder in a lengthy negotiation exercise. The longer you delay putting something in writing with a potential co-founder, the more difficult and messier it could be.

I have seen plenty of teams implode in accelerator programs that only have verbal agreements with co-founders and nothing in writing. A co-founder without a written agreement to a commitment of equity is like a time-bomb waiting to explode.

As already mentioned, once you have signed an agreement with your co-founder tell everyone about it. Tell the world about your new co-founder in social media. Go back and update your landing page website 'About Us' page. Put your co-founders picture on your website and write their University qualifications next to their name if they have any. Highlight all the wonderful points about your co-founder, and put links to their online projects too. Get your co-founder to set up a page in f6s.com and Angelist.com if they haven't already done so.

If your co-founder knows five computing languages – write them all down next to their photograph on your 'About Us' section on your website. Do a smart short biography of your co-founder in the best light as possible too for the About Us page. In the biography put a sentence in there about how passionate they are about IT and/or your product/service. If your co-founder is a tech head, then put in some stereotypical type of 'IT characteristics' such as; they love drinking coffee; they love working late at night; they love playing table tennis, or some other wacky office like sports such as carpet bowls or office cricket; or something along those lines.

The idea is; if you have found a co-founder that is a tech head, you want them to fit the mould of a tech head as closely as possible. We are not making up the so called 'mould' here, and we don't want to get involved in stereotyping and generalizations, other than to say, that many people in the world of entrepreneurship expect to see something cute, or wacky, or fun in your tech heads bio. It's just part of their nature – and it's sort of expected.

Now is also a good time to think about doing a two minute quick video with you and your new co-founder too discussing your product/service. You could do a simple video sitting on a couch talking about your business with only your Smartphone camera, and then post that to YouTube if you like.

Write a blog about your new co-founder too, and post that blog link on social media. If you want to do a professional video with your co-founder now, then great, you can read more about doing videos in our video section later in this chapter.

You might even want to take your new co-founder out and shout them a beer/champagne/coffee to celebrate. Start developing a strong relationship with them. They are about to join you on this entrepreneurial journey, and you definitely want to be able to get along with them in a work environment and a social environment too! If you get into the accelerator program there will be many social events, dinners, networking drinks etc.

But before you sign any documentation with your co-founder, you should have a conversation with them about the idea that you are about to apply to an accelerator program. Of course you want your co-founder to participate in the accelerator program with you. If perhaps your co-founder is not able to give up their day job, their family, or their studies and come along with you to an accelerator for three months, then you may need to reconsider them as co-founder. If your co-founder can't commit to attending an accelerator at least for a few weeks, then perhaps you should keep looking for someone that does want to attend.

If your co-founder doesn't even want to consider for a second attending an accelerator program, then this could be a deal breaker, but it doesn't have to be.

At this time, just be clear and upfront to your co-founder that you are about to apply to an accelerator (which may or may not be on the other side of the world). You need to, at the very least, 'give the impression' to the accelerator decision makers that your co-founder will attend. Who knows maybe when you do get accepted, your co-founder may change their mind about attending. Your co-founder may become very interested in attending an accelerator when you are accepted into the program, and when you are waving around a check for $150,000 in front of your co-founders face (as we said the accelerator stipend varies from program to program from between $20,000 - $150,000).

Getting a commitment from your new co-founder to attend an accelerator could be a real delicate or frustrating exercise for you. But it doesn't have to be. It's hard for anyone to think about real life changes, if the life change isn't actually an option yet. So until the day comes that you actually get the offer to attend an accelerator program, it may be hard to try and get some commitment out of your co-founder. You really just want to mention it at this time, and see your potential co-founders reaction. That's all. Of course make sure you paint the accelerator in the best way possible.

There is often a question in the accelerator application forms, or in the interview, that asks, 'can the co-founding team attend the entire duration of the program'. If your co-founder has doubts about attending the accelerator program, still answer yes to this question. Maybe you can convince your co-founder to come along for the entire duration of the program after you actually get accepted into the accelerator.

If your new co-founder has no problems with attending the accelerator program, then perhaps you want to put into your shareholder agreement that you are going to 'split the accelerator stipend fee'. As mentioned, sometimes the accelerator stipend fee is $20,000; sometimes its $50,000 and sometimes it can be as high as $250,000. Certainly if your co-founder is aware that they may be paid say $25,000 cash for attending a three month program in an exciting place like Silicon Valley for three months, then they may be prepared to make some sacrifices in their life to attend. You may also want to think at this time how your accelerator stipend money should be spent. You will need to spend some of this money on product development, and living expenses, but we will go into more detail about that in the next chapter.

After you have found your new team member, and you are establishing what will hopefully be a long lasting and valuable relationship with them, and after you have signed a signed written agreement with them about equity in your new company, and you have mentioned the accelerator thing, then it's time to move on to the next section. The next section is writing your 'Business Plan Executive Summary' which will most likely be a question in your accelerator application form.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN RIGHT AT 'BUSINESS PLAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY' LANE.

You don't need to write your entire Business Plan at this time, which on average is 15-40 pages. All we want right now is for you to write a one to two page summary of your business.

The accelerator may ask for you to attach your executive summary to a question in the application form. For example, some accelerators have questions that says; "Please attach your Business Plan Executive Summary here".

Further the executive summary can also be used to cut and paste into the answers of the questions on the online accelerator application forms.

Before you start writing your Executive Summary, now is a good time to go back into F6S and Angelist (the accelerator application portal sites we discussed in the last chapter) and start looking at all the questions they ask (and look at how many characters you have in the box to put your answers in too). A good exercise to help you write your Executive Summary is to try and group the questions from a number of different accelerator application forms into separate categories, and then attempt to answer them all with one response.

For example put a heading that says "PROBLEM" and group all the accelerator questions that seem to be related to the problem you are trying to solve with your idea, under this heading. The questions about the problem in the accelerator application form could be as simple as 'describe the problem your idea solves', or it might be a little less subtle in the question such as 'can you explain why you first starting develop your idea?' or "Where did you come up with the idea of your product/service'.

If you look at two or three accelerator application forms you will start to see a bit of a similarity in the questions they ask. The accelerator programs do have a bit of a formula they are following here, and you want to familiarize yourself with this formula right now.

Here is a basic guide below of the 'accelerator formula questions', which is also a good rough guide to how you want to structure your one to two pages Executive Summary. This list below could also be useful for putting together a PowerPoint presentation (but we will discuss more about PowerPoint presentations in the next chapter);

1. One sentence description of your product/service

2. Problem

3. Solution

4. Your unique proposition – what you do differently to others, or otherwise known as your secret sauce

5. Your story

6. Your business model

7. Your 'go to market plan'

8. A competitor analysis

9. Your traction

10. Your team

11. Your financial projections

12. Your current status/ask for capital/how you would use funds you raise.

The accelerators may have different spins on the above questions, but try to look through the creativity of the question, and see it for which one of the questions above it may be.

Your answers to the accelerator questions will need to be as precise as possible, because each box in the accelerator application form will have a limited number of characters/words you can use.

In the Executive Summary, you still need to be precise too (it's usually a two page limit) but of course you have a bit more flexibility to expand it to three or four pages if necessary.

You should be deep enough into your product/service/company by now, that you can write the answers to the list of 12 questions above off the top of your head really quickly, without giving it too much thought.

We suggest you put this book done now, and just have a go at writing responses to questions one to twelve above without thinking too much (no more than a paragraph answer on each of the 12 points above).

We also want to stress that the headings above and the order they are in, are not to be used as Bible though. These are just suggested headings in a suggested order, based on past research and past experiences in the world of start-ups.

If you are struggling about what to write for each of these above headings, then simply go back to your patent application for ideas. Re-read your 'Abstract' and the 'Background to Invention' section on your patent application, and cut and paste those sentences under the relevant numbers/headings, and put them into your Executive Summary.

Another way to fill out the answers to the 12 questions above is to cut and paste the text from your website you did in chapter 3. You probably spent a lot of time making all the tag-lines and explanation sentences precise on your website, so now is the time to use all that work you did then in your executive summary.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT AT 'TRACTION' STREET.

Next, we want to focus again on one of the most important sections of your executive summary – traction. You might remember we discussed traction in the last chapter? We need to revisit traction now, as its going to be the make or break question for if you get an interview for an accelerator or not. The reality is this; the accelerator decision makers are not going to be that interested in your product right now, they are going to be more interested in your traction (and your team - like we've discussed earlier). Traction and Team - this is the crux of your accelerator application.

Maybe by now, you already have got some good traction going on. Perhaps you have already got some traction in the form of thousands of pre-order emails, or you won a start-up competition/business plan competition. Maybe you got a newspaper article written about you. Perhaps the newspaper article led to a couple of large company CEO's asking to meet with you to learn more about your product. Maybe your traction could be that you have signed a successful serial entrepreneur to join your co-founding team.

There will most likely be a question in the accelerator application form about traction, but they probably won't use the word 'traction'. Instead the question might be disguised as something like;

•"what milestones have you achieved for your company?"

•"tell us the latest achievement you made for your company?"

•"please give us an email of someone who is willing to buy your product".

You could offer some answers like below;

1. Validated the product by conducting a market research phone survey to 200 potential clients, or which 40 said they are very interested in buying our product.

2.Submitted a patent application to the US patent office with a priority date of <insert date>

3. Launched product online and began taking pre-order 2 months ago, and already have taken 100 pre-orders

4. Runner up in <local> Start-up weekend.

5. Had a story featured in our countries national newspaper, which lead to us having negotiations with <insert company> about <insert your business model>

6. Currently negotiating with the CEO of <insert big company name> about a partnering agreement to take our product to market.

Do any of these pieces of traction sound familiar? They should because you should have finished some of these exercises as part of reading this book!If you haven't got any decent traction yet, then now is to really make an effort to chase some more new traction.

But how do you get the best traction? You might remember in the last chapter we discussed ways you can get traction – if you don't remember, please revisit this traction section now.

One thing we want to add to the discussion on traction from last chapter is be prepared for traction to build on itself. That is if you win one award, you might then get a new interested customer, or another award. If you get a major newspaper story, you might then get into a start-up contest, and then make a sale.

The first piece of traction may often be the most difficult - especially when you haven't built your idea/product/service yet. Perhaps you could call your first piece of traction, like "your big break".

You might've heard the expression "big break" before? Perhaps you saw it in the movies, or in the art world. Perhaps you associate "big break" with this long complicated struggle which makes up the bulk of the story before the big break occurs. Maybe you have heard the word 'big break' in a rags to riches plotline in a movie or novel that goes something like this; struggle, struggle, struggle, something happens (the big break), and then lots of other successful things happen, and whola the person is a big success.

Of course with your traction you want to minimize the struggle stuff before the big break – you want to speed up the process of the struggle to the shortest time possible. And then of course you want to repeat the big break/success part over and over again.

If you are struggling to find traction for your company, then perhaps you might want to think of traction as 'milestones' instead. As we mentioned, you could even list all the task and exercises you have completed so far in this book as milestones/traction in your companies progress as an answer to the traction question in the accelerator application form.

# EGPS:

TURN DOWN 'MAKE A VIDEO' LANE.

Most accelerator applications ask for at least one video to support your application. And the video they really want to see is of the co-founding team talking passionately about your product/service.

The accelerator decision makers, like someone interviewing for a job interview, just want to get an idea about your personalities, and your attitude from watching you talk on camera before they meet you in person. Do you seem positive, fun, and likeable? Or do you come across in the video as arrogant or un-coachable?

Before you start thinking about putting together a little video of you and your co-founder talking about your product/service, please read over once again the characteristics of an entrepreneur from Chapter 3.

Start thinking about ways you can incorporate 'the entrepreneur characteristics' into your video. For example you might want to show you have 'domain expertise', by saying a sentence like this; "I came up with this idea when I was working as a <insert job title> for <Insert Company> (if not a household name company, perhaps add the one sentence line about what the company does).

Perhaps you made a short video about your product/service when you were putting your website together in Chapter 3. Or perhaps when you signed up your co-founder to your company you already did a short video of yourself sitting on a couch and talking. If you haven't done any of this yet, then you need to do it now.

You will also need to upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo when you have finished making it – that is 'it's not going to be a private video'. Be prepared for anyone watching your video.

You could make this video for the accelerator application with a few minutes preparation time, or you could spend weeks on it. It's up to you how professional you want to make it. The accelerator decision makers, however, are not looking for a high production value/ big budget video at this time. The accelerator decision makers know that a quality video takes time, expertise and generally a lot of money.

So here is the absolute minimum for your video to support your accelerator application; put your Smartphone on your TV cabinet, press record on the video, sit on the couch and you and your co-founder talk for two minutes about you and your product, and then upload it to YouTube. You might want to write a short script first, or have some notes in front of you with dot points about what you are going to talk about like this;

1. Introduction to ourselves - 30 seconds

2. Talk about why we came up with the idea and how we met -30 seconds

3. Talk about the problem and how our product is the solution – 30 seconds

4. Talk more detail about the product, and/or how you are so excited to get into the accelerator program- 30 seconds.

It's up to you about how creative you want to be with your video – you could edit your video with fade-ins to screenshots from your patent application, or you could add some images in there, or you could have many different camera angles, or even scenes of where you are talking, e.g. at the park, at a bar, on your couch etc. Alternatively you might want to shoot the video in one shot. To make your video more interesting, perhaps you want to shoot it at an interesting location such as the busy balcony of your University bar, or in a park or some location appropriate to your product or wherever – such as a electronics workshop. The sofa in your living room is simply the bare minimum.

You might even want to do lots of rehearsals first, or just talk for two minutes unscripted. Once again it's up to you how creative you want to be. And do what you're comfortable with!

The length of the video should be 2 minutes. Some accelerators might ask for 5 minutes, and others may ask for 1 minute. At this time, you should aim to do a 2 minute video – if you find an accelerator that asks for a one minute video, and then you can edit it down to one minute. If an accelerator you are applying for asks for a 5 minute video, then you can go back later and add to it.

As you prepare to make your short video for the accelerator application, now is also the time to start thinking about a longer more professional video or an animated 'explainer video', if you haven't already made one yet. In chapter 3 we mentioned the value of getting an explainer video made cheaply on fiverr.com or freelancer to upload to your website.

Perhaps you are in a position now to make a longer more professional video for your accelerator application as you have some money, or you know precisely what it is you want to say and show in under a minute or two.

If you want a high quality professional video made, you need between $500-$5,000. If you don't have this cash lying around, or you don't know who to engage to help you make the professional video, then you can of course go for the cheap and free Smartphone on the sofa video. If you know someone that has a Digital SLR camera, then that is going to be better to use than a smartphone.

A professional video is not absolutely necessary at this time, but it will certainly improve your chances of getting into the accelerator. A professional video could also be crucial to explaining your product, and without it, nobody will get it. So maybe you've already given a professional video a lot of thought.

To get an idea of the type of professional video you are aiming towards, go to Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com and look at any of their successful project videos. There are thousands of video's you could view of successful campaigns. Watch a top ten list of the most successful kickstarter campaign videos to get started and take notes about what you like/dislike.

In case you don't know about Kickstarter or Indiegogo we suggest you learn about them now. Kickstarter and Indiegogo are the leading crowdfunding websites where people can raise money to manufacturer and deliver their product/service/company. Most often the successful Kickstarter campaigns have professional videos which can make or break their funding targets. We don't expect you to make a professional video right now like most of the successful Kickstarter projects, we just want you to start thinking about how your video would look if you had plenty of money and a professional videographer (if you are not already thinking about it!).

Look at the Kickstarter video's now to get ideas about what sort of scenes you might want to include in a longer more professional video if you choose to make one during the accelerator program. Depending on the accelerator program, they may encourage you to do a crowdfunding campaign during the program. But you don't need to decide now about crowdfunding or think too much about it, until we get to the next chapter and discuss crowdfunding as a possible funding strategy for your company.

You might start to notice a common thread in the Kickstarter videos such as;

•scenes of co-founders talking in front of whiteboards with lots of sketches on it;

•scenes of co-founders showing the use of technical equipment to show development of their product (e.g. CAD drawings on a computer, 3D printing, soldering with a soldering iron on Printed Circuit Boards etc);

•co-founders or actors having fun using the product;

•lots of glossy images of the prototype against bright colorful backgrounds such as murals, cool buildings and so on and so forth.

The other advantage of thinking about a professional video right now is to get you to be constantly on the lookout for scenes in the future as they might occur. You can also be on the lookout for events around you related to your product or service, or even capturing photographs of happenings in short videos on your Smartphone to add to a montage for your professional video at a later date. For example if you have a meeting with your co-founder, and you suddenly find yourself writing some new algorithms on a white board – take a photograph of those algorithms on the board. Or record 30 seconds of your co-founder on your Smartphone talking about these new algorithms as it happens 'in real life'. You may want to recreate this scene at a later date if you make a Kickstarter video.

Perhaps there is a conference coming up, or a community event coming up, and you might want to apply to get a demo table to show off your product/service. Then take lots of pictures and/or video's of the event, so that you may be able to use it later in a Kickstarter video. The general idea here is to always be on the lookout for potentially visually appealing photographs and videos to document your journey you are on right now. Perhaps you could look at this exercise like gathering 'visual evidence' as if you were about to go into a court case. Of course you're not planning to go to court - you just want to have some evidence, or something to show visually of this entrepreneurial journey which you can use at a future date and time which can be used at a later date in a professional video. You may never use these images or videos in the video, but they could also serve as a good record of your journey perhaps to show interested investors. The video and photographic documentation might also be useful for you personally, to look back on your progress on this entrepreneurial journey.

The last thing we will say about video's and crowdfunding campaigns is that please only attempt to do a crowdfunding campaign when you get a couple of weeks into the accelerator program – not now. If you have a physical consumer product (that is something you can hold and touch), then the accelerator program mentors may encourage you and support you to do the crowdfunding campaign. But as we already mentioned we will cover crowdfunding in more detail in the fundraising strategy section in the next chapter.

# EGPS SAYS:

TAKE A RIGHT TURN DOWN 'TELL YOUR STORY' LANE.

Just like branding which we discussed in chapter 3, "Telling your story" is one of the most crucial yet underrated things you need to do as an entrepreneur as you progress on this entrepreneurial journey. You will also need to tell your story in the accelerator application forms.

Perhaps in your country 'your story' might not be all that important, but if you are applying for an accelerator in the US, then your 'story' is almost as crucial as team and traction. You need to be able to tell your story, so people will remember you and your product/service- especially when told amongst thousands of other stories such as in accelerator applications.

Often the "tell your story" question in the accelerator application forms is disguised as a question like;

•'Why are you pursuing this idea?'

•'Do you have any domain experience?'

•'What lead you to start your company?'

•'Explain how you met your co-founder and how long you have been working together?'

•'Briefly describe how and why you choose this idea?'

Perhaps you are thinking 'why is telling your story' so important on this entrepreneurial journey?

Well in the shortest possible sentence, the answer to that is 'people remember/relate to other peoples stories'. It's as simple as that.

For example if you were a judge in a Business Plan competition listening to, let's say 50 pitches in one day, for a week (where all the people pitching have been trained to present in a similar manner and similar fashion), then you are really only going to remember the quirky, the unusual, or the interesting pitches. A good story may tug at your heartstrings, or make you laugh, or you may relate to it on a personal level, and so it will stand out, and you will remember it.

As an entrepreneur you really want to be remembered most of the time as NOT being too quirky or unusual (unless perhaps your service/product is deliberately quirky or unusual). What you want to do is to be remembered for 'having an interesting story'.

Often on TV reality shows such as American Idol or The Voice, you hear the judges saying all the time, 'you've got a fantastic story', or "I remember you from last season– what a story!'. Storytelling is just the way humans have been conditioned to remember something over tens of thousands of year – that is history was often passed down from one generation to another through storytelling.

But of course this is not a book about storytelling, or history or human psychology - we are not going to dwell too much on the why it is important to get your story right now. Instead we just want to emphasize that your story is 'very important' right now, and it needs to go into your accelerator application forms.

You need to make your story interesting and engaging, and rehearse it. You also need to tell your story everywhere you go from now on.

So have a go now at writing your story. If you are having trouble writing your story, then Google 'storytelling' to learn more about it - that is learn how your story needs a start, a middle and an end. Learn how it needs a protagonist, and it needs a climax, or perhaps even a hero or a villain. Perhaps your story is about a quest, or a 'rags to riches' storyline. The story doesn't have to be longer than a paragraph, so don't get too detailed with it all. It has to be about you, and it has to be truthful, or at least close to truthful. Start with the problem you personally experienced, and how your idea is a solution to that problem. You know why you started pursuing this idea in the first place, so just write it down. Put some of your abstract from your patent application in there if you want.

If you met your co-founder through a really interesting way or some chance meeting then tell it in your story. For example 'I just finished pitching at Start-up weekend in my hometown, and my co-founder came straight up to me and said, "what a brilliant idea, I have actually been thinking about this myself for quite some time", and then "we worked hard over the weekend on the idea, and although we didn't win we had so much fun working together, that we decided that weekend we would form a company and build <insert your product>".

You should also have a few different versions of 'your story' too. You should be able to say your story verbally in a way that you are comfortable with. One version of your story could be a sentence or 20 seconds, and another may be two or three minutes long. For example if somebody asks you in an elevator; 'why did you get into this in the first place?' have a one sentence answer ready. Have longer version for say to tell over a conference dinner. You are one sentence story could be as simple, "I came up with this idea when I was backpacking across Europe and I couldn't find <restaurant/bus stop/friend/Airbnb accommodation> or something like that'.

Once you have completed writing your story, say it aloud in front of a mirror. Does it seem labored or interesting? Is it boring, or exciting? If you don't like your story, tighten it up, cut some bits out, and perhaps bend the truth a little – don't break the truth though!

When you feel confident that your story is interesting and that you can tell it in a similar order a few times in a row, then you need to test it out on other people.

Test out your story on your mother, your flat mate, your cousin, your best friend or whoever will listen for a couple of minutes. The person listening to your story will probably be really honest and tell you that your story is interesting, or they might just come straight out and say it's boring.

If you tell your story to a few friends and family, and they tell you that it's terrible, then perhaps you should go back to the drawing board and have another go at making it interesting.

If you are struggling for ideas about how to make your story more interesting – then refer to the book, "The Seven Basic Plots", by Christopher Booker – or at least an executive summary of it. Booker outlines that there are seven basic plot lines in storytelling, which feature in all movies and TV shows. Pick one of the seven story plots you know well, or one which you have seen the most movies related to the plot line, such as the 'quest', or the 'overcoming the monster' or 'rags to riches' and then write your story like these movies are described in summaries online or in the plot explanations such as on Wikipedia.

Your story has to be tight, punchy and around one paragraph for the accelerator application question – we are not asking you to write a Hollywood movie script here. For the sake of the accelerator application and the Executive Summary of your Business Plan, you want to get your story down to around to one paragraph or two as a maximum.

When you are satisfied with your story, then it's time to move on to some other types of questions you are likely to expect in the accelerator application form.

# EGPS SAYS:

TAKE A RIGHT TURN DOWN 'MARKET SIZE AND MARKET OPPORTUNITIES' AVENUE

In your accelerator application, there will surely be a question in there about your market/industry and market size. If you don't already have a bunch of statistics yet about your market, you are going to have to get them right now.

If you start googling questions like 'what is the size of the <insert your market name> market?' you should start to get some consistencies in articles describing your estimated market size.

Also analyze the leaders in your market and learn their numbers. If you're inventing a new product, or even a new industry, find out about the leaders in the closest related traditional market/industry.

A good website to get a quick summary of the leading companies is to go to Yahoo Finance. See how many employees the leader has, what is their market cap/company valuation? What is their revenue? This information will be useful for your market size question in your accelerator application. For example, you could say the leaders in this market are <insert company name>. They have an X market share, they have Y number of employees, and their market cap is Z.

The market size question in the accelerator application form is all about numbers. You will also need to memorize these numbers, and regurgitate them in the accelerator interview, and at every pitch event, or whenever you are talking to mentors at the accelerator program.

Remember if you have got a product that is about to disrupt an existing industry, then you have to be an expert in your market/industry/product. And to demonstrate expertise in the entrepreneurial world, you need to regurgitate numbers.

The other reason why you need to know your market numbers is that the accelerator decision makers might not know one thing about your product/industry/market. And you may have to use your interview to give the accelerator decision makers a quick crash course in your industry and really highlight the opportunities that exist.

You don't need to have a hundred statistics in your market research question responses - maybe three to ten statistics should cut it. For example if you're idea is a shark repellent surfboard, then you need to write "there are approximately 1 million surfers on the planet; a normal surfboard costs $250 dollars, the total market size for surfboards is $3 billion dollars, the majority of surfers are aged 30-45, the current market leader in making surfboards is Rip Curl, they have a revenue of $100 million annually, and their mostly based on the East Coast of the US".

It doesn't have to be a nice flowing sentence or paragraph - just list any relevant statistics to show to a 'non-expert' in your industry, how the market looks, and what the opportunities are like.

# EGPS SAYS:

TAKE A RIGHT TURN DOWN 'COMPLETE OTHER ACCELERATOR APPLICATION QUESTIONS' STREET.

There may also be other questions in your accelerator application form about the following;

1. The Opportunity \- often this just another way to say 'what is your market?' This is also good chance to define the problem and your solution. Also you could put some latest developments in your market in your response here (e.g. hacking of old technology, or existing company going into bankruptcy, or a new technology coming into mobile phones opening up this or that, or a competitor start-up carving out a new market for your product/service).

2. Competitive advantage - this is a question about what makes you unique –perhaps you want to pull a few sentences from your patent application abstract or background for this answer.

3. Operating strategies/Business Model \- be short and succinct in a sentence or two here about how you are going to make money. Such as 'we are going to charge .99cents per download of the app on the app store, and we expect to get 5000 downloads in the first month, and then 10,000 in month 2'.

You may also get a question in an accelerator application form about your financial projections, but you won't need to put anything too detailed in there at this time, as in the accelerator program you will learn all the details about your financials such Profit and Loss Statements, Balance Sheets, etc. Also you need to make a mention to your financials in your Executive Summary too. Perhaps you just want to craft a simple sentence like below;

We anticipate that the cost of goods for our product will be X dollars, and that we will be able to sell them for Y dollars. We anticipate revenue to around Z dollars a month with profit to be around A. By the end of the first year, we would expect sales to increase B % month on month.

As we said, don't worry too much about financials for now. You will learn more about your financial projections, and how to present them during the accelerator program.

The accelerator decision makers shouldn't expect you at this time to have detailed financial projections set out in tables and graphs for the next 5 years. There is a method and science to how you present your financials in the world of entrepreneurship, and you will learn that in the accelerator program.

The accelerator decision makers know that 'preparing financials' is one of the things that the accelerator is designed for. Please Google 'financial projections for business plans' if you want to learn more about Financial projections now, but don't spend too much time on it. We have to start sending the accelerator application forms off before the closing dates!

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

YOU ARE NOW READY TO START SUBMITTING YOUR ACCELERATOR APPLICATIONS – BUT GIVE SOME THOUGHT AGAIN TO THE UPCOMING COMMITTMENT BEFORE YOU SEND OFF YOUR APPLICATIONS.

So you should now be ready to begin submitting online applications to the accelerator programs!

But as reminder to what we said in the last chapter, be prepared about what happens if you get accepted into an accelerator. That is if you apply for an accelerator outside of your home town and you get in, then be prepared to live in that town for the duration of the program and at least 6 months after the program finishes. Even be prepared to possibly live in that town for up to 2 years after the accelerator finishes.

So as we said in the last chapter, before you hit the submit button on those accelerator applications, start thinking and looking into VISA's now if you have to.

It's in the accelerator program organizers best interests to be able to help you to organize things like VISA's so you can stay in the local city during and after the program finishes, so if you run into VISA trouble, the accelerator program organizers might be able to help you out. But you don't want to give the accelerator program organizers that getting a VISA is going to be difficult, otherwise they might choose another company over you that have this VISA situation sorted.

Another thing to think about before you hit the submit button to accelerator programs, is 'accommodation'. Where are you going to live? How are you going to find accommodation? If you are lucky the accelerator program organizers may help you find accommodation, or even already have something set up for you.

In places like San Francisco, some countries governments like New Zealand own houses in the local bay area called 'landing pads', where entrepreneurs can crash at for a few weeks at a time whilst when they first arrive to help find other accommodation.

So perhaps you want to look into any sort of support schemes your local government/city/state or the local government you are going to has for entrepreneurs to go to other countries/cities. You might want also start looking into the local websites for share accommodation, or local rental websites, or Airbnb, or staying in backpacker accommodation to begin with.

One thing that is very important to remember when you seek out accommodation is of course, the long term commitment beyond the three months of the accelerator program. For example if you find a place that asks you to sign a three month lease, ask them if they can make it a 6 month year lease. The last thing you want is to find yourself homeless during or after the accelerator program finishes.

Of course start thinking about all the other things you need to do to 'close down' your current lifestyle – do you need to start packing? Find someone to take over your lease on your current property? Do you need to offer a job resignation, find storage, and so on and so forth?

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN LEFT DOWN 'ACCELERATOR INTERVIEW' STREET.

So if you have sent off applications to accelerators, then the next step will be getting an email inviting you to an interview. An accelerator interview is going to be a lot like a job interview.

You have already answered most of the questions that the accelerator decision makers are looking for in the application form, so now the interview is really just a chance to see if you are likeable. The accelerator decision makers also want to see if you have the right 'entrepreneur personality' like we discussed in the last chapter.

If you have ever had a job interview before, then you know pretty much what to expect in an accelerator interview, so there is not much point about us going on here in too much detail about what to expect in an accelerator interview.

If you want to learn more about what to say in a job or accelerator interview, then by all means Google 'job interview question examples' or something like that. If you're interview is going to be on skype or wechat or Google hangouts, you should of course organize a quiet comfortable environment with a good internet connection. Some accelerators even pay for you to fly out to their home town to be interviewed, so be prepared for that possibility too.

For the accelerator interview you should also be ; 'be confident, know your figures off the top of your head (like we discussed in the marketing section), have your story rehearsed, and be ready to tell it'.

Also do and say everything else that you should in any ordinary job interview. That is be likeable; don't wear too much perfume/aftershave (well that's if you have a person to person interview); look interested; prepare your answers, etc.

Try and have your co-founder(s) attend the interview if you can. If you can't have your co-founder attend the interview, just be sure to tell the interviewers that your co-founder will be able to attend the accelerator - if it turns out he can't deal with that later (remember what we said in Chapter 3 about this?). If there is a tech question, get the tech co-founder to answer that question.

If you find that you are struggling to get interviews for an accelerator program, or if you are getting interviews but not getting any offers, then don't despair. As we mentioned, think of applying to accelerators like applying for jobs. If you are not getting job interviews, then you need to persist until the right opportunity comes along. Also if you need to go back and change your accelerator application or what accelerator you are applying too, just like you might change your resume or the type of jobs you going for, then so be it.

Perhaps you have a hardware product, and you are applying for accelerators that traditionally only accept software companies. Maybe you haven't demonstrated enough traction yet, then go out and chase some more.

Perhaps you need to change the cities where you are applying for the accelerator for. For example, there is going to be a lot more competition applying for an accelerator in San Francisco than there is a city like Detroit.

If you living in a US city and you want to get into the accelerator in that town, and you miss out on the summer intake, then set your sights on the fall intake. Go down to the summer intake program and ask if you can volunteer, or help out in any way possible. You could even make an effort to attend some of the accelerators events if you can. Perhaps you could try to meet the accelerator decision makers at a meetup event that you know they attend. Be persistent and keep at it.

In chapter 1, we touched on the need for an entrepreneur to develop the skill of persistence. If you are sending off accelerator applications and you are not getting interviews, then keep persisting.

Perhaps the following analogy might encourage you to be persistent with your accelerator applications; think of the entrepreneur's journey and getting accepted into the accelerator program like playing tennis, and wanting to get into the top team of a tennis club.

If you are say 25, and you've never played tennis before in your life, then do you think that the people in the tennis club are going to let you play in the top team/top division the first day you turn up at the club? Similarly if you have never played 'entrepreneurship' before, then do you think that the accelerator decision makers are going to let you join an accelerator program, especially if you can't demonstrate that you have played entrepreneurship before? You need to demonstrate to the accelerator decision makers that you have entrepreneurship skills. This book has helped you developed some of these entrepreneurial skills, and we have encouraged you to demonstrate these skills in the answers to the accelerator application questions.

If you have never picked up a tennis racket and you want to join the club, then they should welcome you in (if you pay the fees), but there is no way the tennis club is going to let you play in their top team/division/tournament if you have no tennis skills. No way!

Similarly if you turn up at a start-up co-working space, or a Start-up weekend, or attend a start-up event/meet-up, that also runs an accelerator program, then they should welcome you in (especially if you pay any relevant fees), but there is no way the accelerator program decision makers are going to let you play in a top accelerator program if you can't demonstrate any entrepreneurship skills.

So the only way you will be able to play in the top team/division at the tennis club is if you can prove how good you are – that is prove that you should be there in the top team with your top tennis playing skills. You need to demonstrate that you have the skills, and the understanding and ability to get in to that top team. If you don't have the skills, you have to go off and learn them, and 'practice, practice, practice'.

So how do you demonstrate skills in entrepreneurship? Well its demonstrating you have carried out all the tasks and exercises we have discussed already in this book, such as;

•having traction,

•by having a high quality website and video,

•By having social media accounts, and having followers

•By having press coverage, and links to it on your website

•by having a patent application

•having a top class team

•having an interesting story

•by having past work projects online that anyone can see and understand(especially tech examples)

•having and demonstrating those personality traits we discussed in the last chapter,

How you demonstrate all of the above skills/attributes to the accelerator decision makers will determine if you get into their program. If you are having trouble getting interviews for accelerators, perhaps you might need to think about ways to strengthen some or all of the above.

For example, do you need to add another team member? Do you need to make a more professional video? Do you need to try and get another story in the local press? Do you need to start applying for accelerator programs outside of Silicon Valley?

To answer this last question about Silicon Valley accelerators, we will take the tennis club analogy one step further forthwith;

Think of the top accelerator programs in the world, such as TechStars, Y-Combinator, and 500 start-ups like the top tennis clubs in the world.

We could say that the Y-Combinator accelerator, which has a portfolio of companies that exceeds 30 billion dollars, is like the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (where the Wimbledon championships are held every year). Perhaps you could say that Techstars is like the Queens Tennis Club in West Kensington, London (where the Queen's Club Championships are held every year – the premier lead-up tournament to Wimbledon). The bottom line is simply this - you have to be exceptional to get into these places. For example Techstarts have said that there are roughly 1000 applications for each of its 13 programs annually.

Check out the requirements for getting into the All England Lawn Tennis club where Wimbledon is held (taken from Wikipedia);

The All England Lawn Tennis (and Croquet Club) (AELTC - where the Wimbledon Championships are held every year) is a private members club, with only 375 full members, about 100 temporary playing members, and a number of honorary members, including past Wimbledon singles champions and people who have rendered distinguished service to the game. To become a full or temporary member, an applicant must obtain letters of support from four existing full members, two of whom must have known the application for at least three years. The name is then added to the candidates list. Honorary members are elected from time to time by the clubs committee. Membership carries with the right to purchase two tickets for each day of the Wimbledon championships. The patron of the club is the Queen, and the tennis courts are the best lawn tennis courts in the world.

So in other words if you want to join the number one tennis club in the world, the AELTC, you need to have the at least one of the following;

1. Won Wimbledon before,

2. Donated bucket loads (tens of millions) of money to the club

3. Be a member of the royal family;

4. Need to know members of the club, who will back you up as a referee.

Similarly if you want to get into TechStars, or Y-Combinator, you can rule our number 3 above, as you are not a member of the entrepreneurship royal family (you could say the entrepreneurship royal family are people like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Jack Ma).

You can also rule out number 4, as unless you are friends with Dave McClure, the guy that runs and set up the Y Combinator program or Brad Feld the guy that runs/set up the tech stars accelerator program/member (and they are happy to back you up as verbal and written referees).

And you could probably rule out number 2 too – if you have tens of millions then you should probably not be applying to get into accelerator programs. So therefore you are left with no choice but to go after number 1, and that is 'winning the club tournament'. And the way you win the club tournament in entrepreneurship is of course achieving everything we've outlined so far in this book – see the entrepreneur skills list above which includes having patent applications submitted, completed market research, have traction, have a good video and website, have an awesome team, can communicate the problem and solution and opportunity succinctly and so on and so forth.

# EGPS SAYS:

AT THE TRAFFIC LIGHTS TAKE A LEFT AT 'PREPARE FOR DAY ONE OF THE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM'.

If the first interview for an accelerator goes well, you most likely be invited back for a second interview before getting the offer of acceptance. You may also be asked to provide some more information after the first interview such as demonstrating your traction.

In the second interview you just need to do everything you did well in the first interview, and really get the accelerator decision makers to see all those personality traits we discussed in the last chapter.

So when the day comes that you get the offer of acceptance into the accelerator program, you will need to sign paperwork, and get yourself ready for day one. The accelerator will probably ask you to sign off on all the paperwork with your new company, or they may ask you to register a new company (such as in the state/country where the accelerator is held). If the accelerator is in another city to the one you are living in now, then start getting ready for your move.

One final note before we move onto the next chapter is about the 'cash' you will receive for attending the accelerator. The cash is usually referred to as a stipend and as we've said before, the most common amount is $20,000, but it can also be up to $250,000 depending on the accelerator. But the thing is about the stipend, you are most likely not going to get this money until you have turned up at the program and got to at least the end of the first or second week.

And you will most likely get the cash paid in installments. That is you might get a $10,000 check at the end of the first week, and then you might get a check of $10,000 on the second to last week. It might be one, two or three equal installments scattered throughout the program.

Think of the stipend like your monthly salary of a job, and not a prize, or winning the lottery. You get paid after you turn up at the job (i.e. the accelerator), and after you do the work. You may also have to prove that you have completed certain tasks to the program organizers before they pay the second stipend, such as doing a 5 minute demonstration of your product/service and/or a 15 slide PowerPoint presentation; or showing a completed cash flow budget spreadsheet for the next three years. You will learn how to complete these assessment tasks and what is expected of you in the first few weeks of the program.

The way the stipend is distributed (that is in installments during the program, and not upfront) might not be ideal if you are planning to move to another city, and you don't have enough cash to facilitate the airfares and accommodation. Be prepared for this now. You may have to use the acceptance documents you receive from the accelerators to beg or borrow money from friends, family, banks etc, until the first stipend payment of the accelerator comes through.

Before you turn up for day one of the accelerator program, you have to make some serious decisions about how you are going to fund your company's growth, and we will discuss this in the next chapter.

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Assemble a team/find a co-founder

Write a Business Plan Executive Summary

Build more traction

Make a short video about your team/product/service

Craft your personal and company story

Submit accelerator program application forms

Prepare for an accelerator interview and be persistent

## Chapter 5: Your funding strategy and attending the accelerator

YOUR LOCATION – you have just been accepted into an accelerator program

DESTINATION AT END OF CHAPTER – graduated from an accelerator program

DIRECTION OPTIONS; via deciding on a funding strategy; valuing your company; getting the best value out of attending an accelerator

TIME TO TAKE TO GET TO DESTINATION; generally three months to graduate from an accelerator program.

# EGPS SAYS:

START NAVIGATION

Congratulations! By now you should have been accepted into an accelerator program, and be getting ready to turn up to your first day. If you have read this far, and completed all the exercises and tasks we have outlined in this book, then you have done a lot of hard work to get to this point. The accelerator program will soon provide you with all the tools, resources and connections to help speed up your success from this point on.

Essentially the accelerator is going to take over from us for a while as the navigation system and the driving instructor. So all we are going to do in this chapter is provide you with some tips and hints for getting the most value out of the accelerator program before you arrive for day one. We will also take you through the best fundraising strategy that you should choose before you start the accelerator program.

When you finish the accelerator you will be back on your own again – well sort of – but we will go into that more later in this chapter. We will step back in again in the next chapter to support you as your GPS and driving instructor as you continue on this entrepreneurial journey, and to get to your final destination – the sale of your company for $20 million dollars plus.

Generally an accelerator program will go for three months. Each month usually follows certain themes – for example month one is often the 'product validation' month. Month two is often the 'prepare for investors' month/get your product ready' month. Month three is usually the 'prepare for the demo-day' month.

Sometimes the accelerator will break each week down to a certain theme or topic, such as 'sales week' or 'marketing week', or 'financial projections week'. The accelerator might not advertise the subjects/themes/topics for each week or month, and the breakdown we mentioned is there only as a guide so that you know what to generally expect.

The accelerator program usually concludes with a demo day. The demo day involves you presenting your idea for five to ten minutes on a stage alongside all of the other teams who have participated in the program. There are usually ten teams in total participating in an accelerator at any one time. The audience on demo day could be between 50 to 500 people in an auditorium, hall or a big room.

The accelerator program is most likely held in a large shared office space. The accelerator should have desks, good internet connections, printers, photocopiers, lunch rooms, meeting rooms, storage space, maybe even table tennis tables, and all those things you would expect in a normal office environment. You probably won't have your own private enclosed office - instead you will have booths or tables. But you will have access to meeting rooms for 'private meetings'.

There is usually nine other teams also participating in the accelerator program with you. Depending on the program there could be 4 other teams, or in some rare programs, there might even be 100 other teams. Some of the teams might be at a more advanced stage of development than you. Others may behind you and only thought of their concept a month ago.

Some of the teams may have three or four people, other companies might only be teams of one or two. The teams will consist of people of all ages, gender, backgrounds, religious status, and skills and abilities. Be prepared to get along with all the other people/teams in the accelerator – this shouldn't be a problem as most people in the accelerator will be friendly and supportive. You will develop good friendships with the people in the other teams over the next three months, and you will share some amazing experiences with them.

For many weeks of the accelerator program you will have what's called 'mentoring sessions'. These mentoring sessions involves sitting down in a room, with experienced people who are skilled in certain areas, often one on one (that is one on team), from 15 minutes to one or two hours at a time. These mentors come in to the program to share and impart their knowledge, experiences and wisdom with you. You will learn so much from them – so keep an open mind to everything they have to say.

You may have thirty mentoring sessions throughout the accelerator program or you may only have five. It all depends on the program. You may have to attend twenty compulsory mentoring sessions with organized schedules and times and places, or it might be left up to you to organize the mentors and meeting times yourself at the local bar or restaurant. Again it all depends on the accelerator program.

Sometimes you might be sitting down in a small room with one mentor for up to four hours at a time. The mentors may hang around for the duration of the program, or they may just come into the program for a couple of hours and then fly out of the city again. Sometimes the mentors may only turn up to the accelerator for half a day, or two or three days. Your mentors might turn up two or three times a week at the accelerator program for the entire program and want to have coffee with you a few times a week.

The mentors might be successful entrepreneurs from the other side of the world, or they might be successful CEO's from local companies. You might develop wonderful lifelong friendships with the mentors, or they might piss you off, and you never want to see them again. Some of them may give you bits of advice that blow your mind and change your company and product direction. Others may offer nothing useful or valuable to you at all.

One of the absolute minimums you want to get out of an accelerator program is this; you want at least one of the mentors of the accelerator program to join your team in some capacity. As a minimum you want one mentor to be on your advisory board/team. Perhaps a mentor may want to join your board of directors or management team. The mentors may be encouraged to approach you to join your team, or they may not. They may not even be made privy to this idea of being an advisor for your team so you may have to suggest it to the mentors and the program organizers. Make sure you head hunt the right mentor for joining your team. Some accelerators may even have advisor agreements ready to go for you and your mentor/advisor to sign. We will go into more detail later in this chapter about how to go about getting mentors to join your team as advisors. The only other thing we will say now about mentors/advisors is this; you may have heard of the old expression before 'it's not what you know, it's who you know' - as you go ahead in this entrepreneurial journey you will clearly see this phenomenon over and over again. The right mentor/advisor on your team will open doors you could only dream of, and most often they will make or break your company. So choose your mentor/advisor wisely, and do what you can to get them to join your team.

During the accelerator, you will also attend lectures, tutorials, parties, dinners, guest speaker sessions, public speaking training, and the list goes on and on. You will meet amazing people. You will be inspired, and you will be motivated to make your company a success.

At any moment you could be asked to stand up and present your idea and company to a group of strangers at a dinner party, or to the new mentors arriving from interstate for the week, or to anyone else that may pop in – for example politicians or local journalists. If you are not confident with public speaking, then now is the time to be addressing that fear in any way you can. Of course there are plenty of books, courses and websites out there that can help with public speaking.

During the accelerator program in addition to 'mentors' there will be no shortage of expert, experienced and qualified people around you, willing to help you at anytime with any issue, problem, question, or concern you may have with your company and developing your product/service. Sometimes these people will be labeled 'mentors', others will be called 'the program organizers', or they may even have titles such as 'entrepreneur in residence', or 'lawyers in residence'.

Usually there are two to five of these so called 'program managers', or 'program organizers' in an accelerator program. Just like the other team members in the accelerators, these program organizers will also become your best friends during the accelerator program. At first they might feel like your teachers from school, or your lecturers at University, but they will most likely more hand's on than most people you have experienced in authoritative positions. The program organizers should be based in the accelerator offices from at least 9-5pm most days.

The program organizers probably have already taken an idea to a successful company and an exit, and so they will be very helpful to you. They have probably already completed the same entrepreneurial path as you are on now, so they will be able to relate to what you are going through.

The program organizers should also be well resourced. They will have access to people such as lawyers, accountants, professors, CEO's of big companies, journalists, and marketing experts. They will probably have templates of any legal documents you may need. Further, they will probably have a skill set that you could utilize such as Social media marketing, legal, or graphic design, or management skills.

Depending on the accelerator, the program organizers may actually have personal shares in your company. There could be some sort of arrangement through the $20,000 to $250,000 stipend for a small part of the 4-8% agreement you signed that involves some percentage of that equity going to the program organisers. Once again these arrangements will vary from program to program. Whether the program organizers personally have shares in your company or not, they will always be motivated to make your company a success. They'll be motivated to make your company a success so they can make money out of you in the future, and to keep their reputation as a 'great accelerator'.

Never be afraid to ask the program organizers for support at anytime. They will do everything in their power and beyond to help you. They will constantly bend over backwards to support you no matter what your immediate need is. For example, if you have an accounting question, a tech question, a marketing question, or a legal question, the program organizers will find the answers for you. If they can't immediately answer your questions themselves, or solve your problems, the program managers will speak with their connections, or make arrangements for you to meet an expert to get free advice.

As we mentioned, most of the people associated with the accelerator program, whether they be mentors, or the program organisers, or guest speakers or trainers, would've already been down a similar path to the one you are currently on, so their advice and help will be extremely useful and valuable. So be open and coachable to their advice and help. Finally you will feel empowered as all these successful people seem to genuinely want to help you succeed.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

BE PREPARED TO BUILD/REFINE YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE DURING THE ACCELERATOR IF YOU HAVEN'T BUILT IT YET.

During the accelerator program you will probably be encouraged to develop a prototype of your product/service. If you already have built a prototype, you will be encouraged to develop it some more. Up until this point in this book, we have not discussed developing your product/service, other than basically saying 'fake it to you make it' in chapter 3. But the thing is now; this 'fake it to you make it' period is officially over!

The accelerator is the time you will develop your product. If you've made a start on your product, you'll finish it off in the accelerator, or at least have something to demonstrate by demo day. You need to have something to show, or at least developed a real minimum viable product (you may remember we discussed the fake minimum viable product in chapter 3). You will have all the resources around you during the accelerator to help you build your product/service and a little bit of cash too from the stipend if you need to buy parts or pay engineers to build your product.

If you need IT developers or electronic engineers, or graphic designers to make or further develop your product/service, then you will most likely be provided access to them during the program for free or for 'mates rates'. The experts you need could be work experience students studying IT from the local University, or they could be volunteers or they could be experts paid by the program available for any of the team to utilize at any time through a booking schedule. You may be referred to these experts, who may charge you nothing for their services, or they may charge you their normal rates, or they may charge you 'accelerator mate rates'.

Be prepared to spend some of your stipend money for attending the program on building your product during the accelerator. If you have moved from your hometown to a new city for the accelerator, and you've budgeted all your money for living expenses, then be prepared to get creative on building your product with next to nothing. Maybe you'll have to work hard and be persistent with work experience students from the local University who are participating in the program.

As we mentioned in the last chapter, there will most likely be 'gates' for you to pass through during the accelerator for you to receive another stipend payment, or to stay in the program. One of these gates may involve you showing some progress on building your product/service. These gates might be subtle – you might not even be told about them – you might simply be asked one day to meet with the accelerator organizers and show them what you have done with your product/service in the last 6 weeks. Or on the other hand, the gates may be outlined to you, so you know what you are preparing for.

We won't say anymore about building your product/service, other than repeating what we said earlier and that is; you will have all the tools and resources (including some cash) around you to help you build your product/service during the accelerator, so don't worry right now if you feel that your product/prototype is not ready or underdeveloped before you attend day one of the accelerator program.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

BE PREPARED FOR A BUSY SCHEDULE DURING THE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM, ESPECIALLY IN THE FIRST FEW WEEKS.

Your diary will most likely be full for the first two to three weeks of the accelerator, and every day beyond that too. You will probably be talking about you and your idea non-stop for up to five to ten hours a day. This could feel overwhelming for some, but most likely it's going to be a big buzz for you. You will probably feel really alive talking about you and your idea for hours a day, every day.

You will also feel like that you are making big achievements every week during the program, and getting loads of stuff done. You will have to talk about all your achievements and the stuff you are getting done each week too during special sessions called 'CEO check-in', or 'CEO weekly updates'. These sessions could be every Friday, or every Monday, or anytime, and they'll probably be at a set time each week. These sessions could be held over lunch or dinner, or at special places such as mentors houses or workplaces.

In this CEO weekly update sessions, if you are the CEO of your company (you and your co-founder will need to decide pretty quickly about who takes the role of CEO) you will be asked to stand up and talk for 5 to 10 minutes about all your weekly progress.

Many of the mentors and program organizers will use this as a great opportunity to see how you are progressing, 'are you getting traction?' The program organizers may use this time to assess whether you should get your next stipend, or whether you may be investment ready. But we will go more into being investment ready later in this chapter.

You must push hard during the program to get things done - that is to build your product, to build your brand, and to get traction, so that you have plenty of stuff to talk about during the CEO weekly update sessions.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

BE PREPARED THAT IN AN ACCELERATOR YOU ARE PART OF A PRIVILEGED CLUB, BUT YOU ARE NOT YET PLAYING IN THE CLUB TOURNAMENT.

Do you remember our tennis and entrepreneurship skills analogy from the last chapter? Well we are going to play with analogy some more to help you prepare for an accelerator program. Being in an accelerator may feel like you are in the prestigious tennis club and playing in the top team. But it's only 'guest temporary membership' at the club. Your tournament doesn't officially begin until someone invests money into your company.

Sure, at an accelerator, you are in a prestigious club. Only the best teams get into accelerator programs, no matter what city it is held in. If it's an accelerator that has been run plenty of times before, it will feel like you are a part of something really special too. They will be inspirational 'club members' such as the mentors around you who have sold their companies for tens of millions, and/or who have managed large companies and/or made huge achievements in the local business community.

But remember this - you are only on the sidelines getting coaching and training – you are not actually playing in the club tournament yet. You can use the clubs clean change-rooms and locker rooms and the fresh towels – the shared office space, the free dinners at mentors houses or the like. You can take advantage of the clubs private butlers even (e.g. the free lawyer or accounting services) and you can get full free access to the bar and the food (e.g. networking pub crawls, or mentor dinners) but you can't participate in the club tournament yet until someone invests in your company.

The tournament only begins after you raise investment capital from an accredited and respected investor/mentor associated with the accelerator program. An accredited investor is someone who has passed a series of checklists usually set out by a state or national authority. Of course one of the conditions of becoming an accredited investor is that you have a lot of money – or in investor speak, 'you have a high net worth'.

In reality, you probably won't raise any investment money, that is play in the club tournament until after the accelerator is finished. Sure sometimes companies in accelerators raise capital in the first week, or before they even get to the accelerator, but there is a generally a process at work here for accelerators. And we're going to reveal that to you shortly.

Although you're not going to be playing in the tournament yet, the accelerator program organizers will make you feel like you are actually playing in a Grand Slam tournament like Wimbledon or the US Open every day, or preparing for a grand final.

The program organizers will also make you feel like you are preparing for the grand final of a tournament which they call 'demo day'. The program managers will most likely talk about demo day every day. They'll build up demo day as if it's going to be bigger than your high school graduation, your university graduation, and your wedding day combined. The accelerator program organizers will probably stress the importance of demo day several times a day, or at least several times a week.

The accelerator organizers will also most likely take any opportunity in a group setting to build up the demo-day pressure too. They will say things such as 'you will need to speak about your traction on demo day', when you meet with <insert mentor>, as soon as possible as they will tell you how to put a graph together for your PowerPoint presentation for demo-day. And 'it's only 6 more weeks to demo day, 5 more weeks, 4 more weeks to demo day and so on and so forth, and you have so much work to do'.

From day one the accelerator program organizers will build up the pressure for the demo-day, so by the time the last week of the program comes around, and the day of the demo arrives, the pressure on you will be enormous. You will feel like the demo-day is the make or break of your company. But it's not really like that at all.

On one hand there are perfectly good reasons for why the program organizers build up the pressure for the demo day. For example the demo day is a chance for you to showcase the skills you have learnt from the accelerator program to local press, politicians, powerful people, and of course potential investors.

From the accelerator program organizers point of view, the demo day is an opportunity to show off the professionalism of the companies (and their development throughout the program), and hence the professionalism of the program. Demo day, from the program organizers point of view, is about helping the teams raise capital, and to enable the momentum to keep going for the next program. And of course the program organizers want you to be a success so they can make money out of you in the future through their small equity share in your company.

The program organizers may need to get funding to run the next program from politicians, or encourage more mentors, or encourage the best start-ups to apply for the next program, so it's all about showcasing the companies in the existing program in the best light possible.

The demo day is built up for you to believe that there will be hundreds of potential investors in the audience who will decide then and there if they want to invest in your company. You'll be told if you do a good presentation, accredited investors will invest in you. You will be lead to believe that if you do a terrible job of your presentation on demo day, then nobody will ever invest in you. Ever! Some or all of this may be true, but the thing is, the demo-day is not the be all and end all for your company's success. Your success will most likely hinge on what happens with you and your company after demo-day. But we will discuss more about what happens after the accelerator in the next chapter.

So once again, please don't think of demo day as the be all and end all of your company. It's important to be prepared and to get mixed up with some of the hype of demo day, but don't let all the hype overpower you. But that's enough about demo day for now.

Right now before you start the accelerator program, you need to make a decision if you want to try to raise investment capital during the program (and immediately after, or on demo day). Although one of the main focuses of the accelerator program is preparing you to raise investment capital, you don't have to raise capital if you don't want to. You can choose other fundraising options.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

DECIDE BEFORE DAY ONE ABOUT WHAT YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY IS – YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE RAISING INVESTMENT CAPITAL AS YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY.

Before you turn up for day one of the accelerator, you should make a decision about what 'funding strategy' you want to pursue during the program. So the funding strategies you have to choose can be any of the following;

1. Raising capital from investors (selling equity in your company to what's called 'accredited Angel investors' or 'Venture Capitalists'. A term often used to describe an early stage investor in companies is called an 'Angel', or 'Angel investor'.

2. Crowdfunding – raising money from the crowd on online websites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo (you might remember we discussed crowdfunding briefly in the last chapter).

3. Bootstrapping- that is finding customers to fund your company development, or doing everything without any money.

4. Government Grants – submitting grant applications to Governments to fund your companies development.

It is critical that you make a clear, conscious well-informed decision right now about a fundraising strategy before day one of the accelerator program. The decision you make now about funding will massively affect your entrepreneurial journey from this point on. This is a massive fork in the road here.

After you have decided on which is the best funding strategy for your company, you will be able to approach every meeting you have in the accelerator program, whether it be with mentors, potential customers, potential investors, or anyone really, with the right mindset.

By deciding now on a funding strategy, it will give you a razor sharp mission for the entire accelerator program. You will also immediately stand out from the other teams in the accelerator program who are 'not sure' or 'think' they want to raise capital or do a crowdfunding campaign.

Other teams attending the accelerator program may turn up on day one with the mindset that they are going to learn about what funding strategy they should pursue during the program. Or the other teams might simply think they have no choice but to chase raising capital.

But by reading this chapter, you have a head start on other teams entering the accelerator. By deciding now on your fundraising strategy before you turn up to the accelerator, you will be one step ahead of the other teams. You will 'know', rather than 'think you know' what the right funding strategy is for your company.

If you decide to raise investment capital as your funding strategy, you will be hungrier for it from day one. The mentors and accredited investors will be able to see your hunger too. And your chances of getting an investment during and/or after the program will be greatly enhanced.

Before we go into all the pros and cons of each of the four funding strategies, please be aware that, although we suggest you should get one step up on the other teams in the accelerator program, as if they are competitors, the accelerator is not a competition. Unlike most competitions or tournaments, where there can only be one winner - all of the participants in the accelerator program can turn out to be winners – especially in terms of raising investment capital. So please look at the other teams in the accelerator program as friends and not competitors.

Many of you who have already researched online about what accelerator programs are all about, may be thinking right now that 'raising capital during the program is a no brainer'. That is 'why on earth would you want to go to all the trouble of getting into an accelerator program, often designed to help you raise capital, and which puts you in front of all these accredited investors who are interested in investing in the companies in the accelerator program, if you don't want to raise capital in the first place?'

You might be thinking, 'the only way I can get my business off the ground, is to raise capital'. Or perhaps you're thinking, 'why waste such a wonderful opportunity to raise capital that is presented before me now in the accelerator program?'

Even if you are thinking anything like the statements above, there are many things you should be aware first of before making a decision one way or another about the best funding strategy for your company right now.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

IF YOU CHOOSE TO RAISE INVESTMENT CAPITAL AS YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY, BE PREPARED THAT YOU WILL CONSTANTLY BE JUDGED, ACCESSED, WATCHED, MULLED OVER BY ANYONE IN THE PROGRAM AT ANYTIME.

During the accelerator program the mentors, the accredited investors, and the program organizers will most likely spend hours every week discussing whether you are ready or not for investment capital. They'll be regular meetings, usually held behind closed doors, to discuss your you, your company, your idea, your market, your potential, your skills, your personality and so on and so forth.

The potential investors will discuss if they really want to invest in you now or in the future, or never. They will also consider if you should be recommended to their investor friends to invest in you. Often there will be one or two 'leaders' in the local investment community, attached to the program (directly or indirectly) that makes the "big calls" about who to invest in. These 'leaders' might have titles like Chairperson of <City> Angel Group, or Director of <something> Investment Group, or something like that.

The program organizers and mentors might meet with this Angel 'leader' on a number of occasions to decide if you are ready to present to their Angel group, or to even to present to the leader himself.

The program organizers and mentors might put you on a 'watch list', and see how you go over the next month or two of the accelerator. If you are on the watch list, and suddenly you hit a new milestone, you could be invited to suddenly present to the Angels in a formal meeting. Maybe you'll suddenly be invited to a one on one coffee meeting with the leader of the Angel group if you said something on the CEO weekly update such as "I just signed a MOU with a big company" or something like that.

Often the 'investment leader', has significant power and respect in the local investment community, and if he/she decides to invest in you, then other angel investors will probably quickly follow suit and invest in you too.

Often the Angel investors are like sheep – that is generally they will follow their leader. The sheep might be sent in to assess your situation, that is carry out what's called 'due diligence' on you before reporting back to the Angel group or leader about your potential. Due diligence involves checking over all your legal agreements, and all the achievements you have made to date, in addition to checking all the information about your industry, to make sure you are not simply making it all up.

You might have meetings with some of the followers who really love you and your opportunity, but if they can't convince the 'leader' about your value, then they may not invest in you.

So if you do decide to raise capital during the accelerator, here is a list of things you will need to do every day of the accelerator;

•Be punctual to all happenings/events/sessions.

•Be the first person to arrive at the shared office space where the accelerator is being held every morning, and be the last one to leave at the end of the day.

•Be well presented (you don't have to wear a suit or high heels every day, but you should always look professional - that is no croc shoes!).

•Be full of enthusiasm at every moment.

•Be willing to step out your comfort zone at all times, and jump through hoops (e.g. if the program organizers ask for one volunteer to attend some sort of networking event downtown, be prepared to put your hand up for it first. If the program organizers ask you to ring up 100 people to survey about your product, you should ring 200 people.

•Constantly demonstrate that you meet the list of the entrepreneur personality traits we discussed in the last chapter.

•Show amazing progress each week during your weekly CEO report in sessions.

•Make sure you have no 'red flags' that rise up during the mentoring sessions. 'Red Flag' is an expression often used by investors to describe something you say or do that tells them you are not investment ready yet. You will learn more about 'red flags' during the accelerator, so it's a bit hard to know about all the red flags before day one. Just be aware of when mentors talk about what is a red flag. The definition of a red flag will vary from investor to investor. For example a red flag could be you saying something like this, 'we intend to take revenue in quarter 2 of next year'. A common red flag for investors is saying, 'I haven't invested any of my own money in this venture'. The red flags might be different in different countries, and for different size groups, so there is not much point running through a list here of red flags. Google 'angel investor red flags' if you want to learn more now about this topic.

If you decide on the investment funding strategy before day one of the accelerator, then the program is going to feel a bit tougher for you than if you choose funding strategy 2 (crowd funding), or strategy 3 (bootstrapping) or strategy 4 (government grants).

Further if you choose to raise investment capital before you get to the accelerator, be aware that you are going to have to be always 'on show'. Be vigilant that you are being observed at every moment during the accelerator. And whatever you say or do, or how you act at any moment, could make or break your investment opportunity. This is a real serious test you are about to face. Most of the time you won't know you are being tested. But it is also important for your own mental health, that you make sure that you enjoy attending the program too!

On the other hand if you choose the other aforementioned funding strategies, it doesn't mean that you can slack off and do whatever you want every day of the accelerator program. It doesn't mean that you can turn up at the shared office space at midday every day, and not show up at any of the mentor dinners or get blind drunk all the time at the mentor dinners and networking events.

Whatever you decide, you still need to show some sort of professionalism at all times for the sake of your reputation. If you give the accelerator organizers/mentors reasons not to help you, by not turning up, or verbally abusing mentors in public, or talking negatively about a mentor behind their back, or just being 'unprofessional', then the potential investors will turn to other companies in the accelerator to support instead.

The last thing you want out of an accelerator program is to earn a horrible, negative reputation in the business world. As you try to make your company a success, you don't want to be dragging around a negative reputation everywhere you go. The last thing you want to as you try to get a company of the ground is having people talk negatively behind your back. Of course wherever you go or whatever you do in life, you do not want powerful people to talk negatively about you behind your back.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

EXPECT A SPECIFIC PROCESS TO PLAY OUT IF YOU WANT TO RAISE INVESTMENT CAPITAL.

So if you choose funding strategy one, that is to raise investment capital during the accelerator program; here is a common scenario that will play out;

1.one mentor/accredited investor will take this liking to you, and see the massive opportunity as clearly as you do, and decide they want to invest between $20K to $250K in your company.

2. This investor will start talking you up as a great opportunity to a 'leader' in the investment community and to others accredited investors too.

3. The interested investor/mentor will carry out due diligence on you and your company in an obvious or a subtle way. You will learn more about the due diligence exercise during the accelerator program. This due diligence could be subtle, and you might not actually know that it's going on. On the other hand this due diligence exercise could take months, with many emails to respond to each day.

4. If that first investor actually does decide to invest into your company, you will sign legal documents with them stating the terms of the investment. Other investors will most likely follow and want to invest in you too.

This might sound all fairly simple and straightforward, but for most people the hardest part of raising capital will be getting that very first investment. You could spend weeks, months, and even years meeting with this first potential investor on a regular basis, before they actually do invest in you.

During the discussions with the potential investor, if it all goes well, you will need to negotiate what's called 'term sheets'. Term sheets are legal agreements between the company and the investor that details the investment particulars. A term sheet will include clauses and conditions, board rights, types of shares, and all of these other legal things too. These other legal things could include; convertible notes; carry-on rights, pre-money valuations, ordinary shares, and the list goes on and on. Sometimes you might feel like this is all a little bit pretentious or unnecessary or way over the top. It might even feel like you are learning a new language when you start negotiating with the potential investors. The potential investors may even ask you to register a new company such as what's called a C-Corp in the USA, and stipulate how the shareholding table should be set up in that new C-Corp, and/or they may ask for three or four board seats in this new C-Corp.

If you want to get an investment at any time, then you have to be prepared to play the investors game. And to play the game, you have to learn the rules of their game. But don't worry too much about the investor game for now – you should learn all about that during the accelerator program. You just need to be worried about making the actual decision if you want to play the game.

If you have never met with investors before, at first the discussions with them might feel overwhelming, exhausting, draining, and take up a lot of your time. You might feel like you are wasting your time with meeting after meeting. If might feel like you aren't making any progress in the meetings, and the potential investors just aren't getting your opportunity. You might spend 20 hours a week for 6 months meeting with investors and helping them with their due diligence and get nothing out of it all.

You will learn in the accelerator, however, when and how to draw the line in the sand with a potential investor – for example after a few meetings, you might be encouraged to tell the investor that you have other interested investors around, and you need them to make a decision by <insert date>.

The accelerator organizers should also help you negotiate and help you prepare the legal documentation for the investor when the time comes that you are close to finalizing an investment.

At some point the investor may provide you with their legal documentation, and you will be able to show it to the program managers/other mentors in the program, and they will tell you what is fair and equitable, and/or what should be changed. On the other hand the program managers may warn you about the potential investor not being the 'right fit' for your company.

You will need to trust the accelerator program managers that they are getting the best and most fair and equitable deal and arrangements for you at this time. The other way to ensure you are 'not ripped off' by potential investors is to go off and read books about investing, and/or to pay a trustworthy commercial lawyer for advice. You may be given 'free hours' to commercial lawyers in the accelerator program – so utilize this opportunity.

One other thing that the potential investor will probably ask for before they invest in you is they want to see a copy of your business plan, or your Executive Summary, or your 'Investor Memorandum'. You will remember that we went through preparing an Executive Summary of a Business Plan in the last chapter. You will learn how to prepare a detailed business plan and/or an Investor Memorandum during the accelerator program. So don't worry to much about these documents for now.

So if you manage to close a first investment from an accredited investor before, during or after the accelerator program, then you will be officially playing in the first round of the 'investment tournament'. But there will then be further rounds of the tournament to follow too. Round 1 is often referred to as the 'seed' or 'pre-seed round' – the funders/investors are often family and friends, or accredited local Angel investors the amount is usually $5,000 - $100,000. The bar for round 1 could simply be your great idea, and vision, and your great team.

Round 2 of the investor tournament involves the Angel Groups as the investor, and their investment is usually from around $100,000 - $250,000. The Angel Groups usually like to see something more than an idea and team as this stage, such as a prototype, and some serious traction.

Round three of the investor tournament usually involves a Venture Capitalist Fund organization, and the amount they invest usually ranges from $500,000 - $5,000,000. Usually these funds only invest in you if you have customers and significant revenue.

Round 4 of the investor tournament is the later state Venture capitalist funds, and it's usually a mix of a number of them. Round 4 will only happen for you if you have revenue of around $1 million to $5 million a year and you should expect to get investments of between $5 million to $50 million at this round.

# EGPS SAYS:

DRIVE DOWN 'VALUATION OF YOUR COMPANY' ROAD.

Before you choose the right funding strategy for your company whether it is raising investment capital, crowdfunding, bootstrapping, or Government grants (which we will discuss in more detail shortly), you'll need to learn more about valuing your company first.

Whatever funding strategy you choose, you need to be prepared with an exact valuation figure of your company and you need to be able to justify your valuation figure.

So what is your company valuation? Or in other words, what is the dollar value you think your company is worth right now? We all know what your company will be valued at in a year or two – that is $20 million dollars to $20 billion dollars right? – Because that's the whole point of this book right?!

But we have to come up with a number right now to tell the potential investor, and the Government grant assessment body, or for planning for your crowdfunding campaign. This valuation figure is based on the here and now, and of course this is going to be considerably lower than what we expect the company to be valued at in two years time. Your valuation is like a current snapshot of your company's worth – it's not a snapshot in two years time.

Like many other topics we've already mentioned in this chapter, you will probably learn how to value your company during the accelerator program. But unfortunately if you don't have any revenue coming into your company yet, then your valuation is going to be what some investors call a "mumber" – that is a 'Made-up Number'.

If you do have revenue in your company, then investors and VC's use a simple universal formula to work out your valuation. The formula just involves taking your monthly or yearly revenue, and they times it by somewhere between 2-20 times. To decide on what the number between '2-20' is for your company, depends on your industry, the current economic times, and a whole bunch of other factors. These so called 'multiplier numbers' are usually universally agreed by the global investment community. For example if you are in the industry of media and telecommunications, then your multiplier is low- somewhere between 1.5 to 3. If you are in healthcare technology, then you will have a higher multiplier of 4-7.

So for example if you sold $200,000 worth of your product last year in say app downloads for $5 each, then the magical 'times by number' (multiplier number), could be 8 (which is high because the app download industry is big and growing at the moment). So your company valuation, that the investment and business community will agree upon is $200,000 x 8, which is $1,600,000.

The reason they times your revenue by this magical number is sort of related to the number of years you can continue to make money like you are making now. So maybe in 8 years time you would've made $200,000 a year, so the company would've made $1,600,000 in its lifetime. There is some other theory and science behind this, but like most topics in this book, we've attempted to simplify it, and explain in the least amount of words, so we can keep moving on and not get bogged down with minor details.

Whatever way you look at it, without revenue yet in your company, your job of putting a valuation on your company is going to be difficult. Many investors have been burnt before by investing into companies early on with no revenue, and lost a lot of money. So many investors will be really, really 'risk averse'. If a company goes bankrupt early with no revenue and no assets, then the investor doesn't have any chance of getting their money back. On the other hand if there is some revenue and assets in the company, and it goes bankrupt, then the investor may get some money back.

Although almost every investor/mentor will agree on the revenue multiplier valuation method, when you do have revenue, the pre-revenue valuation becomes a bit like a 'he said, she said' game.

Often it's left totally up to you to simply make up a number for what your valuation should be, and then try and come up with all these reasons for why you have chosen this number. How do you justify your valuation? For example, you could show that in 6 months time, by having all these already signed agreements, that you're revenue will be x dollars, hence the valuation of y.

Unfortunately if you ask any accredited investor or entrepreneur, or anyone that teaches in business and entrepreneurship about what they think your company valuation should be before revenue, you will probably get very vague and different answers.

If you ask the accelerator program organizers or any mentors in the program what your valuation should be as you approach investors, they probably won't give you a straight answer either. In most situations there isn't really a clear answer to what your company valuation should be when you are 'pre-revenue'.

But in our case, as you've just been accepted into an accelerator program, you can get an exact number to give to investors backed up by an investor theory. We are going to use - what's called in the investment community 'the line in the sand' theory to value your company right now.

The 'line in the sand' theory goes something like this; it is whatever the last investor in your company invested plus a little bit more. If for example you had an investor put in say $10,000 dollars into your company, and you sold them 10% of your company for that $10,000, then 100% of your company is valued at $10,000 x 10 = $100,000.

So as you have just been accepted into an accelerator program, and you sold say 4% equity for $20,000, then you can use the 'line in the sand' theory to justify your valuation to potential investors. The potential investors you come across during and after the accelerator will simply have to accept your valuation based on the 'line in the sand' theory – which of course they should accept and understand.

If you have signed all the documentation by now for the accelerator program then you would've just sold a percentage of equity of your company for a set dollar figure. If the stipend for the accelerator program was say $20,000, and you had to give say 6% equity for this stipend and attendance in the program, then technically, according to the 'line in the sand theory', your company is now valued at $333,333.33 cents.

That is 20,000/6, gives you $3333 for 1%, which means that 1% of your company costs $3333, and so you times that by 100 to get to 100%, it gives you the approx $333,000 valuation. You could argue that the accelerator will give you so much more value to your company (such as free cloud hosting for a year valued at around $20,000 and mentoring support), but then we go back to the 'he said, she said', problem here about how much that value is really worth in dollar figures.

So if you stick to the 'line in the sand theory' here when you turn up for day one of the accelerator program, you can confidently tell a potential investor what your valuation is right now– that is your company is now worth $333,000, and so you should not offer your first investor a valuation (and equity tied to that valuation) for lower than this figure. The first investor related to the accelerator program will know this, and so they wouldn't expect you to offer them any lower than this.

Now if you only started reading this book a month ago, and if you did everything we suggested in this book, and you just got into an accelerator with the above equity and stipend, then you could say we've just given you $333,000 worth of value already, and we're only in Chapter 5!

With the line in the sand theory consider this example; if the investor you're talking to says he has $50,000 that he wants to invest in your company, then you can tell him that you will sell him 15% equity for his $50,000 – which means your valuation is $333,000.

So this means that if you sold your company the next day after taking the $50,000 investment for 15%, for let's say $1 million (even though you just agreed that your company was worth $333,000), then you and your co-founder will get $850,000, and your investor will get $150,000. So in this example, the investor would have just tripled their money.

You should be aware that you, your co-founder and your investor will only get the money back from your investment when your company is sold, or when you list your company on the stock exchange (this is called an IPO) or if another investor offers to buy out your shares/equity.

If you agree on and sign all the legal documentation, and the investor deposits the money into your bank account, based on the aforementioned figures, then the investor will now own 15% of your company, and the other 85% will be owned by you and your co-founder (assuming that of course you followed our instructions and you have a co-founder now that you are sharing equity with).

Just a quick word of warning here – its common that many companies get signed term sheets, and signed legal documents, but the deal isn't finalized, and you can't celebrate or officially declare your investment until the money has cleared in your bank account. A common expression in the world of entrepreneurship is 'check the bank account for the investment money clearing, and then check again, before celebrating'.

Unless you discussed with your investor things such as loans, and/or paybacks, and/or licensing revenues, or convertible notes, then the investor won't be able to get a percentage of future revenue that your company earns until the aforementioned IPO or other events such as a investor shareholder buyout occurs.

Perhaps you are thinking that you have invested more time in your company than $333,000, or that this valuation is simply way to low. But for your very first investor, after an accelerator, we recommend you stick with this 'line in the sand' theory.

If you go too much higher than this $333,000 valuation, then potential investors in the accelerator program are simply not going to invest in you. It doesn't matter how much time or work, or money you have already invested into your company. It also doesn't matter to the potential investor how much you may make in the future, unfortunately the reality is that the first few investments, the majority of the time, if you don't have any revenue, it must be on a valuation lower than $350,000. For those companies without revenue, and without being accepted into an accelerator, the valuation is most likely going to be significantly lower – it will most likely be anywhere from one dollar through to $100,000 – in the eyes of the potential investors that is.

Now that you know what your company is worth (after you've been accepted into an accelerator program), you are in a better position to decide on what funding strategy you want to pursue during the accelerator and beyond. But before we move onto the other funding strategies of crowdfunding, bootstrapping and government grants, there are still a few more things you need to be aware of about raising investment capital. Understanding about 'holding onto equity in the future' is very important as you go through further investment rounds.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOUR FIRST INVESTMENT IS CRUCIAL TO MAKING SURE YOU HOLD A DECENT AMOUNT OF EQUITY, AS BY THE TIME YOU GET TO THE SALE OR IPO EVENT OF YOUR COMPANY YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU GET SOME DECENT MONEY OUT OF IT ALL.

Every time an investor invests money into your company (or if you give equity away to advisors – but we will go into more detail on that shortly), then you and the previous investors must dilute your equity/shares in the company.

So as we mentioned earlier, as soon as the documents are signed with your first investor, and cash transferred into your companies bank account (and you check twice and celebrate!) your first investor will most likely go around and tell all his/her buddy investor friends how great you and your company/product/market is. Your first investor will reveal the amount they have invested in your company, and encourage his friends to invest a similar amount or more into you at a slighter higher valuation.

The first investor will also talk you up in remarkable ways to encourage others to invest in your company. For example perhaps your first investor will tell all his investor buddies that he knows the CEO of Home Depot, and that a deal has already been done to place 50,000 of your product in all Home Depot stores by the end of the year, or something like that.

And so your first investor will use all these techniques to convince his investor buddies to inflate your company valuation, so his share of the investment rises. Of course your first investor wants your company to succeed more than ever now that he has a share in your company, and he wants your valuation to skyrocket from here. The theory is that every time a new investor comes on board, the company has a better chance of success, especially if the investor can make deals and connections for your company to increase revenue or at least to give the impression that future revenue will be enormous.

Often companies will simply take investment after investment (and sometimes not even have profit for years) so they can inflate their companies valuations based on each investment round. Often by the time a sale or IPO occurs, the co-founders may only be left with 5-20% of their company. It is common that by the time a company gets $20 million plus in investments, the co-founders equity usually drops to around 15-30%. For example as of mid 2015 (the time of writing) Mark Zuckerberg holds 24% in Facebook. Zuckerberg's shareholding is actually an unusually high equity holding for a co-founder holding at its stage of development and valuation, considering Facebook has been through so many rounds of capital raising. Check out http://whoownsfacebook.com/ to get an idea of all the different Angel investors and VC companies that have invested in Facebook over the years.

Now on one hand if you have 10% of a company that sells for $10 billion dollars, then you will be a billionaire – and that is all good right? But on the other hand, many co-founders who take on investment may find themselves diluting down to 5 or 10% by the time of a sale, and then by the time the exit is completed, the founder could be left with next to nothing, or even nothing.

For example, let's say you've raised capital, but then things go a little pear shaped, so your board advises you to sell for let's say $5 million dollars. If you are only holding 10% at this time, then you will only end up with $250,000 dollars. And if you sacrificed a salary until the company had significant revenue, and you only cash in $250,000 at the time of the sale, then you've only earned $50,000 a year for the last five years. You would have probably earned more if you had just stayed in a full time job.

Going one step further, in many cases co-founders have found themselves with nothing or even in debt after they sell their company. Even if the sale is for between $10-$50 million and they were holding 5-20%. This might sound insane, but it happens often. For example the co-founders may have to spend most of their final equity cash in after a sale on lawyer's fees to help the sale of the company finalize. Or perhaps the co-founder has signed agreements with the investors with all of these detrimental detailed clauses that make sure that the investors get a better return on their equity/dilution then a co-founder gets.

So holding onto a decent amount of equity as co-founders go through fund raising rounds can be a bit of a challenge. So just be aware of this at this time – you would be surprised at how many times co-founders end up with nothing even after a sale of $10 million dollars plus who chose an investment capital raising funding strategy.

Then on the other hand, co-founders can use the valuation methods we've discussed, and other techniques, to really exploit the opportunity to drastically increase the company's valuation in a short period of time. Some examples of this 'inflated valuation' is Airbnb, and Twitter, and many of the Silicon Valley 'unicorns'. Airbnb is a good example to break down - Airbnb is an online accommodation booking website, and they closed a funding round in mid 2015 for $1 billion that valued their company at $24 billion. Yet despite this enormously high valuation, Airbnb reported an operating loss of around $150 million in the previous financial year with revenue of $250 million.

This just does not add up – if you use the multiplier formula and number we discussed earlier, to work out a current valuation of Airbnb after this funding round, to get to $24 billion, then they would need to have a multiplier number of nearly 100. And if that's not crazy enough, at the same time before and after this fundraising round, Airbnb are not even making any profit. You will be surprised about how often companies go onto billion dollar valuations without ever making a profit. Amazon are another example of companies with valuations over $1 billion who are not making profits. Google 'billion dollar companies not making profits' to learn more.

So as you can see the valuation processes can be logical or illogical and as a company grows, the valuation techniques turn more into an art, rather than a science. Or more than likely the valuations turn into 'who has the loudest voice and power'. Who can convince others to invest at 'future revenues' to bump up valuations? Often the loudest voice in the investment community is dictated by the person with the most money and power. Whatever the formula or art is in this Airbnb, Amazon or Twitter situation, the co-founders are obviously doing well for themselves.

In their last round of funding in mid 2014, a year before the $24 billion valuation, Airbnb had a $10 billion dollar valuation. So in one year, the value of Airbnb has grown $14 billion. After the 2014 investment, it was officially reported that the three co-founders of Airbnb held 15% each, valuing their share in the company in mid 2014 at $1.5 billion. This net worth of the co-founders comes even though they are running their company every year at a massive loss (the shareholding of Airbnb after the mid 2015 investment round had not yet been disclosed at the time of writing). So you can see the Airbnb founders have done pretty well for themselves.

If you want to play in the 'artificially inflated company valuation game', you will need to learn more about it by reading and studying as much as you can, and you will also need to make all the right connections along the way. You will also definitely need someone on your team who has played this game before so they can advise and coach you along the way. The accelerator can be a perfect jumping board to get into this game if you like, but we're not going to dwell on it much here at the moment, other than what we normally do in this book, and that is to provide the absolute bare minimum to help with your decision making. Of course feel free go off and learn more about company valuations and reading up on start-ups with large valuations like Airbnb now if you want, before deciding on what the right strategy is for you.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

WORK OUT HOW MUCH MONEY YOU NEED BEFORE CONSIDERING DRIVING DOWN "FUNDING YOUR COMPANY WITH INVESTMENT CAPITAL" STREET.

To help with your decision making on what funding strategy you should choose, look at the money you really need right now to get your company off the ground. In the start-up community to get your company off the ground, they say 'runway'. You will hear during the accelerator program investors asking, "How long is your runway?", or "how long does your runway have to be?" But by 'runway' or 'getting off the ground' it really means, 'what do you need to do to get the first say 1000 sales?' So if for example you are spending $2000 a month on your company (e.g. accounting fees, consulting fees, rent, stationery etc) and you have $10,000 in your bank account, then you have a runway of five months. In five months time, you will run out of money, unless you start earning money or raising capital, and in five months time, your runway will end, and you will crash and go bankrupt.

In this next section we are going to help you prepare a list of all the expenses that may come up on the way to your first 1000 sales.

Please consider all the questions below about how much money you will need to get to the 1000 sales breaking point;

•Who will help you get to 1000 sales?

•Will you have a partnership with a leading company who will get you a deal to sell your product in 100 Home Depot stores across the country?

•Perhaps you need to employ a professional salesperson because you don't have sales skills, and you've never done sales before?

•How much are you going to pay that sales person?

•How much is it for extras such as superannuation payments/insurance etc to employ someone?

•Perhaps you need to pay to do a sales skills course so you can do it yourself?

•Perhaps you are ready not want to get out on the road and do sales door to door yourself, but you don't have a car?

•Perhaps you need to employ an expert in business negotiations to get you supermarket sales deals, or your manufacturing partnerships, so they can set up and sign off on contracts with other companies?

•Perhaps you want to pay for some advertising and some online marketing, and SEO so that people can learn about your app and download it from the online stores?

•Perhaps you need to pay IT developers and engineers around $50,000 to finish building your product so that you can launch it and start selling it.

•Will you need to pay other consultants or lawyers to prepare all the legal agreements for manufacturing, employees etc?

•Remember chapter 2 about patents? Well you are going to need at least $2500 before the end of the year after you submitted it to get your patent onto the next stage of assessment too (but we will talk more about that in the next chapter - you have enough to worry about right now without throwing the patent situation into the mix).

•How will you spend the stipend of the accelerator? Will it go all on living expenses, or will you spend all of it on developing your product? If you have your rent situation sorted, perhaps you are living with family, and then you could spend your entire stipend on product development?

You need to also have a good look at your own personal cash flow and situation for the next six months or so, before deciding on how much money you need to raise to get your company off the ground.

If you're about to go through an accelerator program, then you've obviously made a choice to give up whatever it is you do now, and devote yourself full time for the next three months to the accelerator program. But remember when we said earlier in chapter 4, that you should allow at least three months to a year after the accelerator to devoting yourself fulltime to your company to give it its best chance of success, which also includes living in the same town for three months to a year after the program has finished? Well once again we'll ask you do you have enough cash to survive six months in a foreign town or until you launch and get to 1000 sales. Can you build a runway right now for six months? How much more do you need to do on top of your MVP before people start paying cash for your product? As you can see there is a lot to think about in regards to how much money you need to get your company off the ground.

If you don't launch your product during the accelerator program, then you should try to launch it within three months after the accelerator program finishes. Unless you have a licensing strategy, or a partnership/joint venture to sell your product, or some other significant cash event about to happen to you personally such as receiving your superannuation or something like that, then perhaps you don't need to desperately launch in that three month period after the accelerator program finishes.

Take a few minutes now to try to write a list with the greatest priority for cash, you think you need to take your company to the next level of significant sales (e.g. use the 1000 sales figure) based on some of the questions we have already asked.

What you are doing here is preparing a cash flow budget for a business plan. If you want to get an idea for what type of things to budget for, then simply Google 'Business plan cash flow forecast templates'. If within a few minutes your list of priorities adds up to over $200,000 then you can probably rule out bootstrapping as your funding strategy, and will have no choice but to choose raising capital for your funding strategy, government grants or crowdfunding.

# EGPS SAYS:

DRIVE DOWN 'LEARN ABOUT CROWDFUNDING' CRESCENT AS A FUNDING STRATEGY.

In this day and age, a common practice to get a company and product off the ground is called crowdfunding. Crowdfunding has only been around for a few years, and only recently was it even added to all the mainstream dictionaries as a word! So crowdfunding is defined as according to Webster dictionary;

The practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.

Introducing a new product through crowdfunding can be a winning formula. In addition to raising the funds necessary for building your product, it will also serve as visible evidence of the interest and demand for your product. You can also use crowdfunding to quickly increase the value of your company, attract potential investors, and line up distribution deals in supermarkets, hardware stores and retail chains.

If you are developing a product that people can hold and touch, then you should seriously consider crowdfunding as a funding option for your company. If you are developing a service such as an app or software, then the data shows that the chance of making a success out of a crowdfunding campaign is significantly reduced.

To learn more about crowdfunding go to the two leading crowdfunding sites, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and read all their 'Frequently Asked Questions' (FAQ's).

Get online and do as much research now about crowdfunding – start by googling, 'advice on how to have a successful kickstarter project' or something along those lines.

Further, read as many articles from people who have been successful at crowdfunding before. Study and analyze the most successful campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and have a look at the ones that weren't successful. Once again, just like we discussed in the capital raising section, it is important that you make a decision before day one of the accelerator if you want to do a crowdfunding campaign as your funding strategy.

By deciding to crowdfund before day one of the accelerator means you can mobilize all the resources available to you during the program to help you put your crowdfunding campaign together and to make it a success. For example to get a crowdfunding campaign ready, you will need to do the following;

Make a 2-3 minute professional video including;

•Scripting

•Actors arranged

•Professional voiceover

•Arrange filming permissions at certain locations

•Get royalty-free music

•Get professional video production and editing

•Get a video crew – at least 1 day

•Adding graphics such as branding, logos, colors etc.

Build a campaign page including;

•carry out graphic design for campaign perks/rewards for kickstarter page

•Get professional product Images – 3D model videos from functional prototypes

•Get detailed product descriptions, specs

Set up a campaign management strategy including;

•Responding to people's email enquiries (approx 15 hrs/week)

•Public relations

•Post-campaign support for fulfillment of rewards.

•Having a spokesperson for PR interviews

•Having a 60 Day Pre Campaign strategy

•Organize Pre-sales

•Chase retail and distribution opportunities

•Social Media (2 posts per day per social media outlet)

•Email Marketing

•Media buying

If you do decide to go down the crowdfunding path, please be aware that the average amount people raise on Kickstarter and Indiegogo is less than $100,000.

The most money anybody has ever raised on any crowdfunding platform is $20 million - which is not too bad right? A company called Pebble that makes smart watches raised $20 million in early 2015.

It's up to you to set the target of money you want to raise. So if you just prepared your budget of how much money you needed to get your company off the ground and if it was significantly above $100,000 then perhaps crowdfunding is not the best option for you.

Spend some time online learning about companies that have had successful crowdfunding campaigns, and then go on to get valuations or exits in excess of $20 million dollars to see if you want to follow in their footsteps. The most famous example is that of Oculus Rift. Oculus Rift raised $2.4 million on Kickstarter a couple of years ago, which immediately put it on the radar of all the big technology companies. Then two years later Oculus Rift was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion dollars.

So the only other tip we want to offer here about crowdfunding is this; it's a massive time commitment - you can't just sit back and watch it go after you've launched it and expect that it's going to be a success. Just like most things in this world, if you don't have a good marketing strategy in place, then it will fail. And to get engage a good marketing strategy, you will need an experienced and connected marketing person on your team. The good news is if you don't have this marketing person on your team at the moment, then you should have direct or indirect access to the right marketing person through the accelerator program.

The accelerator program managers should have already supported their portfolio companies through crowdfunding campaigns in the past (accelerator portfolio companies means companies that have graduated from past accelerator programs). As the program managers know a lot of the ins and outs of running a crowdfunding campaign, they should be able to help you with marketing, and everything else involved in getting the campaign ready. Finally the program managers should be able to help you managing the campaign through to its completion, and beyond (e.g. finalizing the manufacturing run or the like).

To get an idea of timings for your crowdfunding campaign, try and work towards getting the campaign launched before demo-day to take advantage of all the hype and potential customers likely to come out of demo-day. For example many of the audience at demo-day may be really interested in your product after hearing your pitch on stage, and they may even take out their mobile phone during your pitch (and their credit card details) and place an order for your product on Kickstarter.

Potential backers of your crowdfunding campaign may also be so inspired from your demo-day pitch that they convince their friends and family to back you when they get home from demo-day. Finally you will most likely pick up some extra media coverage from the demo-day to for your crowdfunding campaign, especially if there are some local journalists in the demo day audience - which is usually the case.

# EGPS SAYS:

DRIVE DOWN 'LEARN ABOUT GOVERNMENT GRANTS' STREET AS A FUNDING STRATEGY.

Many Governments around the world are starting to see the benefits to the local economy and community that new innovative companies can bring. The Governments motivations are simple and that is to provide cash to new companies to encourage local employment and spending to create growth in the local economy.

Many companies nowadays choose Government grants to get their company off the ground, and to support growth. However the thing about Government grants is that they can be very competitive and hard to get. Sometimes they require that you put in matching funding – that is if they give you $100,000 you would've already had to have raised $100,000 from other investors. Often Government grants are only provided to companies that already have revenue and employees, or show something exceptional in their traction. Many Government grants demand letters of support or partnerships from billion dollar or big well known companies.

Often the Government grants take a long time to get the money into your bank too. On average don't expect to get a Government in less than 6 months. The wheels of bureaucracy spin very slowly in democratic Governments anywhere around the world. So if you only have a 5 month runway – that is you are going to run out of money in 5 months, then Government grants as your funding strategy might not be the best option for you. Further, there is a lot of reporting requirements with Government grants, and many start-up companies may say that the red tape burden and time is simply not worth it.

But on the other hand if you can find a Government grant specific for your company/product/service, and it doesn't require you giving up equity in your company, or finding matching funding, and you're prepared to put in the time to do the reporting and preparation, then it could be perfect for your company.

Before you start the accelerator program Google 'Government grants in the home town you are doing the accelerator in', or in your own home town and see what there is on offer.

Often local governments offer grants to companies to set up their offices in their home town. But once again these types of grants usually only apply if you already have revenue and employees.

If you find a grant that is appropriate for your company, then, just like with the investment path or the crowdfunding path, tell the program organizers on day one that you want to do this grant application as your primary funding strategy – and that you are not interested in raising capital.

There are also many companies out there nowadays that take a percentage of the successful grant monies to help you prepare an application. Often these companies will do the bulk of the preparation work for you, but just be careful to what they ask in return for preparing the application. See if you can find some in your local area who has already received a Government grant, and ask them questions about what's involved in getting the grant. Ask questions like 'was it worth the time in red tape?'

# EGPS SAYS:

LEARN MORE ABOUT BOOTSTRAPPING AS A FUNDING STRATEGY.

The final fundraising strategy to consider pursuing before day one of the accelerator program is 'bootstrapping'. Bootstrapping is defined as;

A situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company with little capital. An individual is said to be bootstrapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.

The reason we've left the discussion of bootstrapping to the end of funding strategies is that you might feel that what you've learnt so far about raising capital, or crowdfunding, or Government grants sounds all too difficult, and you want a simpler option.

Perhaps your product is almost ready to launch now, so you may choose to simply bootstrap your company. Perhaps the reason why you don't want to raise capital or do a crowdfunding campaign during the accelerator is because your business model is a licensing one, and you don't need to launch a product immediately. Perhaps you're looking for only one partnership with one company, or you are looking for a Joint Venture (JV) with one company. Perhaps you already have a deal with Home Depot or another retail chain to stock your product – then bootstrapping may be for you.

If your business model/strategy is a licensing or JV one, then you want to be close to finalizing a deal; or at least you should've had some dialogue with senior decision makers in a company to partner with. You need to also demonstrate throughout the accelerator program that you have deals close to finalizing.

That is because once again, there will be all these people around you in the accelerator wanting to help you succeed, and you need to show them that this bootstrapping strategy/business model is going to be a reality, otherwise they're not going to be motivated to support you.

If you choose bootstrapping as your funding strategy, then always be upfront and clear on this to all the mentors and everyone you meet in the accelerator in the first minute you meet them. Have a good reason rehearsed for why you have chosen 'bootstrapping' as your funding strategy.

The mentors in the accelerator program must know why you've chosen to bootstrap, so they can mobilize their connections and forces to support you on this path.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

WHATEVER DECISION YOU MAKE FOR YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY STICK WITH IT FOR THE DURATION OF THE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM.

Whatever path you choose to follow before you start the accelerator, make sure you stick with it all the way through the program. Also stick with it for at least three months after the program too. Now this could be one of the most challenging things you do throughout the accelerator program, as you will probably have mentors telling you that you should choose another strategy for funding than the one you have already chosen. The mentors may tell you what they did to raise capital to get their company off the ground twenty years ago and you should do that too. But this strategy may be something very different to what you have chosen.

A mentor might even tell you straight out, "you have chosen the wrong path, look at the path I choose, and I'm worth $200 million today" or something like that. Maybe the mentors will tell you all about the bad experiences they had with the funding path you have chosen and they might advise you not to do what you have chosen at all costs.

Perhaps you are thinking; 'what's the point in going to all these mentor sessions if we shouldn't listen to what the mentors actually have to say'. We are not saying don't listen to the mentors advice and be stubborn and do only what we say. What we are saying is that you should stick to one of four funding strategies we've discussed in this chapter for the duration of the program to give it the best chance of success. And if you are upfront and honest immediately to all the mentors about the funding path you have chosen, and the reasons why you have chosen it, then the mentors should be able to see that you have made the correct choice in your situation, and so they will advise you specifically on your chosen strategy, and they should support you on this strategy.

This advice about 'sticking to your guns' about your funding strategy for the entire accelerator program may also fly in the face against a lot of the modern theory about entrepreneurialism. That is new companies have to be agile, nimble, and quick to adapt and change – and that's what makes them successful. What we are saying is yes, that is all true, and go ahead follow all that entrepreneurship theory and advice, but for the sake of getting maximum value of the accelerator program for just the three months of the accelerator be consistent and firm with your funding strategy so that you attract the right people to you and so that you get the right advice for what you need at the right time to make your chosen strategy a success. If you want to change your funding strategy at any time, then by all means consider this after the accelerator is finished. But we will discuss this more in the next chapter.

During the accelerator you'll probably learn about this concept called 'the pivot' – please don't apply the pivot theory to your 'fundraising strategy'. This 'pivot' concept is about changing your idea or your direction and going in a completely different direction to your original path.

What we are saying here is that pivoting is fine, it's great to take the advice of the mentors, and by all means if you feel the need to pivot anything but your funding strategy then go right ahead. If you desperately feel you have to pivot your funding strategy say from raising investment capital to bootstrapping at week 3, then pivot, but just try to stick to one funding strategy for at least the first month or two, and see if it gets you anywhere.

It is important that you stick with one funding strategy for at least one month to give it some chance of being a success, because during the accelerator you are going to be bombarded with information, and you might not be in the best frame of mind for making any big decisions. Your mind will be all over the place as you go on this massive learning curve, so if you can just stick with just one thought and action for at least a month, then it might help you get better success.

If for example you have chosen to bootstrap for the accelerator program, but you meet this brilliant well connected mentor that wants to say invest $500,000 in your company at say a $2 million valuation, then this may be an offer to good to refuse. If you change your funding strategy without any guarantees, then please be aware that the time in the accelerator may be lost up to this point, and you will have to do all this catching up to the other teams to get to their point of progress once again.

On the other hand, but sticking to a funding strategy, which is not capital raising, it might actually have a 'reverse psychology effect' on the potential investors in the program. They potential investors may be more attracted to invest in you, and they may want to make offers to invest at higher valuations, as you are initially rejecting the idea of them investing in you. Although this is probably unlikely, but you never know!

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

WHEN YOU HAVE DECIDED ON YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY INCORPORATE IT INTO YOUR STORY.

You might remember we discussed "your story" in chapter 4? So let's update your story now that you have made a decision about your funding strategy. Every time you meet someone new in the accelerator program, you will have to introduce yourself with your story. For example here is a one sentence introduction;

"My name is John Citizen, I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of Citizenify, our company delivers apps for migrants to apply for citizenship."

Now add your funding strategy;

1. and we looking to raise $70K for 20% equity.

or

2. and we are about to launch a crowdfunding campaign next month.

or

3. and we are close to finalizing a Commercializing America Government grant to launch our product next month.

or

4. and we are bootstrapping our company as we chase a licensing business model with a leading Telco and we already have a signed letter of intent.

If you have the opportunity for a longer introduction or if somebody ever asks about what you are going to use the money you are chasing in your funding strategy, then have that answer ready to go too.

Remember we asked you earlier in the chapter to outline how much money you need? Have these numbers committed to memory, and add them to your one sentence story. So following on from the sentences above;

1. we plan to use the $100,000 investment capital to engage a sales person part time, and to increase our patent portfolio.

OR

2. We have set a target of $125,000 for our crowdfunding campaign, and we intend to use this money to carry out our first manufacturing run of 1000 units with our Chinese manufacturing partners.

OR

3. The 'Commercialization America Government grant we're going for is for $500,000 and we intend to use that money to engage a full time Business Development Manager to get deals with retail chains such as Victoria's Secret or Staples.

OR

4. We are currently close to finalizing a licensing deal with a leading manufacturer for a royalty of $20 per unit, and a $20,000 sign on fee

Now throw in a last 'call to action' sentence to your introduction story, so following on from the above sentences;

1. We would love to send you an IM (Investor Memorandum).

OR

2. Would love you to place an order when we go live next month with our Kickstarter campaign called the Coolest Citizenyfy.

OR

3. We have already got our stage 1 grant application finished and we're looking forward to commercializing our product, and we would really appreciate a letter of support from you for the grant application.

OR

4. If you know someone that know x, y or z company that you could do an intro too so we can get more licensing deals, then that would be wonderful.

# EGPS SAYS:

PLEASE TURN AROUND AND GO BACK DOWN 'GET A MENTOR' STREET.

Earlier in this chapter we mentioned that the bare minimum you should get out of the accelerator program (other than knowledge, connections, experience etc) is getting a mentor from the accelerator program to join your team as an advisor. Here are some more points to consider about getting the right mentor to join your team;

Before you start each day with a new mentor, you should know in advance from the program organizers about who you will meet. You should research whatever you can find out about each of the mentors before you meet with them. You want to find out everything you can about them, from their background, and skills and work experience to see if it aligns with your product/service/industry. For example if you have a health product, you don't really want a mentor with lock manufacturing experience to join your team. If you do find a mentor that looks appropriate (perhaps you've checked out their employment history on LinkedIn), you want to try and determine in the first 10-15 minutes of your meeting with them if they or any of their friends in your industry, want to join your 'advisory board'.

You will need to provide a small percentage of equity in return for someone becoming an advisor in your company. Generally this will be 2% or under. Once again the accelerator program managers should have a copy of a legal agreement that you want to sign with a mentor to become your advisor, and they should also advice you on the amount of equity you should give to your new advisor.

So why do you want an advisor on your team? In addition to everything we discussed in the earlier chapter that the mentor brings to your company (i.e. connections, ongoing advice) getting a high quality adviser on your team is sort of like your insurance policy for attending the accelerator program. If you don't raise capital, or if you don't have a successful crowdfunding campaign, or if you launch your product and it fails to sell, then the most valuable tangible thing you can get out of an accelerator program could be a signed 'quality' advisor on your team to help you get your company to the next steps.

We've said this before, but we will say it again; getting the right advisor on your team, especially if you are on a bootstrapping funding strategy, will certainly open doors for you. The right mentor/advisor could introduce you to their connections which could be your best customers, your trial customers, your partners, your manufacturing partners. The right advisor could get you distribution deals in supermarkets, in national chain hardware stores, and so on and so forth.

In addition to their connections, the advisor will also be able dispense advice at anytime during the life of your accelerator, and most importantly after the program has finished. This is extremely important for you, as you won't be able to rely on the program managers to support you all the time after the accelerator finishes. Sure you will keep in touch with the program managers, but as they will most likely be preparing for the next accelerator program, they won't be able to support you in the same manner as they did during the accelerator program. After the accelerator program finishes, the program managers time to help you will be limited.

The final thing that the right advisor brings to your company, which is so important in the world of entrepreneurship, is 'credibility'. If you can get a high quality top class person joining your team as an advisor, then other quality people or customers will be attracted to your company too.

If you are on a capital raising investment funding path, then you can update all your websites, social media accounts, all the startup websites we discussed before like f6s and Angelist with information about your new advisor. And other investors, or potential partner CEO's or the like will then start to take you more seriously, and want to get on your company train and join you on your entrepreneurial journey.

So by now you should have decided on a funding strategy; you know what your company is worth; you know what to expect during the accelerator program, and you are ready to turn up to day one and have the time of your life! Good luck and let's go!

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Prepare for the accelerator program by learning what to expect.

Decide on your funding strategy

Value your company

Work out how much money you need to survive at least the next 6 months with a Full-Time commitment to your company (three months during the accelerator, and at least three months after)

Add your funding strategy to your story and rehearse it

Study the mentors profiles

Attend the accelerator program and get the most out of it.

## Chapter 6: After the accelerator and launching your product/service

YOUR LOCATION – you have just graduated from an accelerator program

DESTINATION AT END OF CHAPTER – you have launched your product and you are selling a lot of it.

DIRECTION OPTIONS; via follow up with potential investors/customers, progress your patent, pivoting, prepare the buzz, launch, sell, sell, sell.

TIME TO TAKE TO GET TO DESTINATION; 3 months to a year.

# EGPS SAYS:

START NAVIGATION

If are reading this now, then you should have reached the end of the accelerator program and you would have just graduated - congratulations!

If it's the day after demo day, then you're probably feeling very exhausted right now. Most demo days are usually followed with an 'after party' where the teams celebrate with the mentors and the audience, and have a jolly good old time. After you recover from your hangover, you'll probably feel super excited and motivated by all the positive energy, the discussions and approaches you had from potential investors/supporters at demo day and at the after party (and of course everything you learned from the accelerator program).

You might even have a pocket full of business cards from people that approached you on demo-day all saying they want to invest in you. Perhaps you handed out 100 business cards to people whom you had good conversations with at the after party. You might remember all these conversations about people who said things like, 'they would like to meet you for coffee to discuss a possible investment' or 'we should catch up and discuss opportunities'.

When you look at some of the names and experience of the people on the cards, and do some quick research about them on LinkedIn, you may have to pinch yourself because of how rich and powerful and connected some of these people might be.

You might even get 20 or 30 Linked In connection requests and emails in the next day or two after demo day, with messages from them asking if you want to catch up for a coffee meeting, or perhaps there may be a few invitations to pitch at the next Angel group meetings.

You have about a two week window where you need to follow up on all the interest you got from the accelerator program, and from demo-day and the 'after party'. You want to call as many of the interested people you met that you think align to your funding strategy. But make sure you only meet with people, and spend time and energy following up with people that align with your funding strategy. For example if you are on a Government grant strategy, and you had a conversation with the head of a Angel Investment firm at the after party, who said he wants to meet up as he is interested in investing in you, then you don't want to follow up with him.

This could be a rather tempting and challenging time for you, especially if you have chosen a funding strategy that is not 'raising capital' and you have all these people saying they want to invest in you. That's because many of the people you would have met at demo day, and at the after party were probably 'accredited investors', and they are looking to put their money into the next big thing – and they might see you as 'the next big thing!'

Some of the potential investors that approached you at the 'after party' might go around to demo days all the time, searching out that next big thing, and it might be very flattering that they think that your company might be in their eyes, 'the next big thing'.

Although we have suggested that you should be consistent with your funding strategy throughout the accelerator program, now that you have graduated you can consider changing your strategy now – but please only consider it under extenuating circumstances.

Here is an example of extenuating circumstances; if you on a bootstrapping funding strategy, and you have Marc Andreessen or Ben Horowitz's (billionaire investors/first investors of Facebook) business card in your pocket and you had a great conversation with them the previous night at the after party, and he made you an offer to invest $500,000 for 15% or something like that, then you could possibly change your strategy now.

Once again it was important to be consistent during the accelerator program for many reasons like we discussed, and one of them was to demonstrate your integrity, and discipline and to keep a positive reputation. For example if you told one mentor one day that you were going to license your technology, and then the next day you told another mentor that you were looking to raise $250,000 for say 10%, and then you told another mentor later that day, that you were looking to raise say $50,000 for 10%, then the mentors and the accelerator organizers (and anyone related to the accelerator program in one way or another) would've found this out and they'll be questioning your integrity now (remember when we said in the last chapter that all the mentors and investors talk to each other to decide if you are investment worthy?)

Of course if you have a unique but amazing opportunity like we described above with some billionaire investor like Andreessen Horowitz, wanting to invest in you, you will need to brush up on all the knowledge you learned during the accelerator about investments, and weigh up all the pro's and con's, and do all the valuation calculations, like we discussed in the last chapter.

After the program has finished, make an effort to keep in touch with other teams from the accelerator program so that you can support each other on this journey. Other teams may be able to help you now and/or anytime in the future. You never know, they might sell their company for $15 million six months after the program has finished, and they might want to invest some of that money in you. Even if one of the teams goes busts, and the co-founders take full time employment or get into another business venture, then they could help you out by placing an order in the future, or giving you introductions to people they have recently met.

Try to organize pub/bar drinking sessions/catch-ups or a coffee with other graduates of the accelerator every month or so after the program has finished to fight the loneliness which may kick in. Encourage each other if they make any achievements and be sure to use social media to congratulate the other graduates too. Remember this is not a competition like in sports – other companies that have graduated from the program are not trying to beat you. They are on the same path as you right now, and you can easily emphasize with each other. You can all be winners!

Some accelerators even open up the shared office spaces you were using during the program for use as casual or permanent rental after the program has finished. If you feel like you need to get into a work space away from home to get work done every day, and if it's affordable for you, then you might want to take advantage of this.

If you have graduated from the accelerator, then you would have committed full-time to your company over the last three months or so, and if you don't have regular revenue (such as through an investment that has cleared in your bank account or sales), or through other means (perhaps you are renting your house out on Airbnb, or living off your savings) then the next three months or so could be the toughest three months of your life. So just be prepared for this.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS;

TRY TO FOLLOW UP ALL THE CONNECTIONS THAT ALIGN WITH YOUR FUNDING STRATEGY WITH PHONE CALLS AND NOT EMAILS. TRY TO KEEP YOUR INTERESTED PEOPLES/PARTIES ENGAGED, BUT HAVE A LINE IN THE SAND, SO THAT YOU DON'T KEEP WASTING YOUR TIME WITH THEM.

You may find that after you have your initial follow up coffee meeting with the interested potential investor, or big customer, or retail partner or the like, that they keep emailing you with all these questions. Try to respond to their questions as soon as possible, because this means they are doing due diligence on you to see whether you are worthy to invest/support/back you.

If the interested person requests more meetings, then meet with them. But be prepared to draw a line in the sand after a period, or if you get a feeling that they are wasting your time, or if you uncover hidden motivations – such as the interested person wanting to charge you a monthly fee to be a coach or a consultant.

If you think that time with this potential investor/supporter is going nowhere use some gut feeling or judgment here. For example, you may find that during a second coffee meeting with a so called 'investor', they may suddenly not seem that interested in you and your company/opportunity anymore. Instead the so called 'investor' may seem more interested in doing a sales pitch for their consulting service. Perhaps they are trying to get you to pay them a monthly retainer fee to be a consultant to you. If this happens, hit your escape button and get out of there as quickly as you can.

You may also find that some people you meet might offer you contracts and promise to raise capital for you, but when you look at their contracts they seem to be offering a completely different service. You need to look out for people who are often referred to as agents. That is they promise you the world, such as meetings with big name investors, or big names in your industry, but before those meetings you have to sign a contract that says they take 20% of the money you may raise (even if it's not related to them or the people they introduce you to) or they may demand a $10,000 a month retainer, or want to take 5% of all your income or 5% of your equity(hidden at the bottom of a lengthy contract) to coach you.

As we said in the last chapter, if any legal documents come your way after the accelerator from interested investors or whoever, just like they may've come your way during the accelerator program, you can go back to the accelerator managers or your new advisor for their advice and help with understanding about these documents/proposals. Or of course go to a commercial lawyer you can trust.

If you are unsure of the motivations or reputations of the people you are meeting with, seek out the advice of the program managers and your advisors about their reputations. Maybe the people you are talking to have a reputation for 'taking advantage' of young entrepreneurs like yourself.

You should find that the people who managed the program will still be there to help you on any occasion you need. And the program managers should still go out of their way to help you, but don't expect the same level of service and support you got during the accelerator program. That's because the program is over, the 'hand holding' and 'learning period' is over, and now you are essentially supposed to be out on your own taking everything you learnt from the program and putting it into practice.

Further, the program managers will probably be more focused now on getting ready for the next accelerator program about to start in a couple of months. This also applies for the mentors in the program. Some mentors may've said during the accelerator program that they want to keep helping you, coaching or advising you, and they want to keep getting updates from you, but when you do ask them for advice, you might not even hear back from them, or they may request you pay them $300 an hour for their advice or something like that. The mentors may even tell you something like they are really busy and they want to help you, but they have a full-time job, or other priorities or clients, and so to prioritize you they'll need to get paid, just like they charge their other so called 'clients'. This may not happen at all to you, but we are just saying to be aware that things are different now the accelerator program is finished.

After the accelerator program has finished if you have questions or run into any trouble, then this where your newly signed advisor comes into play. If you have signed agreements with a new advisor, and given them a small piece of equity for their commitment, then you should expect that they can give you advice anytime to whatever situation you are going through.

Sometimes your new advisor might not be able to respond immediately, but they should help you out within a few days or so. Of course if your new advisor has equity in your company, they know they will need to give you advice from time to time, even it's only a small percentage of equity.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

BE AWARE THAT JUST BECAUSE THE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM IS FINISHED, IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THE TEST/OBSERVATION PERIOD OF YOU/YOUR COMPANY IS ALSO FINISHED.

Be aware that the first month or two after the program is also an ongoing test for you to see if you have applied what you learnt from the program into practice. Or put simply all those involved in the accelerator want to see if you are getting increased traction immediately after the program has finished, and they want to see sales.

The accelerator managers and mentors are watching you to see if you have launched your product and if you're selling it. You may even be scrutinized more after the program then you were during the program as you are 'out there' in the real world on your own now. The potential investors want to observe you for a period to see if you will sink or swim. If you can swim, then they will invest in you.

The observations of you might be subtlety done by the program managers- they might ask for weekly or monthly updates in an email, or they might just give you a call and ask how you are doing.

The monitoring of you 'sinking or swimming' could even be done indirectly from verbal reports from all the so called 'potential investors' that you're having coffees with. We're not suggesting here that the program managers/potential investors are going to hack into your emails or bug your phone, or send spies out to follow you everywhere you go; we are just suggesting they may simply send you an email once a week saying, or a phone call, saying "how is everything going?" The program managers might also be reading all your social media posts, and your blogs, and/or talking with people in your industry to hear how you are getting on.

If you don't get any traction after the program finishes, and if it appears that you are going nowhere – that is you are nowhere near launching your product and getting sales, then everyone associated with accelerator program may turn to other companies to focus their attention on.

Right now the real traction that anyone is looking for is simply 'sales of your product'. The time for all that other traction like newspaper articles, and pre-order emails and the like is finished. The time has come to sell! But before we go into detail about sales, there is something else you should consider now before moving forwards and that is your patent application that we did in chapter 2. You remember submitting your patent in chapter 2? Well by now several months should have passed since you submitted it, and you need to consider if you want to progress your patent application/devote more funds to it, to get it to the next stage. You only have a maximum one year window to decide if you want to progress your patent to the next stage. So lets discuss that more now.

# EGPS SAYS:

TURN DOWN 'PROGRESS YOUR PATENT APPLICATION' ROAD.

You are going to need at least $2500-$5000 to move your patent application to the next stage. You have two choices now for moving your patent on to the next stage. One of those choices is paying for a Search report to be done on your patent in the country you originally applied to (remember we suggested to apply initially to the USA) to see if you have anything that is novel, inventive or industrially applicable (or in other words, to see what you have claimed something is not what someone else has already claimed before you).

If that search report comes back as good, then you can then pay more fee's to the patent application office in the country you applied for the patent to be examined and then granted.

If your search report comes back with rejections including claims that appear to have been taken by someone else/some other company, then you have an opportunity to adjust part of your application before submitting for examination. But you will need to pay a patent attorney to do all these steps for you, as they will be skilled in knowing how to interpret the search report, and how to challenge any objections if necessary, and how to prepare those challenge statements. You can't really do any of the work yourself for free from this point on.

The next stage of your patent application after the international search, will be the 'examiner stage'. After a period in a queue (which could be anywhere between six months to four years, depending on many factors) your patent application will arrive on the desk of an examiner who will do more searches, and look at the previous searches and decide if you should be granted a patent.

It could then take anywhere from another six months up a few years for the patent to actually be granted. It all depends on so many factors such as; how busy the patent office is; how many applications have come in your field at the same time; how supportive the actual examiner is you get- for example if there are some things that that the examiner is unsure about, then they may need to seek advice from other patent examiners, and the other patent examiners could be busy or away on leave, and it might take months to hear back from them. You may get an unfavorable examiner, and then you may have to request a new one, which means you go back in the queue again.

There is an opportunity to speed up the application process, if you get a good initial search report via what's called 'the Patent Expediation Highway'. But there are no guarantees here about getting a speedy examination, and if you do decide to progress your application, then there will be more fees.

The other option you have for progressing your patent application before the end of the year long 1st period, is applying for what's called a worldwide patent application which is also referred to as a PCT application (PCT stands for Patent Cooperation Treaty). This option will cost you atleast $8000 but that's only the next step, there will be other costs too at later dates.

There are over 168 countries on the PCT that you could possibly apply to have your patent granted in. This PCT application will also include an international search report being done on your application to see if you have something which once again is novel, inventive and industrially applicable.

You will then have another year to decide what countries/regions on that 168 PCT country list that you want to apply to. Each time you apply to a country or region, you will have to pay more fees to the Patent Offices in those countries for them to examine your patent. And if you are applying in countries where English is a second language like China or Japan, then you'll need to pay for the applications to be translated too. For each region/country you apply to you may have to allow another $5000-$20,000 in total to get your patent fully granted.

So if you applied to all 168 countries on the PCT application list times by say $15,000 on average, then being granted a worldwide patent is going to cost you around $2,500,000. Of course you don't have this money, and even the big companies like Google and Apple, don't usually apply to all the countries on the PCT list, so you have to be selective and choose the appropriate ones for your company strategy. For example if you are going to manufacturer your product and sell it in mostly Japan, as there is no market for it anywhere else, then you should consider taking out a patent only in Japan.

So you can see that the patent starts to become an expensive exercise to add on top of everything else that is costing you money at the moment such as getting your product ready for launch, or even paying for food and rent to survive.

If you are tight on cash at the moment, or if you are close to finalizing an investment, then you may have to think about sacrificing your patent application for now. You can revise the application at anytime (that is re-submit it, but if you do this after the one year period has ended then you will lose what it called your priority date). That is the very first date of when you submitted your patent application. If anyone submits a similar patent to you after let your application lapse, then the patent will be rejected.

All is not lost if you choose not to progress your patent application at this time. You don't even know if you have anything that is patent worthy yet in your application, and so your small investment in time and money you made in Chapter 2 to do the patent application in the first place has already paid for itself in helping you get into the accelerator program, and possibly it helped to raise your investment capital too. Seek advice from your advisor if you are unsure what to do here regarding progressing your patent to the next stage.

But then on the other hand if you have chosen a bootstrapping funding strategy, then perhaps you were relying on a licensing deal, and generally you can't get a licensing deal if you don't have a patent application. You can, however, license things other than patents, such as 'know-how' or 'trade secrets', or 'trademarks' but the licensing strategy generally works best when patents are involved.

If you choose to just get your patent granted in only one country such as the USA, and many start-ups and countries often choose to do this, then you might only need around $5000 -$10,000 (on top of the $2500 search report, and including all application fees and patent attorney fees) to get the patent all the way to being granted.

Also by applying to one country, it will also be a lot quicker to get granted, because you'll bypass this PCT one year waiting period, and you'll also bypass more searches and processes in other countries patent office's too.

Whatever you decide for your patent application, you must decide before about ten months after your initial priority date. You should give a patent attorney at least two months notice if you intend to progress your patent. When you have made your decision to progress your patent, or not to progress your patent, and after you've paid the fees to your patent attorney, then you can forget about patents again for around another six months to a year, and set your focus now entirely on sales.

# EGPS SAYS:

DRIVE DOWN LAUNCH YOUR PRODUCT AND GET SALES STREET.

What you need to focus on right now is the launch of your product, and getting sales. You have to apply all the skills and techniques you learnt during the accelerator, and push hard to sell your product/service. If you didn't launch your product/service during the accelerator program, then you have to make a decision now to 'draw the line in the sand' and send the most minimal viable product out to the world. Perhaps your IT co-founder, or the developers, designers, marketers you engaged are telling you they need six more months to fully build out your product to get it ready for launch. It's common for IT developers to make sure they have a perfect product before releasing it to the world, but you may not have time now to make it perfect as your runway is shortening with each new day without having sales or revenue.

As you get ready to launch you product/service, you job is going to turn from being a founder juggling loads of things, to being a salesperson or what's called a 'Business Development Manager (BDM)'.

If you've raised investment capital as part of your funding strategy, then perhaps you need to now organize getting experienced sales persons employed and on your team. If you need employment agreements for these sales people, go back to the program managers once again, and ask for their help with this. The program managers should also suggest what should consider offering your new employees shares in the company, or other incentives such as bonuses or the like.

If you haven't raised capital to employ a sales person, and you've decided that you are going to do the sales yourself, then you need to think about what tools you need to do the sales. Maybe you need to print brochures and new business cards? You might want to start rehearsing your sales pitch, and go back over your notes you took during the accelerator about how to close sales.

Perhaps you want to think about how your product is going to be displayed or carried around from door to door when you are doing sales. You might've got lots of ideas about all this during the program, but because you were so busy during the program you never had a chance to get all this ready then.

Perhaps you had someone from another team in the accelerator recommend a really good sales book to read, so you want to start allocating time now to read this book as you build up to your product launch. Perhaps you need to do that three day crash course in sales that you've been looking at for a while, so you can build confidence and learn sales techniques. Whatever it is you need to do to begin sales, begin preparing now, and then 'just do it!'

If you've never done sales before, you have to be prepared to really get out of your comfort zone and push boundaries and go to extremes to reach this 1000 sales mark. You have to be prepared to put in long hours, and not necessarily get any rewards for weeks or months at a time. There is an old expression in the business world that if you approach 100 people to sell your product/service to (i.e. knock on 100 doors, make a hundred phone calls), you will get 10 people interested for 1 sale. That is there is globally accepted '1% conversion rate for new product/service sales'.

In the world of crowdfunding which we discussed in the last chapter, there is now even more specific data available to back up this old expression. On the two leading crowdfunding websites, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, by analyzing all the data from all the campaigns that have ever been done in the last 4 years on their sites, since they've been in business, they found the average conversion rate is 1.5% to 2%.

Here are some more interesting statistics Kickstarter has gathered that you can use as you prepare for sales - only 3.7% of users actually reach the campaign 'pledge pages' that is the page that asks consumers to pay money for your product by entering their credit card details into the online forms.

So if you were going to be doing your sales purely online using a variety of techniques from SEO to Public Relations (that is trying to get media to pick up your product/service) to Social Media marketing, and then e-commerce (accepting payments online) then if you are aiming for 1000 sales as your first achievable goal, and if you use the crowdfunding 1.5% statistic, you would need to get atleast100,000 visitors to your website to reach your goal of 1000 sales.

Now if you've been blogging each week, and looking at the statistics for your blog site, then you will see that getting 100,000 people to visit your site is not going to be an easy task.

In the accelerator program, you would have probably learnt about the need to create buzz before you launch your product too - so get onto that buzz creation now.

Maybe you were encouraged during the accelerator program on how to cold canvas potential customers to make sales. Maybe you learnt how to write awesome Press Releases, and you were introduced to journalists from local newspapers. Maybe you learnt some sales techniques during the accelerator, and tried them out on other teams in the accelerator. You can use all the techniques and new skills you learnt in the accelerator to build the pre-launch buzz now to ultimately help with your sales. Start talking up your launch date and your product in Social media. Get your advisor to start sending some emails out to his connections about your product launch event.

If after three months of full-time effort after launching your MVP and chasing sales, and if you're not getting many customers despite all your best efforts, or if you haven't even got any customers or sales, then you should consider another "pivot". You will remember that a pivot is changing your business model, your funding strategy, your product design, your marketing campaign, your sales employees (if you have some) before then attempting another new launch with your new product/new business model again etc.

You might actually need to pivot and re-launch your product three or four times over a six to twelve month period before you find that winning formula. This is common of many start-ups. As you go out and chase sales, you may find that your customers want something different to what you had first anticipated. Maybe you learn that the price is too high. Perhaps another competing product has beaten you to launch and their getting all the publicity and sales and you can't compete with them with your product as it currently is.

If you do decide to rebuild and relaunch, then you may need to go back to different sections in this book and redo all the exercises in the different sections again. If you go through the process of; create buzz; launch; iteration, and launch again three or four times, and you think you've solved everything that you thought could be possibly be solved, and you're still not getting sales, then perhaps it's time to think about failure. In Silicon Valley failure is often celebrated as an important step in the learning curve. To get an idea of how much failure is celebrated in Silicon Valley Google 'Silicon Valley's culture of failure'.

But we're not going to focus on failure here, as we want you to become a success and hit your initial 1000 sales target, and then go onto to grow your company and then prepare it for success.

If you have launched your product/service and pivoted and re-launched several times, and tried everything to sell your product/service but it's not working, and you've reached the end of a runway, then perhaps you need to start thinking about a plan B. Your plan B may involve anything on the following list;

•'•changing your funding strategy.

•changing your lifestyle/changing your location

•finding a way to get some part time income to pay for product development

•get a friend or family member to invest in your company

•get a bank loan.

•giving up more equity in your company to attract IT developers or marketing experts or whoever you desperately need to get on your team to get your product ready for a re-launch.

By pivoting your company, it may mean you want to completely redesign your product or your business model. For example you might want to lower the cost of your app, or change the user group who should pay for your product/service. Maybe you want to give your product away to start off with, or even paying customers to sign up for your product/service. This is not such an unusual technique as you would think for start-ups - for example PayPal in 1999 not long after it first started up did not have enough customers, growth was slow and expenses were mounting so the PayPal co-founders decided that for their business model to work they would need to attract a critical mass of least a million users. Advertising was too expensive, so they decided to pay people to sign up. They gave new customers $10 for joining, and $10 more for every time they referred a friend. Of course the PayPal business model was to take a small fee on customers transactions.

If you are struggling for sales, and looking for inspiration to persevere you could read online lots of stories about founders who moved into their cars to save money, or went on diets or gave up other things before becoming millionaires.

If you're hitting a lot of brick walls, and you've run out of money, then perhaps you will be tempted to go back to your old job, or get a part-time job to survive. See if you can work out a way to still devote some time to your start-up if you have to take full time work again to survive. You might get a job offer from someone you met during the accelerator program that is too good to refuse. But you owe it to yourself, by coming this far, to give it everything you have for at least 3-6 months full-time after the accelerator program has finished. Now is the time to develop and practice that persistence skill which we often discussed is so important on this entrepreneurship journey.

# DAVE THE DRIVING INSTRUCTOR SAYS:

IF YOU REACH 1000 SALES, THEN THE DRIVING LESSON IS OVER. YOU WON'T NEED EGPS ANYMORE, AS IT'S TIME TO LEARN HOW TO FLY.

If you get to 1000 sales of your product or service with six months after the accelerator program, then congratulations - you are no longer going to need an Entrepreneur GPS system and a driving instructor anymore. If you hit this 1000 sales milestone then you are at your final driving destination. What you will need next is not an 'Entrepreneur Global Positioning System', but a 'Company Growth Flight Management System'. You won't need a driving instructor like Dave, you'll need a flying instructor because your company will now be flying!

And if you are flying, you will be growing your company month on month, and then all of a sudden within a short period, you'll find yourself preparing for an exit for $20 million dollars or more.

If you don't reach this 1000 figure mark within six months after an accelerator has finished, then by all means go back to earlier chapters in this book and re-read and carry out more exercises and do more online research, and pivot and persevere until you reach the 1000 sales figure mark.

As sales and customers for your product/service goes beyond the 1000 mark, you will suddenly find a strong team around you helping you to navigate these new 'flying things that come up'. When you get beyond 1,000 customers, suddenly you'll find five to ten people helping you to service all your customers and help you grow your company. When you get to 10,000 customers it will take a team of fifty to one-hundred people to service them all - maybe even more. Within a short time after 1000 sales, you will have sales employees, management boards, Human Resources, engineering departments, budgets, and the list goes on and on. If you get to 10,000 customers, suddenly a lot of 'middle' management will be there to help you out to make sure things are flying smoothly. You will also be able to employ a large accounting staff to make sure things are working well. You'll find yourself with a HR department. You might even hire a reputable person from Microsoft, or Facebook that can be your Chief Financial Officer for $1 million a year to help navigate you to the sale of your company. Within a year or two, you may find that you are suddenly at 500 or so employees. And if you have 500 employees you will have some big state of the art office stadium to house them all in! You will have pool tables, swings, table tennis tables, water fountains, unlimited supply of food and drinks, catered lunches and dinners everyday etc. And all these employees, and big offices, and big company revenues will make you look attractive to other companies to buy you out. You might even find with all these people and resources around you supporting you, your company's growth might feel like you are on autopilot. Soon you may find the toughest decision you will need to make is do you accept an offer for $20 million dollars from another company to buy your company, or do you reject all the offers, and grow your company until it's a Unicorn – a billion dollar company?!

Finally, Dave the driving instructor would like to say;

"THANKYOU SO MUCH FOR COMING ON THIS ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEY, YOUR LESSON IS NOW FINISHED, YOU HAVE PASSED, AND GOOD LUCK AS YOU GO FOR YOUR FLYING LICENCE!"

# REVIEW YOUR ACTIONS CHECKLIST

Follow up on all of your contacts from the accelerator program

Be prepared to pivot, but keep the focus, and be persistent, try to get more traction, build buzz and prepare for a launch of your product/service

Launch your product/service

Start selling your product/service – aim for 1000 sales over the next three months

Grow your company from 1000 sales to 50,000 sales.

###

Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, won't you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer?

Thanks!

Brad Paul

About the Author

Brad Paul wants to live in a world where people don't have to rely on the old '9-5 working for the man' job to survive. When he's not starting up new companies, Brad has started 13 businesses since the age of 15 (including 4 successful multi-million dollar exits), you can find him kite surfing and traveling. Brad is not on Facebook, this is all you are going to get! Well Brad is on Twitter so you can get in touch with him there.

Follow me on Twitter @BradPaulwrites

