Funding and Building your Montana Business

Here are five tips to help you get outsourcing right, save your pot of gold, and maybe even avoid a few gray hairs.

No single executive has more visibility across more business processes than the CIO.

-If you start by selling your concept to potential prospects (rather than stock to VCs), you will either end up with initial customers or a conviction that your idea won’t work. Why raise money and then find out which one it will be?

ViewPoints features original articles on deal valuation and ways to stimulate equity investments in rural markets. VC Online features new audio-on-demand interviews on valuation of intellectual property and planning for exits.

Get away from the grand eloquence and echoing emptiness of the conventional mission (or vision or values) statements. Make them more than buzzwords to really mean something to employees’ day-to-day.

What are angels looking for? Simple, says Jeffrey Sohl: high-growth companies, meaning companies that appear likely to grow at 30% to 40% annually and then either be bought or go public.

Turn first to your Advisory Board. Don’t use their valuable time for opinions on matters you understand or have already decided on. Instead, put items on the agenda for which you don’t have answers, and be open to their suggestions.

Getting out into the field "is some of the best market research I can get."

The concept of a partnership is that each partner brings something unique to the business.

”Great firms let the stars be the stars."