Branding is one element addressed in the marketing section of the business plan. It’s also the image presented to angel investors when searching for business funding. Contrary to popular belief though, branding is not just about a trendy logo or elaborate advertising. It’s the element that represents you as the business owner, the quality of your products, and the level of customer service. Brand is composed of your individuality and your company’s value.
Branding is a complex concept which is one reason why it’s often reduced down in people’s minds as being mostly about advertising. The assumption is that if the target market is aware of your logo, then branding efforts have been successful. However, it goes much deeper than advertising, which is why your business plan must present more than an advertising plan to potential angel investors.
Business brands is about the quality and value that underpins the entire business. It’s the projected image, but more importantly it’s the tie-in for everything the company does or will do. business brand is a broad brush that covers marketing, pricing, the level of customer service and the business culture. Branding pervades the business plan and is not simply one element in the marketing plan.
Common question angel investors ask always concerns brand. What do you want your brand to project to the marketplace? Is it quality, innovation, creativity, problem solving or all of the above? Branding is important to startup companies as well as established companies. In fact, branding for startups can perform an important job for startups on limited budgets by making advertising efforts more effective. Clear and distinct branding differentiates the company in the minds of customers, thus giving the company more value for marketing dollars spent.
Before preparing a business plan to present to angel investors, make sure the brand is well defined. Branding is not just advertising. It’s the element that ties your entire business together.
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When you start a business, different people will advise you differently on how to turn your venture into a success. While it looks natural to have a business plan beforehand, do not be surprised if you find some people telling you to not have one. According to some, having a business plan limits you in your exploration and prevents you from taking risks. That might hold true in some cases, but that’s not how it is for everyone. Having a business plan is a sensible step, but if you are on the fence about whether to have one or not, here are some disadvantages of not having a business plan to help you make a well-informed decision.
Why Not Having a Business Plan Is Not Advisable
1. There Is Nothing to Achieve
Milestones have to be an integral part of any venture. When you don’t have any milestones and targets, there is nothing for you to achieve. Having no business plan is the first sign of your non-seriousness with your business. If you could not take out time to create a detailed plan, how can one expect you to manage your business – an activity that could require even up to 16 hours of continuous working at times? The problem with having nothing to achieve means you will have no strategies for your expenses, profits, revenues, etc.
How would you ever know how much you should spend or not spend? Why would you invest in marketing when you don’t have any goals?
2. There Is Nothing to Interest Investors
There might be some proponents of the idea that a business does not require a business plan, but there are still more people who believe in having a business plan. Investors always need indicators from entrepreneurs to judge their personalities and potentials. Business plan is one of the strongest indicators of a person’s potential of doing a business. When you ask investors for a certain amount of money, the first question they ask is why you need that money or what you need that money for. Your answer to this question can make it or break it for you.
In fact, that is not the only question. They will follow up this first question with a lineup of crucial follow-up questions. For example, if you tell them you will invest the money in marketing, they will ask you about the type of marketing you are aiming for, the return you expect and the costs of customer acquisition. How can you answer all those questions if you do not have a business plan?
3. Your Marketing Will Go Awry
One of the damages of not having a business plan is your marketing plans going awry. Entrepreneurs have more power to them today than they ever had before. These days, startup owners have internet where they can collect information about their customers in the startup stages. Collecting customer information helps them create buyer personas and target their audience with appropriate marketing. Here are some pieces of information you will have to collect.
What age group and gender my product appeals best to?
What interests my target age group and gender?
What platforms is my target audience most active on?
What is the average buying power of my target audience?
What type of content best attracts my target audience?
What expectations do my potential customers have with my product?
How can I personalize my marketing to my audience?
That’s just few of the many questions that you have to get the answers for to make your marketing endeavors profitable. However, all of this homework is a part of your business plan.
4. Your Team Won’t Share Your Vision
It is crucial for a business’ success to have a team that shares the same vision and endeavors to achieve it. Several studies and researches have proven that employees do not perform at their best when they don’t understand the vision well. You must define clear and vivid targets to your employees for them to know exactly what they have to do to be of value for the company. What you have to realize is that telling your team the vision of the business is not enough. It is a broad concept and does not define the action plan to your employees.
What you have to do is break the process of achieving your vision into small parts. These small parts are the milestones and within each milestone the role of your team is clearly defined. In short, break the entire pursuit of vision into small missions, and explain the role of every team member to achieve a milestone.
5. You Won’t Know When to Exit
One of the biggest mistakes most startup owners and entrepreneurs make is that they don’t know when to exit. If you can close down your business before it starts hurting you financially, that’s a form of success. The true failure is when you cannot realize that your business is hurting you and you keep burning dollars for its success. An integral part of a business plan is defining favorable and unfavorable conditions for the business to exist.
In a business, you have to define a deadline before which you must see positive results. You have to define a time frame within which you can continue to invest in your business. However, you have to draw a line to make it clear when you cannot continue anymore. If you have been running your business for six months and the money has been going out of your pocket, it might be an indicator that it won’t work for you.
Conclusion
A business plan should be considered a part and parcel of a venture. It is not an optional component because your success rests on it. If you are looking forward to starting your business, it is advisable that you sit down and take time to write and review your business plan. If that is too much for you, hire a professional to write it for you.
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Getting into a business partnership has its benefits. It allows all contributors to share the stakes in the business. Depending on the risk appetites of partners, a business can have a general or limited liability partnership. Limited partners are only there to provide funding to the business. They have no say in business operations, neither do they share the responsibility of any debt or other business obligations. General Partners operate the business and share its liabilities as well. Since limited liability partnerships require a lot of paperwork, people usually tend to form general partnerships in businesses.
Things to Consider Before Setting Up A Business Partnership
Business partnerships are a great way to share your profit and loss with someone you can trust. However, a poorly executed partnerships can turn out to be a disaster for the business. Here are some useful ways to protect your interests while forming a new business partnership:
1. Being Sure Of Why You Need a Partner
Before entering into a business partnership with someone, you need to ask yourself why you need a partner. If you are looking for just an investor, then a limited liability partnership should suffice. However, if you are trying to create a tax shield for your business, the general partnership would be a better choice.
Business partners should complement each other in terms of experience and skills. If you are a technology enthusiast, teaming up with a professional with extensive marketing experience can be quite beneficial.
2. Understanding Your Partner’s Current Financial Situation
Before asking someone to commit to your business, you need to understand their financial situation. When starting up a business, there may be some amount of initial capital required. If business partners have enough financial resources, they will not require funding from other resources. This will lower a firm’s debt and increase the owner’s equity.
3. Background Check
Even if you trust someone to be your business partner, there is no harm in performing a background check. Calling a couple of professional and personal references can give you a fair idea about their work ethics. Background checks help you avoid any future surprises when you start working with your business partner. If your business partner is used to sitting late and you are not, you can divide responsibilities accordingly.
It is a good idea to check if your partner has any prior experience in running a new business venture. This will tell you how they performed in their previous endeavors.
4. Have an Attorney Vet the Partnership Documents
Make sure you take legal opinion before signing any partnership agreements. It is one of the most useful ways to protect your rights and interests in a business partnership. It is important to have a good understanding of each clause, as a poorly written agreement can make you run into liability issues.
You should make sure to add or delete any relevant clause before entering into a partnership. This is because it is cumbersome to make amendments once the agreement has been signed.
5. The Partnership Should Be Solely Based On Business Terms
Business partnerships should not be based on personal relationships or preferences. There should be strong accountability measures put in place from the very first day to track performance. Responsibilities should be clearly defined and performing metrics should indicate every individual’s contribution towards the business.
Having a weak accountability and performance measurement system is one of the reasons why many partnerships fail. Rather than putting in their efforts, owners start blaming each other for the wrong decisions and resulting in company losses.
6. The Commitment Level of Your Business Partner
All partnerships start on friendly terms and with great enthusiasm. However, some people lose excitement along the way due to everyday slog. Therefore, you need to understand the commitment level of your partner before entering into a business partnership with them.
Your business partner(s) should be able to show the same level of commitment at every stage of the business. If they do not remain committed to the business, it will reflect in their work and can be detrimental to the business as well. The best way to maintain the commitment level of each business partner is to set desired expectations from every person from the very first day.
While entering into a partnership agreement, you need to have an idea about your partner’s added responsibilities. Responsibilities such as taking care of an elderly parent should be given due thought to set realistic expectations. This gives room for compassion and flexibility in your work ethics.
7. What Will Happen If a Partner Exits the Business
Just like any other contract, a business venture requires a prenup. This would outline what happens in case a partner wishes to exit the business. Some of the questions to answer in such a scenario include:
How will the exiting party receive compensation?
How will the division of resources take place among the remaining business partners?
Also, how will you divide the responsibilities?
8. Who Will Be In Charge Of Daily Operations
Even when there is a 50-50 partnership, someone needs to be in charge of daily operations. Positions including CEO and Director need to be allocated to appropriate individuals including the business partners from the beginning.
This helps in creating an organizational structure and further defining the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder. When each individual knows what is expected of him or her, they are more likely to perform better in their role.
9. You Share the Same Values and Vision
Entering into a business partnership with someone who shares the same values and vision makes the running of daily operations considerably easy. You can make important business decisions quickly and define long-term strategies. However, sometimes, even the most like-minded individuals can disagree on important decisions. In such cases, it is essential to keep in mind the long-term goals of the business.
Bottom Line
Business partnerships are a great way to share liabilities and increase funding when setting up a new business. To make a business partnership successful, it is important to find a partner that will help you make fruitful decisions for the business. Thus, pay attention to the above-mentioned integral aspects, as a weak partner(s) can prove detrimental for your new venture.
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As an entrepreneur with a unique business idea, your most difficult task is to make others believe in your idea as much as you do. Your knowledge of your business and the passion for its concept reflects in how you pitch your startup. While learning comes from failures, your target should always be to ace your pitch the first time you deliver it. The idea of pitching your business to the experienced investors can be quite daunting. You are standing in front of the people who can look right through you and your words. Any mistakes or misinformation can ruin the opportunity of a successful investment.
If you have watched a few episodes of the Shark Tank, you would know how brutal investors can be with their probing and reprimanding. While their harsh words can be quite painful, the more disappointing part is when you are not able to get the investment you want.
Regardless of all the internal and external forces, favoring and non-favoring odds, it is your perfect pitch that can win the investors over. What you need to focus on is how you can craft the perfect pitch that has the thinnest chances of being turned down by potential investors. Here are the tips that will help.
7 Tips to Craft and Deliver the Most Successful Business Startup Pitch
1) Keep Your Pitch Short
Do whatever it takes—hire professionals or spend hundreds of hours brainstorming—but come up with a shortened, succinct and most effective version of your pitch. Don’t make your investors yawn. Split your pitch into three to four different phases and transition through them smoothly. For example, split your pitch into four parts that could look like this:
Tell the story how it started.
Explain clearly what your product/service is.
Give out numbers i.e. revenue, sales, profits, losses etc.
State the size of the investment you are looking for and explain what the purpose for which you need the said amount.
So, you could give 2 and half minutes to every part and complete your pitch in 10 minutes. Increase the time for the section which you believe needs more attention.
2) Be VERY Clear about Your Product/Service
One of the biggest mistakes that startup teams make is not being able to explain the idea they are selling. It can often happen when you divide your product/service into multiple sections with each section solving a different problem. If you are not able to explain your product/service clearly, it is an indication of one of the two problems or both: 1) you have not worked on your pitch and 2) you don’t know your service/products very well yourself. As soon as the investors feel lost during your pitch, consider the opportunity lost too.
3) Know Your Target Market and Product’s Uniqueness
Many entrepreneurs’ pitches have turned into nightmares because of this particular point. It is like an interviewer asking you, “Why should we hire YOU?” There might be many other products similar to yours in the market without you knowing about them. What you have to know is what makes yours unique/different.
You must also know the market you are targeting with your product. Keep in mind that investors are often not interested in products that only target a niche market. Take the example of selling Christmas trees that only sell in the Christmas season—indicates a niche market, a limited product.
4) Know Your Numbers
If you have not done your homework on your numbers, you have no chance of getting an investor interested in your product. It’s sad but true. In fact, some investors are only interested in numbers as they believe it’s the numbers that tell the real story, not the business owner him/herself. Know your revenues, sales, losses, incomes, etc. Make sure you know your profits and revenues regarding months, quarters and years. If they ask you how much profit you made in last three months, you must come up with an answer immediately.
5) Be Clear on How You Intend to Spend the Money
This section is where the investors will gauge how trustworthy you are and how good you are as a person in the leading position for your business. Of course, if you want money for your business you must also know where you are going to spend it. A few things that investors are trying to find out by asking “how you are going to spend the money” are as under:
You aren’t asking for money just because you haven’t been able to take a paycheck from your business.
You are not going to use the money to pay for debts and old investments.
You are not going to use the investment money for a business process that will not contribute to business’ growth and expansion.
If your demand for money ends up being for any of the reasons mentioned above, you are likely to be rejected for your investment.
6) Show Your Passion
Barbara Corcoran, successful businesswoman and investor, says that she looks at the enthusiasm and passion of an entrepreneur for their business. She believes that you cannot fake passion. Whether you are pitching through an online platform or live in front of the investors, your passion can get them interested in your business even if it is not something they have done before.
7) Choose the Right Platform
In today’s digital world, you can gather funds from investors through an online platform, which is the most popular and successful way for entrepreneurs to gather funds for their start-ups. However, when it comes to choosing the platform, you must pick one that has a reliable network of investors, significant traffic, reputable online image and great exposure for startups. One that fulfills all these requirements and more is Funded. Funded is currently one of the best and most reliable platforms for startups, especially when it comes to angel investors.
Final Word
As a startup, the presence and preparation of your competitors might be intimidating at first, but that’s what you need to change about yourself. Your competitors might have reached to a bigger network of investors, more inventory and better technologies to support their mission, but what can make the difference is your passion and confidence in your startup pitch.
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The success of a small business depends greatly on how effectively it markets itself, its products and its services. The real challenge with marketing is that it is one of the broadest concepts that any businessperson and entrepreneur have to deal with. Every business has its specific marketing needs, and yours does too. If you have a business, you must understand marketing in its depths and the many techniques that will help your business grow and expand. A lot of the business owners believe that having a website and doing some seasonal material marketing is enough for them, but they are wrong.
Marketing has completely changed in the modern times with “digital” being the main focus. A conventional approach towards marketing will not help you achieve the goals you have set for your business.
Understand the Concept of Marketing Mix
Before you start marketing your business, you have to understand the concept of the marketing mix. Marketing mix consists of price, product, promotion, and place. While many other factors have been added to the mix recently, these four Ps remain the strongest ones to date. If you can understand the concept of the marketing mix, you will ensure allocating strict budgets and still getting the best ROIs from your marketing campaigns. You must bear in mind that spending too much on marketing does not mean you will always be successful.
Your successful marketing strategy has to be a mix of the four Ps. Before you start promoting a product, you must know the product is complete and in an acceptable form. Once the product is complete and you want to promote it, you have to make sure you promote it in the right place. You don’t want to be selling air conditioning units to the people of Siberia. Now, even if you created a great product and are promoting it in the right place, you won’t be able to sell it well if you haven’t priced it right.
You understand at this point that you have to pick every “P” of the marketing mix one by one and see if your strategy touches all of them. An important point to remember here is that the concept of the marketing mix is not limited to the “planning” phase of your marketing efforts. Even when you have executed your marketing plans, you have to keep measuring these four factors. If your efforts are not yielding any profits or positive ROIs, look at the four factors and try to find out which one has not been executed properly. Maybe you are promoting the right product at the right place but to the wrong people.
Base Your Marketing on Data
If you don’t know already, the more relevant and popular term than marketing is data-driven marketing among marketers. It is clear now that marketing without data is less effective and less practical in the modern times. Today, you have dozens of different tools to collect data about your target audience. You use these tools because the data you collect gives you deep insight into your market, what your customers want and what puts them off. In the online world, the process of data collection starts from your website. On your website, the data you can collect include the demographics of your visitors, their recent interests, their path to reach your website, etc.
There are other means of collecting data about your customers. The thing is that you will collect data from many different channels and in many different formats. Being able to view this data in one place and taking effective action on it is what the real challenge is. Companies are now looking for solutions to manage their digital marketing campaigns in one place, regardless of the nature of those campaigns. Data-driven marketing also allows you to create more personalized campaigns that are more effective in persuading your customers to use your products/services.
Look at the Right Numbers
One huge mistake that many small business owners make is focusing on the wrong numbers. You might have a great website, a strong marketing strategy and a lot of data to target your efforts in the right direction, but you can’t get any benefits until you look at the right numbers. Looking at the right numbers means that you measure the success of your marketing efforts by keeping up with the most important KPIs (key performance indicators). For you to measure the KPIs, you must set associate goals and targets with your marketing campaigns.
So, when creating a landing page for your product and get a lot of visitors on that page, it does not mean anything to you unless you are measuring some KPIs. In the case of a landing page, your most important KPIs will be the number of visitors, number of converted visitors and the sources from where the visitors are coming. Now, focusing on the wrong number would mean you are looking only at the number of visitors coming to your landing page every day. The number of visitors is only telling you that your marketing efforts have been successful enough to bring the visitors to the landing page. But how does that benefit you in any way if you don’t earn anything from those customers?
That’s where you have to measure the conversion rate. The conversion rate will tell you how much you are making from the visitors that are coming to your landing page. By focusing on conversion rates, you will put more money towards marketing campaigns that are bringing the most potential traffic, i.e., the traffic that’s converting the most.
Now, no matter how benefiting it is to focus on your conversion rates, it is still only one side of the picture. The right numbers here are your acquisition costs. If you spend on every acquired customer is $100 but you are obtaining a value of only $20 from that customer, this type of marketing is not good for you. You always have to look at positive ROI, i.e., your returns on the investments must always be higher than the amount of money you have invested in a marketing campaign.
Conclusion
So, you know at this point that marketing is a profound concept and you have to understand it in its depths to it successfully. Large companies spend millions of dollars every year on just marketing. They must find some value in this activity to spend that much money towards it. On the other hand, small business owners can often ignore the importance of marketing. They are always focusing on short-term progress and return. If they don’t see any significant results quickly, they stop spending on marketing and start looking for faults and shortcomings of their products/services.
It will pay off in the long-term to start using the right marketing tools right from today. Keep in mind that marketing tools are designed to handle different phases of marketing. While some tools help you market your products and services, others are more analytical. Another category is of tools that help simplify the use of both the types of tools. If you are thinking of starting a business or have set the foundation for a startup already, be sure to give marketing the attention that it deserves.
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Loans can provide a sometimes easier avenue for a startup or existing business through SBA lenders or an existing business revenue model. You will need good credit in most cases and show cash reserves. In some cases, most lenders will have the partners sign the loan note and require a personal guarantee. The good side is that you keep 100% of the business and have more flexibility in reporting. However, the terms can come due in 10 years on SBA, and ongoing payments can put an initial burden on a startup. Lots of companies can boot-strap some personal debt to start a business. It would be helpful to set aside a year of payments in the bank so the payments will always be made on time and have one year of developing revenue.
Investors can be one of the best ways to raise capital for a startup or existing business. It can provide initial capital and less liability for the raised funds that lenders most likely require personal guarantees and some collateral. Investors can also provide pivotal guidance and experience to your business by offering advice and even distribution chains and connections you usually would not have. This can also bolster your business to a new level. The takeaway is that Investors can be instrumental in the odds of success of your business. However, it can also be challenging to prepare for a pitch and finding the correct type of interested investors can be a drawback. Investors will also return a percentage of your company and expect the business to grow. In addition, they usually get paid through some exit strategy in multiples of their original investment.
Suppose you want to determine the effectiveness of Loans versus Investors. Prepare a business plan using both models, however, If you don’t have good credit or some capital reserves, the banks sometimes like to see the emphasis in your business plan a few pages for investors to return and pitch content geared for investors. On the other hand, if you have good credit and some working capital, a loan might be good if you don’t mind the risk of debt to fund your idea or business.
Some startups can use a variety of ways, including some credit cards to finance some inventory or other expenses and wait for offers of balance transfers of 2-3% fee but no interest for one year. The final thought is that both are equally effective for startup businesses under $150K. Investors may be the best option for you if you are in the $1MM plus and do not have real estate to collateralize.
Who we are: Funded.com is a platform that is A+ BBB rated over 10+ years. Access our network of Investors, get instantly matched with a Lender, or get a business plan by visiting us Funded.com
The most well-known cryptocurrency is called Bitcoin, and it was made for it that created blockchain technology. A bitcoin is a form of money like the U.S. dollar, but it is digital and employs encryption to control the creation of new currency units and to verify the transfer of funds.
Cryptography is used all the time in our everyday lives. For example, we use it to safely send passcodes for shopping online placed above a white complex system. The cryptosystem is also used to store your username and password on bank servers and in email clients. In our Internet – of – things world, cryptography protects all information sent, verifies people and devices, and connects devices.
Security flaws in critical infrastructure can be caused by weak or unrecognized cryptography. In addition, brand equity is eroded because of the public’s interest in publicly disclosed data. Therefore, keeping an eye on how cryptography is deployed and handled in the modern workplace is necessary.
Cryptocurrency types
1. Ethereum (ETH)
2. Tether (USDT)
3. USD Coin (USDC)
4. Binance Coin (BNB)
5. Binance USD (BUSD)
1. Ethereum (ETH) – Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain-based platform that safely sets up a peer-to-peer network that runs and verifies application code, called smart contracts. Intelligent contracts let people do business without a centralized authority they can trust. Utilizing the Ethereum Virtual Machine and the native Solidity scripting language, developers may create decentralized applications on Ethereum. Competent contract developers who used Ethereum benefit from a vast ecosystem of developer tools and recognized best practices that have developed over time as the protocol has matured.
2. Tether (USDT) – According to the market cap, Tether is the third-largest cryptocurrency. Some economists, including a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve, are concerned about this.
Stablecoins, like Tether, is a relatively new concept. To avoid the high volatility associated with most cryptocurrencies, these digital currencies are linked to tangible assets like the U.S. dollar to maintain a stable value. For sample, Bitcoin beat an all-time high of about $65,000 in April before its value tripled over the following two months.
Tether was made so that it would always be worth one dollar. As a result, although the value of many other cryptocurrencies often changes, the price of Tether is usually equal to $1.
3. USD Coin (USDC) – USD Coin (USDC) is a stable digital currency tied to the U.S. dollar.
USD Coin is a regulated stablecoin that runs on blockchain technology. It was released in 2018 by Centre, a group started by Circle and Coinbase.
Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency whose value is tied to another asset, like a fiat currency, a commodity, or even another crypto coin. For example, USD Coin wants to stay at the same value as the U.S. dollar.
Stablecoins like USDC are used differently than cryptos whose prices change, like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH). The only reason for this cryptocurrency is to be a stable store of value, not an asset that, in theory, gets more valuable over time.
4. Binance Coin (BNB) – BNB is a cryptocurrency (token) issued in 2017 by Binance. Between the 26th of June and the 3rd of July, it was published and released for the first time via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) crowdfunding campaign.
The native coin of the BNB Beacon Chain and BNB Smart Chain, BNB fuels the BNB Chain ecosystem. One of the world’s most widely used utility tokens, BNB may be used in various applications and use cases and traded like any other cryptocurrency.
BNB reduces its entire supply to 100,000,000 BNB via an Auto-Burn method.
5. Binance USD (BUSD) – Binance created the 1/1 USD-backed Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoin in collaboration with Paxos, as well as the New York State Department of Financial Services has authorized and controlled it (NYDFS)
Although USDT has enormous trade volumes, it is not fully supported by cash reserves and has run into reputational problems. BUSD, in contrast, has undergone more thorough auditing procedures and operates on numerous blockchains. As a result, both two currencies offer quick transaction speeds and affordable fees.
Positive or negative? The potential benefits of using cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrency’s many benefits
Some firms could benefit from using cryptocurrency. Among the benefits:
1. Many cryptocurrency transactions are rapid and straightforward. Bitcoins can be transferred from one digital wallet to another using a smartphone or computer.
2. For cryptocurrencies to exist, a public ledger known as the blockchain must record every cryptocurrency transaction. There is a way to keep someone from spending coins they don’t possess, manufacturing clones, or canceling transactions. This means there are no transaction costs because there are no intermediaries to deal with. Payments in cryptocurrencies are becoming increasingly popular, especially among large corporations and industries such as fashion and healthcare.
Risks of using cryptocurrencies
There are some downsides to adopting cryptocurrencies for a company:
It is possible to remove your crypto money or lose your virtual wallet. Additionally, websites that allow you to store your cryptocurrency remotely have had thefts.
Some people don’t believe converting “actual” money into Bitcoins is safe because the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins might fluctuate greatly.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) does not supervise the bitcoin market; thus, there are no regulations to safeguard your company.
It may lose value and turn worthless if businesses or customers switch to another cryptocurrency instead of yours or stop utilizing digital currencies altogether.
Exchanges for cryptocurrencies are susceptible to cyberattacks, which might result in a permanent loss of your money. In addition, Bitcoin is vulnerable to fraud. People are frequently duped into making such transactions by scammers using websites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
How to Implement Bitcoin into Your Business
Around the world, businesses and diverse brands are beginning to use cryptocurrencies, notably Bitcoin, for transactional and operational needs. Even if its value is unstable, more and more individuals are becoming aware of its benefits. The methods listed here can help you incorporate bitcoin into your operations and start reaping its benefits if you own a business and wish to start accepting it.
What You’ll Need to Get Started
If you want to accept and move any cryptocurrency, you must have the following:
Wallet for Cryptocurrencies
Because cryptocurrency is a form of electronic cash, you’ll also need a digital wallet to store it. There are a variety of cryptocurrencies that you can use to pay for your services. Use a digital currency wallet that can keep many currencies. Banks that accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can also be linked to your cryptocurrency wallet.
The Bitcoin Address
As with all bitcoin wallets, your wallet has a unique built-in address. Numbers and letters make up the code. Wallets for digital currency have a function that allows users to generate Q.R. codes from their digital money. Payouts can be made to this address or Q.R. code by sharing it with others. A transaction can’t be canceled or reversed once it’s been sent because of the technology. Refunds cannot be requested either.
The Secret Code
The digital access to your bitcoin wallet is coded into your private key. Your bitcoin wallet’s private key is also unique; if you lose it, you won’t be able to access it. It is possible to set up an optional password for some wallets. If this is the case, you should keep your private key on a USB flash drive or similar storage device.
The Most Suitable Ways To Use Cryptocurrency in Your Company
1. Paying Your Employees with Cryptocurrency Is One Way to Use Cryptocurrency in Your Business – Paying your employees with cryptocurrencies and then converting them into fiat cash can be done at any time by the business owner. The rate might be frozen depending on an employee’s salary. When converting digital currencies, you can utilize the current market value. Payroll payments to employees might begin on a specific date.
Business owners can help employees decide how much of their earnings they’d like to accept in fiat cash and how much would be in cryptocurrency. Because everyone’s financial situation is unique, it’s preferable if employees have some input on how much they receive. Employees will likely take up to 20% of their wages in bitcoin.
As a business owner, you may also talk to your employees about what kind of cryptocurrency they prefer. Employees’ risks should be considered while considering cryptocurrency. To introduce students to digital money, they can use numerous methods and tools to convert digital currency to fiat currency.
2. Create your Bitcoin Company – Incorporating digital money into your company website is possible because of the variety of alternatives available. If you own a retail shop and accept payments online, you may introduce your clients to a new type of cashless payment by offering bitcoin as a payment option. Such considerations will aid in your search for the best solution for your business.
Pay Manually
Clients can use your public address or Q.R. code to make payments. As a result, the digital currency you purchase will be delivered immediately to your online wallet. Numerous wallets have detailed instructions for those who don’t know how to do this.
Summarize
Investors are reaping the benefits of adopting cryptocurrency since it is money. In addition, businesses are beginning to accept it as an alternative to fiat cash because it has lower transaction fees. In the modern world, there are more options than ever to encourage customers and employees to pay with cryptocurrencies. The gradual transition from cash to digital money will benefit everyone.
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It’s not often that business owners get the chance to pitching their startups to potential investors. Unfortunately, rare as the chances were, many owners fail to grab the opportunity that was given to them by committing serious mistakes that drive the investors away.
Here are the five common flaws committed by owners when pitching to potential investor:
Answering the wrong questions
Most of the time, the bulk of the discussion between the entrepreneur and the potential investor are centered on the description of the business and its operations. Unfortunately, most investors are not primarily interested with the “what” and the “how” of the business. Rather, they are more interested in hearing the answer to questions such as, “What will they get once they invest in your business?”
Whether you have a small business or a large one, you have to have a business plan in order to set a path for it. A business plan is more like a manual or guide that lists your goals in an order, and how and when you will achieve them. It is even better to have a plan B if things do not work out the way you expect them to. But an important question you should ask yourself is “what makes up a perfect business plan?” What are the important factors that you have to take into consideration to create the perfect business plan?
Of course, you can’t make a plan randomly because business matters are a game of numbers—you have to be precise and accurate.
Describing Business and Writing a Summary
The first and foremost part of any business plan is the executive summary. It is a summary of what’s included in your business plan. You have to keep in mind the word “summary” i.e. you are supposed to summarize everything. You will face two challenges when you do that. First, you will have to find the most selling and appealing parts of your reports to grab the attention of the readers of your business plan instantly. Secondly, you have to find a way to shorten all the descriptions. Bear in mind that the details are in the plan itself, so you have to efficiently summarize all the points.
Furthermore, you have to explain the industry and your business. At this point, you want to talk about what industry your business serves, what the industry looks like and how much potential of growth your business (and the industry) has in the future.
Market and Competitor Analysis
At this point, you will have to put in some work to gather the details that will fill this section of your business plan. You have to know the market that you are about to target. For this, you will have to analyze the market and the sub-markets within it. By doing this, you are trying to paint a clear picture of your target audience. Without this type of analysis, you could end up selling the right product to the wrong people, which means your business will not survive. As you are describing your target audience and how you will approach them in the most effective way possible, you will have to do some analysis of your competitors.
It is just another level of market analysis. You want to get a good idea of what your competitors are doing to run their similar businesses and how much they are succeeding with their strategies. You should also pinpoint their weaknesses and why certain strategies are not working. When you have a business with many competitors, your investors will always ask you several questions about your competitors. They do this not only to know how knowledgeable you are about your target market but also to figure out if what you are about to do is going to work at all.
Development and Design
This is the section where you will define not only the design of the product but how the development takes place. Are you creating the product in your garage or do you have manufacturing plant working for you? How do you get the materials for creating the product? Are you producing your product within the country or outsourcing the production? In case of either of the options, you will have to explain why you have chosen that path. Investors will also ask you how much it costs you to design your product and make it available on the shelf.
What they don’t want you to do is pay more for the production and design of your product than you should. If there are other options available but you are sticking to the expensive ones, it will show them either the stubborn side of your personality or the less knowledgeable.
Costs of Operation and Management Planning
The ongoing processes of the business are the most important ones to pay attention to. How have you planned to take care of the daily matters? How have you assigned the roles and why have you assigned them to certain individuals? At this stage, you also have to talk about the costs of operations. You have to keep your costs realistic and justify that what you intend to spend is not an excessive by any means. In the costs of operations, you will also have to have an estimate of how much you will be spending in salaries. You can include this particular piece of information under the financial planning section as well.
Financial Planning
In this section you have to describe how you intend to finance the business. Are you using your own money to start the business or have you borrowed it from a family member? What kind of debts are there on your business. Debt is deadly for a business, so you want to have a very strong plan on how you will handle the initial debt when starting the business. You also have to show your management of the financial resources and knowledge to prove that any loans that you are taking for the business will be paid off in time and with ease.
If you have given a detail of various loans that you intend to use for your business, you will also have to state how you will use the money. Your usage of the money should be precise. At no point should the investors get a hint that you are going to use the money for something personal or something that will not benefit your business in any way.
Conclusion
Last but not least, make projections a part of your business plan as well. You will need to ready balance sheets and income statements for the coming years. It is imperative to know here that business plans are just assumptions, not facts. You should always expect things to go a bit away from how you planned them. However, such minor setbacks should not stop you from going forward and turning your small business into a large one.
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Suppose it is 2030, and you’re teaching in a business school. What will be your reaction to seeing just a handful of learners attending your class? It must be disappointing, but it has nothing to do with your pedagogical skill, nor it’s about the subject matter you’re teaching or your school’s ranking. Students do not enroll simply because the finance sector has no jobs for them. And automation is one of the main reasons behind this phenomenon.
You might find it hard to believe because management, economics, finance, and accounting are some popular subjects at the graduate level in most universities. Students opt for these subjects as they are associated with high employability; however, changing due to advances in technology and automation.
According to Opimas- a renowned consulting firm, the future will be harder for many universities in terms of selling business-related degrees. Another latest research showed that by 2050, nearly 230,000 financial jobs would be lost to artificial intelligence agents and bots.
To put it simply, when a vehicle manufacturer finds aluminum or any other material lighter, more accessible, and cheaper to make cars with than steel, they stop using it. They replace it to gain functional and financial advantage. It is the same when it comes to evaluating the future of the finance sector.
The current situation raises a few questions:
Our current and prospective financial jobs under threat? Are robotic advisers/employees the future of finance?
Let’s find out.
Artificial Intelligence- A New Generation
A survey from Aite Group –a research firm evaluated that businesses have started investing in automated portfolios. The investment rate increased to 210% in 2015. Many recent reports by market analysts found that robotics-advisers have taken over already in some giant corporations. Wall Street is just one of the examples that have replaced hundreds of its financial analysts with Robo advisors and high-tech software.
Oxford academics in its 2013’s paper claims that approximately 74% of professions are at high risk of becoming automated in the next 10 to 20 years; 54% of jobs among them will be in the finance industry, which is alarming. The phenomenon not just confined to the United States. Indian banks, for example, have also reported a decline of 9% in headcount in the last two consecutive quarters due to the hiring of robots at the workplace, which shows how automation is taking over in the finance sector.
Perhaps, it’s not surprising in finance, particularly as the banking industry is all about processing information. And most of its critical operations, like passbook update and cash deposits, have been digitized. This is one reason why financial institutions and banks are adopting advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
This new generation of technology has enabled institutes to automate their financial tasks that were traditionally performed by humans. That includes risk management, operations, algorithmic trading, and wealth management.
For instance, the COIN program and Contract Intelligence that run on a specific machine learning system, help banks shorten the time taken to review loans. Plus, the software is excellent at providing impeccable loan servicing to customers. Considering AI’s growing dominance, Accenture predicts that the banking sector will make AI a’ primary way of interaction with the customers within three years. It is because AI enables a simple and easy user interface to help banks provide a human-like client experience.
Luvo, in this regard, is a virtual chatbot that uses IBM Watson technology to learn and understand from human interaction, making manual workforce redundant.
Fintech Grads- A Traditional Threat to Banking
This might sound surprising to you, but universities are revising and reviewing their traditional education blueprints to adapt to new technological disruption in the financial job market. Like Georgetown and Stanford University, business schools are planning to include “fintech” in their MBA programs. This inclusion aims to make students learn, understand, and master financial technology.
One reason why Fintech firms are considered an existential threat to traditional banks is that they work differently from conventional banks. Plus, not only do fintech firms understand consumer issues, but also solve them in a fraction of time. They have become a reliable funding option for customers to look to invest in various businesses.
The critical weakness of the banking system lies in its technical debt. Banks are lagging due to their antiqued IT setups that date back to the last century. Fintech, on the other hand, is in a winning position with its fast-moving and technology-led services, particularly in investment and loan systems for e-commerce businesses.
Kabbage is a perfect example that gives technology-led loans to e-commerce businesses for which traditional banking is not only slow but also inflexible when it comes to lending finances.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is another financial innovation that enables Fintech providers to create applications on data of bank accounts. APIs will be a long-term solution for data providers as it takes away the crucial information (that only traditional banking employees have). Fintech providers will have the same quantity and quality of data without having any physical branches.
Is Dependence on Robotics Advisors Safe?
There is no denying that robot advisers, AI, and Fintech are changing traditional banking. Many financial analysts consider them the most significant drivers in the financial sector.
However, for many analysts, it’s still unclear to what extent automation and AI will prove to be advantageous for the financial sector. They believe that relying entirely on artificial intelligence could backfire if there are no humans to supervise everything.
Undoubtedly, robotics advisors are inexpensive and save a lot of time and effort when it comes to creating investment portfolios. But there is no guarantee that they will not struggle when it is about taking correct precautionary measures if the market becomes volatile. Thousands of machines are trying to operate the same thing at high speed.
In 2012, Knight Capital Group- a robotics stock trader lost $450 million in just 40 minutes when it went on a spending spree. That means these well programmed and high-tech robotics-traders can cause chaos and fatal errors in the financial markets.
Final Thoughts
Overall, there is no denying that rapidly growing dependence on automated devices and robotics-technologies is raising many concerns for commercial jobs. From banking systems to other financial institutes, automated technologies, like Fintech, APIs, and AI, are considered an integral part of the operations. They are slowly taking over and making employees redundant.
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