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Now this is the kind of Planning Startups Stories blog mentions some of the more prestigious business plan competitions: Notre Dame University, Rice Alliance, Moot Corp, New Venture Competition. They offer big prizes, have teams of five MBA students, pitch plans for companies with global reach who are seeking a half-million dollars or more in investment financing.

In contrast, I look out the office window, and view three blocks of our street. I see an auto repair shop, a dentist, a mini-mart, a doctor, an aquarium store, two small restaurants, a credit union, a coffee kiosk, a lawyer, a women’s clothing resale shop, a specialty beer emporium, and of course, us, a software developer.

This is small business in America. This is the business that keeps our lives organized every day and our economy moving. So where are the business plan competitions for the local teams of one and two entrepreneurs, who sell us our shoes, fix our cars, and feed us our rushed business day lunches?

I say three cheers for the Brooklyn Library and their PowerUP! Business Plan Competition for showing us how it can be done.

PowerUP! celebrates the entrepreneurial spirit of Brooklyn, enhances the vitality of the local business community and rewards the ingenuity and determination of ALL participants!

If you are 18 years of age or older, live in Brooklyn, are a legal resident or US citizen, and wish to start a business in Brooklyn, you are eligible. “PowerUP!” is a competition to help applicants start a business.

Three winners will receive cash awards for entering the best business plan to start a business in Brooklyn. Cash prizes of $15,000 for first place and $5,000 for two runners-up will be awarded.

Hopefully more communities and public agencies will follow their lead, and support the local entrepreneurs we depend on.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

The Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest – the nation’s first statewide, tech-based business plan competition – is accepting entries online for the 2009 competition. Entries will be accepted now through 5 p.m. Jan. 31, 2009. The contest’s Grand Prize is worth $50,000 in cash and services.

Who’s eligable to enter? Wisconsin residents 18 years and older and teams from Wisconsin-based businesses and organziations are eligble to enter the contest.  Teams from outside Wisconsin are eligble as long as they plan to base their business in Wisconsin.

For a full list of rules and contest information as well as the form to enter the contest -  visit the Governor’s Business Plan Contest website.

www.govsbizplancontest.com

All interested teams must submit an Intent to Compete no later than February 13, 2009 to be eligible for the competition. Palo Alto Software is proud to once again sponsor the competition and provide all teams who submit an Intent to Compete by the February 13th deadline with a free download of Business Plan Pro Premier Academic Edition software.

If you meet the eligibility requirements and are interested in the opportunity, I would highly encourage you to submit an Intent to Compete. I attended the competition in 2007 and can honestly say it was an experience I will never forget. It is by far one of the best business plan competitions out there today.

Kristen Langham
Manager of Business Development
Palo Alto Software, Inc.

According to the Forbes.com Boost your Business blog: In addition to next week’s presentations, each finalist also must submit two written business plans: a full-length plan (20 pages max), that only the judging panel can see, and a condensed 3-page version which will be posted–along with videos of the presentations–on Forbes.com during the final voting period in November.

Palo Alto Software sends their good wishes and congratulations to all the finalists of the Boost your Business competition.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

The bad news is that this thing closes Friday.

Click this link to go to the page and fill in your entry. Amazon is asking for basic name and address info plus several simple text entries.

1. A summary of your idea.
2. What stage you are?
3. How you’re using the Amazon Web services?
4. What is the problem you solved?
5. Who is your target customer?
6. Who is your competition?

From now until Friday is plenty of time. Right?

(Note: this is republished from my Up and Running blog. Tim.)

Tim Berry
President and Founder
Palo Alto Software

I’ll never forget this particular plan for a resturant that was submitted.

Business plans for resturants seem fairly easy to write, I say this because we seem to get a lot of them during college business plan competitions, but harder to implement in the real world.

The plan started out well, they had a good management team, a good location and their “secret sauce” was pretty effective I thought. But then I got to the end of the document where they finished the plan with this summarizing comment:

While we believe the restaurant is a good idea, we’ve realized through the writing of this plan that there’s no way we could make a living running this restaurant. It’s just not going to work.

Well, I guess it’s good to know before you go too far that it’s not going to work, but here’s my question. Did they give up too soon? Was it a good assessment of the feasibility of the plan and the business? Or of their passion and willingness to build the business? I guess we’ll never know.

Sometimes the difference between success and failure is all in the way you look at it.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

According to the competition site, Fresno is known as the financial, industrial, trade and commercial capital of California’s San Joaquin Valley and provides a perfect venue for the budding business entrepreneur. Additionally, there is an exciting downtown revitalization underway, which could provide a perfect opportunity for new business growth.

We at Palo Alto Software are proud to be a sponsor of the competition and are excited about the buzz this first-time competition is generating. They are doing a great job marketing the competition and are being rewarded for their efforts. Look and listen to their mention on SBTV.com last week!

If you’re an entrepreneur and interested in starting your business in Fresno, what are you waiting for? Check out the rules and regulations and get started on your chance to win $250K!

Kristen Langham
Marketing Manager
Palo Alto Software

While this issue seems, on the surface, to be about copyright, fair use, and possibly expansion of new revenue streams, it also deals with attribution and citing of sources. This is not just for journalists. It is just as important to entrepreneurs.

When you write your business plan, especially if you are using the plan to secure funding, you must cite your sources. Your plan will have topics and statistics covering your target market, population demographics, spending habits, market trends, market growth, and the like. The banks or investors or VCs are savvy business people. They know how to double check your assumptions, and will have no qualms about calling your bluff…and quashing your funding if they don’t credit your stats.

If your business is going to provide day care services, you’d better be able to show an increase in young dual-income families in your area. Investors are unlikely to support the construction of high-end mansions in a community that has been losing all of its industry. If you forecast skyrocketing sales, you’d better be able to document how a similar product or service did the same, and why yours will follow suit, and not crash and burn in a saturated market niche.

In other words you can’t pull your projections out of your … that is, out of thin air! Do your research! Develop your forecasts using that information. Document your sources in your plan. Take a look at this blog post by Alan Gleeson, Managing Director of Palo Alto Software Ltd, in the UK. The post quotes several people, businesses and news sources, and includes links and footnotes. Your business plan should do the same, giving the proper attribution to your sources.

As a raconteur I can make it up as I go along. As a business owner you don’t have that luxury.

Steve Lange
Senior Editor
Palo Alto Software

At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, and a calculator.

The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security believe the man is a member of the notorious Al-Gebra movement. He is being charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

Al-Gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed. They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on a tangent in a search of absolute value.

They consist of quite shadowy figures, with names like “x” and “y”, and, although they are frequently referred to as “unknowns”, we know they really belong to a common denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country.

As the great Greek mathematician Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every triangle, and if God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes.

Therefore, I’m extremely grateful that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are so willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard.

These statistic scumbags love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence.

Under the circumferences, it’s time we differentiated their root, made our point, and drew the line. These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimate everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex.

As our Great Leader would say, “Read my ellipse.”

Here is one principle he knows with certainty, they continue to multiply, their days are numbered and the hypotenuse will tighten around their necks.

Funny, yes? I think so.

Mark Twain said, “The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning-bug.”

The story above is also a cautionary tale about spell checker software, and the almost-right word. Everything in that story is spelled correctly, but many words are very incorrect in the context of Homeland Security. My spell checker just breezed right on by those.

If you make similar mistakes in the business plan you submit, the bank, the investors, the venture competition judges, or your MBA professors will also get a good laugh … and keep right on chuckling as they send your plan to the Out box.

Proofread your plan. Have someone who wasn’t involved in writing the plan read it over. Implement the edit suggestions you receive.

Steve Lange
Palo Alto Software