Wiki business plan: Difference between revisions

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Revision as of 18:40, 21 June 2008

This is a rough draft.

Please edit this plan and feel free to fork it and create another plan, or subplan. Be Bold!

Executive summary

Funding will come from a diverse size of monetary investments, from perhaps a few dollars to an unlimited amount.
The products that will be used to create a return on investment will be created by and decided upon by the investors and community involved in the business.

Organizational background

Anyone can join this organization, and anyone can help fulfill the mission that is decided upon by the participants.

Mission

"Our mission is to help alleviate problems in the world through innovative and collaborative means, to democratize education, and remove barriers to access"

History

Founding date: 19 October 2007

Marketing

For each significant substitute product one must explain:

Name, features, why substitute, why proposed product better
- Create a product with a subpage like /One or More Laptops Per Person/, /Feed Everyone Project/, /oPhone/ and so forth
Switching costs and why new product justifies switching
Expected adoption dynamics
Expected role once market begins to develop (see above for existing products)

Pricing

Chosen price points
Proposed Wikipedia:Pricing
Research supporting chosen price points

Distribution

Wikipedia:Distribution (business)
List of major distributors
Current status of negotiations

Promotion and brand development

Promotion strategy

The promotion of this company and this companies products will be done virally.

Current products and projects

Suggest some. Use subpages please.

/Linux Boxes/

Manufacturing/deployment

Wikipedia:Supply chain

Information technology

Wikis...

Systems needed
- Operations: Billing, HR, SCM, CRM, Knowledge bases, etc
- Websites: internal, public
Security and privacy requirements
Hardware requirements
Off-the-shelf software needed
Custom development requirements

Staffing

Once capital is accrued utilize those desiring to learn, and where someone can't fulfill a role in a safe learning capacity, hire someone to do it and teach others how to do what they are doing when appropriate.

Please add...

Organizational learning

The organizational learning plan discusses what lessons will be learned from the marketing, operational, and finance plans and how those lessons will be consolidated to gain strategic advantage.

Market sensing - organization's method for collecting information about customers (George Day)
Strategic Staircase - the accumulation of future competencies by building on existing competencies. (Michael Hays, Costas Markides)

Organizational memory

Financial plan

Nanoinvesting.

The basic economics of this business are important. From start to finish, this business is wiki wiki wiki. It doesn't matter who contributes. There will need to be policies and guidlines specific to this business. Be civil. Act in good faith. Assume good faith. Don't revert. Don't delete. Change, play, be creative.

Finances are of importance.

Everyone earns a share in the profits depending on how much they invest.

Share of profits = (% of Business owned) * (Net earnings - a certain % reinvested in the company)

% of business owned = (An individual's investment) / (Total all owners have ever invested)

Everyone decides together (consensus) how money is allocated. Everyone decides what projects are funded. People stick to what they are good at (and can teach others) and what they want to learn about.

Intellectual property will be licensed creatively. GFDL, CC-By... and so forth (to be determined)... probably just GFDL unless they're is a compelling reason to switch.

Funding plan

Micro investments?

Everyone earns a share in the profits depending on how much they invest.

Share of profits = (% of Business owned) * (Net earnings - a certain % reinvested in the company)

% of business owned = (An individual's investment) / (Total all owners have ever invested)

Financial forecasts

Sometimes called 'pro formas'
- Balance sheet
- Income statement
- Cash flow statement
1-3-5-7 year projections (depends on length of project)
- For loans, the repayment period determines length of projections. For example, a six month loan doesn't need a seven year forecast.
- For investments, points at which returns are stabilize (terminal value) determines length of forecast.
Annual, quarterly, and monthly versions should be provided.
Graphs of key values like gross revenue, EBITDA, NPV, and so forth are often helpful.
Financial portions of the marketing, asset development, and operations are often placed in this section rather than in the section discussing the specific aspects of the plan. They are viewed as elaboration on the various line items in the pro-formas.

Risk analysis

For more information, see Wikipedia:Risk analysis.

Market risks- lack of surgeons; large geographical area so that we don't compete against our own clients;
- New entrants to market
  - Ease of entry
  - Potential threat to market share - advertising companies
- Slower than expected adoption
Operational risks
Staffing risks- embedding the right candidate for the right surgeon
- Availability of skilled workforce- x-pharma reps, x-equipment reps
- Union issues
Financing risks
- Liabilities
- Poorly worded investor contracts at risk for litigation
- Investor pull-out
- Lack of follow-on funding to complete project
Managerial risks
- Poor board or investor dynamics
- Agency risk particular to the venture

Risk management

Detailed plans are more often found as part of in internal plans.

For both companies and consumers that participate in online business, security concerns are very important. Many consumers are hesitant to buy items over the Internet because they do not trust that their personal information will remain private. Recently, some companies that do business online have been caught giving away or selling information about their customers. Several of these companies have guarantees on their websites, claiming customer information will be private. By selling customer information, these companies are breaking their own, publicized policy. Some companies that buy customer information offer the option for individuals to have their information removed from the database (known as opting out).

Plans written for funders may need to include a high level description if there are significant controllable risks.

Methods and procedures to limit liabilities
Reserve funds
Continuity of operations plan

Business plans typically cover five major content areas:

Background information
A marketing plan
An operational plan
A financial plan
A discussion of the decision making criteria that should be used to approve the plan.

Decision making criteria

Wikipedia: Break even analysis
Wikipedia: NPV
Wikipedia: IRR
Wikipedia: Balanced Scorecard

As aforementioned funding is done collaboratively and at a micro scale. Additionally, the finances of this business are totally open all the time.

Everyone who puts monetary or human (work) capital into the business will a chance to influence the outcome. All decisions are made by consensus.

The actual consensus mechanism could be formal (an electronic vote through a voting system [like board elections] or simply on wiki.

The actual mechanism to spend monetary capital could have a more formal system. We give a trusted member of the community who is going to execute the purchasing, using the capital, on behalf of the business the ability to do so. And this is done through memembers of the business who are eligable to vote all agreeing through a formal mechanism to all a certain memember to spend "x" ammount of dollars on "x" item/items/service and use it for "x" purpose. Then proof that the item was used for such purpose could be done through receipts, photos, video, or simply reminents, in the sense that is physically in a certain location where all could go see it.

Wikimedia

External links

@@ Line 145: / Line 145: @@
 * Wikipedia: [[Wikipedia:IRR|IRR]]
 * Wikipedia: [[Wikipedia:Balanced Scorecard|Balanced Scorecard]]
+As aforementioned <!-- some of this aforementioned material will be written later--> funding is done collaboratively and at a micro scale. Additionally, the finances of this business are '''totally open''' ''all the time''.
+Everyone who puts monetary or human (work) capital into the business will a chance to influence the outcome. All decisions are made by consensus.
+The actual consensus mechanism could be formal (an electronic vote through a voting system [like board elections] or simply on wiki.
+<!--What are those things called, I've seen them in movies, where there are maybe 10 keys to open a box, and all ten keys have to be present, and 10 different people hold keys to open the treasure.. what movie? is there a name for those devices?-->
+The actual mechanism to spend monetary capital could have a more formal system. We give a trusted member of the community who is going to execute the purchasing, using the capital, on behalf of the business the ability to do so. And this is done through memembers of the business who are eligable to vote all agreeing through a formal mechanism to all a certain memember to spend "x" ammount of dollars on "x" item/items/service and use it for "x" purpose. Then proof that the item was used for such purpose could be done through receipts, photos, video, or simply reminents, in the sense that is physically in a certain location where all could go see it.
 ==Wikimedia==