Now that you have read “Smart Start-Ups”, our group of angel investors would like to see your business plan for new online or mobile community for the purpose of providing you with up to $300,000 of start-up capital.  We have done it many, many times and for several online and mobile communities. See www.sfcapital.com.

Although “Smart Start-Ups” contains the Secret Sauce to enable you to start an online or mobile community, not all business plans are created equally.

Some of the better business plans we have seen are based on some of the great offline business models such as Weight Watchers International, The Arthur Murray Dance Studios, the United States Golf Association, the Billy Graham Crusade, Tupperware party-plan selling, Mary Kay Cosmetics party-plan selling, the New York Stock Exchange and Harley Davidson rallies. Our angel group particularly likes online communities that are modeled on these brilliant, sustainable, economically justifiable business plans.

Some of the better business plans we have seen are based on magnificent local offline business models such as Rotary Clubs, Elks Lodges, Kiwanis Clubs, Parent Teachers Associations, quilting bees, scrapbooking clubs and member-guest golf tournaments.
Why not begin your community locally, then grow it regionally and then nationally. Why not use party-plan selling, seminar selling, newsletter selling or franchising to bring in members? There are many offline models to emulate including McDonalds, Kinkos and the entire life insurance industry.

I emphasize in “Smart Start-Ups” the enormous value of the unexpected reward. You  going to need to create mobbing, and to do that, you will need early adopters who can influence others to become members. Why not pay early adopters a fee to bring 50 or 100 additional members to your community? It has worked in numerous offline businesses. Students are always in need of money. Approach them to become your early adopters and surprise them with an unexpected reward.

As you know from reading “Smart Start-Ups”, our angel group does NOT like business models whose principal source of revenue is advertising. These do not appear to us to be sustainable businesses, because advertisers are fickle and will flee to the “next best thing”. We prefer business models where subscribers pay, in one form or another, to gain access to a scarce resource.  And that scarce resource could be how to improve oneself, get into some place that is hard to get into, find the great weekend event in their region, how to lose weight, finding people like oneself to travel to somewhere and do something with or to locate one’s ranking in judo contests in comparison with others.

In addition to subscriptions, as you know from the book, we like revenues from tip-jars, product sales, purchase of avatars, purchase of materials for the avatars, payments from wireless carriers, use of branded debit cards, introducing a branded currency to use in the community, payments of specialized search, strategic alliances with other communities that want their members to have access to your community’s scarce resource, and one form of advertising that we like, product placements.

Does your online or mobile community contain the Secret Sauce to become one of the great ones? Let’s find out.  On the following pages we invite you to Score your business model and submit the score to us.  If it comes in over 40, your community will be funded.
Between 30 and 40, perhaps we can submit some ideas to you to improve it, so that it will be funded. Below 30, you might want to forget about it.

Score your Business!!