Plano & Simple
Presenter:
Linda Plano, Founder
Email:
linda@planoandsimple.com
Phone:
857-230-0188
Website:
www.PlanoAndSimple.com
Address:
PO Box 180188
Boston, MA 02118
Year Founded:
2010
Industry Sector:
Cleantech Category:
Company Overview:
[This should be your 30 second pitch or other concise description of your company's value proposition and other critical elements of your business plan. Potential customers, partners, investors, employees and others reading it should find it compelling enough to want to learn more.]
Entrepreneurship is growing rapidly worldwide, in traditional centers of business innovation like Silicon Valley, within emerging economies and everywhere in between. In most of these regions, support for entrepreneurs is limited, but even in Boston and Silicon Valley where business incubators, nonprofit organizations and consultants abound, entrepreneurs frequently struggle to get the mentoring and coaching they need, resulting in costly mistakes and slower growth.
Plano & Simple was created to provide an online accelerator for entrepreneurs worldwide at a price they can afford. Founded by Linda Plano, Ph.D., who has coached over 500 entrepreneurs and helped them raise over $250M in equity and grant funding, it provides a place where entrepreneurs can raise their online profile, join coached "mastermind" groups, get personalized coaching, and training from experts in law, finance, marketing and other key areas, dramatically improving their companies' chances of success.
Plano & Simple operates on a freemium basis, although entrepreneurs must apply to be admitted to the accelerator and those who fail in the application process are required to get coaching before they can be added. Entrepreneurs using the free level have access to a la carte services while premium members receive special pricing and invitations to online events that showcase them to relevant audiences.
Markets & Applications:
[This section should highlight the size of your total addressable market and how much pain your potential customers are in, AKA how much they're willing to pay to solve their problems.]
Over 600,000 businesses are started each year in the US alone. While the majority of these are small, home-based businesses, a substantial fraction are the high tech companies with potential for growth that are Plano & Simple's initial niche. These companies are the ones with which we have the most experience and they garner the most interest from investors. Furthermore, there is intense competition among them for the limited pool of investors, so they are strongly motivated to develop the best pitches, business plans and connections possible within their resource limitations. Many of these entrepreneurs are pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for the privilege of pitching their companies to exclusive audiences of investors, entering business plan competitions and attending networking events but never get funded because they have a bad pitch, often founded on an inadequate business plan.
Plano & Simple was created to rectify this situation. We offer intensive coaching and training to entrepreneurs at competitive costs with the additional benefit of exposure to investors and others on our website and through our online and bricks & mortar events. We anticipate growing to a premium membership of 200 high quality startup companies. Turnover is expected to be relatively high as these companies should receive funding - or decide to cease operations - at a significantly higher rate than those who are not receiving Plano & Simple services. Revenues from the premium members combined with program and event revenues are expected to reach $1M in five years, with breakeven in year one.
Technology & Products:
[This description should include *what* your technology and products do, not *how* - i.e., NO proprietary information. This is a high level, nontechnical description - no equations, formulas or jargon. Information about your IP strategy and the status of your technology (proof of concept, beta, product, whatever) should also be included.]
Plano & Simple leverages several existing online platforms in order to provide high value added services at minimal cost and time for development. This approach allows us to migrate our considerable experience and knowledge about the startup development process - which comprise our intellectual property - to the web with minimal overhead, as well as to release innovative new programs rapidly. Our offerings to entrepreneurs include:
- Membership
- Display of company's executive summary (after application approval)
- Participation in moderated closed forums
- Programs
- Online "bootcamps" of intensive coaching and training in various aspects of entrepreneurship by experts
- Participation in small "mastermind" groups led by experienced mentors
- Events
- Online pitching events for invited audiences of investors or customers
- Online company portfolios for bricks-and-mortar events
Some of these services and products are already available while others will be developed as funding permits.
Sustainable Competitive Advantage:
[Describe your competitive advantage relative to "business as usual", current competitors and emerging technologies. Focus on benefits, not features, of your products and services.]
Competition in this field ranges from online information and training at the low end through programs run by local organizations to individual consultants or consulting groups at the high end. Our competitive advantage is based on offering high quality services at competitive prices combined with an existing extensive network.
Free Online Tools & Training
For most entrepreneurs, money is in almost as short supply as time. Therefore, the availability of free information on the internet is often their training source of choice. However, this information provides no interactive coaching and the quality of the information is variable. Proof of the limitations of this approach is apparent in the fact that the vast majority of pitches and business plans are of relatively poor quality. Furthermore, online information provides no accountability or support and rarely enables them to raise their profile.
Free membership forums such as You Noodle do exist and have achieved success in building large communities. However, there is no coaching or training element associated with it and no limit to who may join them. It's possible to raise a company's profile on this site but accelerating its development in terms of business plan is not provided. There are also many online groups on LinkedIn and Facebook that provide forums for special interest groups. However, these do not have the technology for facilitating training or coaching nor for managing online events or other ways of raising the profile of a given company.
Paid Coaching & Training
There are many coaches and consultants marketing their services online although offerings similar to the Plano & Simple online accelerator platform have not been identified. In fact, most of these consultants do this work either on an interim basis while searching for their next opportunity or because they prefer not to work in a corporate environment, i.e., they prefer to focus on helping individual clients and not on managing a growth business. In fact, we provide low-risk access for them to the diffuse and high risk but high potential market of entrepreneurs via our platform as guest coaches and mentors.
Nonprofit Entrepreneurship Organizations
There are many organizations that provide support services to the entrepreneurial community, including international organizations such as the MIT Enterprise Forum and TiE as well as local organizations such as MIT's Venture Mentoring Center, the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and The Capital Network. These organizations provide extensive programs and support for entrepreneurs primarily via bricks-and-mortar events, usually coupled with online resources of various kinds. They depend heavily on volunteer support to produce quality programming as well as on sponsorship. Coaching of individual entrepreneurs is expensive and time-consuming by traditional methods, although highly rewarding and a popular volunteer activity for many successful business people and service providers. However, consistency and accountability are very difficult to maintain in such organizations while these are built into the Plano & Simple platform.
Business Model & Financials:
[Investors are particularly interested in how sustainable and growth oriented your business is. Describe nonproprietary aspects of your business model to demonstrate your company's viability and your business acumen.]
Revenue Streams
As an online business, we use the freemium model for recurring: entry level services are provided at no charge while premium services are available for paid subscriptions. Additional programs and events are available on an a la carte basis. However, Plano & Simple's credibility as a resource for entrepreneurs and as a source of interesting startups depends on the quality and success of its members. Therefore, even entrepreneurs who wish to participate at the free level need to submit an application for entry and the total number allowed is limited. An important incentive for premium membership is the opportunity to be part of a small mastermind group led by an experienced mentor.
In addition to memberships, we offer a number of products and services for sale. The core of our programs is the online bootcamp: six weeks of intensive work that produces a measurable result for the entrepreneurs and their business. For instance, our pilot program is a six-week course that helps entrepreneurs convert their business plans into compelling investor pitches, identifying and filling holes in their business plans in the process. The bootcamp includes online lectures, tutorials, homework and coaching, as well as a private forum for participants that acts as an online mastermind group. Recordings of past bootcamps are available at a reduced fee while one-on-one coaching is available at a higher fee.
Special seminars on corporate and IP law, marketing, finances and other areas will also be provided by service providers and other experts. Fees for these seminars will be offset by sponsorships from the service providers. We have a broad and deep network of experts in many fields that we tap to ensure that our offerings are of top quality.
Client Acquisition
New members are obtained by two primary mechanisms: coaching of groups of entrepreneurs for specific events and social media marketing.
There are dozens of pitching events, business plan competitions and investor conferences each year in the US alone. Plano & Simple offers a Startup Event Accelerator package that includes pitch coaching of each participant and an online portfolio of their executive summaries made available to conference participants. The benefits to the event organizer include high quality pitches and executive summaries for each of their participants and a central, online location showcasing the companies that participate in the event that can be used for marketing prior to the event or simply for information during the event. The entrepreneurs are invited to a premium membership in the Plano & Simple accelerator at no charge for six weeks after the event is over. Those who find value in the offerings can elect to stay at the free or premium level, provided their applications are accepted. This marketing approach is expensive and time-consuming but is typically done on a fee-for-service basis.
One of the primary advantages of offering our services online is that we can reach anyone who has internet access. Entrepreneurs who live close to centers of entrepreneurship have many options available to them for business acceleration, but most of the entrepreneurs in the world do not. To reach those who have limited options, Plano & Simple takes advantage of the leverage of social media via the three powerhouses in the field: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. In addition to using these media to distribute blog postings and other direct marketing, we participate in many entrepreneurship-related groups within each to raise our profile within diverse communities. These activities have relatively little financial cost associated with them but they are also time-consuming and do not have a direct revenue model associated with them. They are outsourced as appropriate.
Financials
Plano & Simple anticipates reaching breakeven in the first year of operations by maintaining low overhead and providing custom coaching to individual clients. We expect growth in 5 years to $1M annual revenue. We plan to exit the business in ten years by sale of the accelerator to a major service provider.
Team:
[Investors invest in people more than they invest in technology and they care more (a lot more) about experience than they do about training. List your management team and their relevant experience here. Your team also includes advisors with appropriate expertise, directors (if any), and partners or even beta customers.]
Linda Plano, PhD, is the founder and sole member of Plano & Simple.
Linda has built a reputation in the Northeast and especially Boston as a coach with integrity and an excellent track record in the course of coaching over 500 entrepreneurs who have gone on to raise over a quarter billion dollars in equity and grant funding. Her leadership skills in building innovative organizations and events have been demonstrated repeatedly. In 2004, she co-founded and subsequently chaired of the Ignite Clean Energy Business Competition, which is now part of the Cleantech Open, the largest competition of its kind. She chaired the Conference on Clean Energy for five years and provided coaching services for investor conferences in Life Sciences, Nanotechnology, Marine and Ocean Sciences and others, as well as preparing entrepreneurs in individual venues.
In addition to her coaching and community-building work, Linda has extensive business experience. She started as a research scientist in a startup company while earning her PhD at Stanford in Materials Science & Engineering, and then moved through various levels of management culminating in the position of Vice President of New Business Development at MicroNetworks Corporation, a small company that she helped to sell in 2001. She has also been CEO of an unfunded software startup, a position she took due to her interest in and development of community websites on a variety of platforms for several organizations.
Advisors
Partners
Development Plans:
[It is illegal to recommend investment on unregistered websites such as this one so DO NOT solicit investment in this section. However, you can describe your plans for the next five years including the major milestones you will accomplish, the amount of funding required to get there and the anticipated date for an exit. This provides readers of your executive summary with a good idea of whether you are a good fit for their profile.]
In 2011, Plano & Simple will complete two Startup Event Accelerators and two bootcamps, from which at least 20 premium members will be recruited. This work will require approximately $50,000 which is funded internally and through client work.
The first Startup Event Accelerator is in progress with the Consulate General of Canada Boston as the beta customer (with many thanks to all of you!). The first bootcamp is already in progress, with plans to add new ones at Babson College and in partnership with the Cleantech Open. Work on the technology platform is still in progress as are the social media campaigns. We have reached out to some members of the service provider community to begin discussions on participation in future seminars, mastermind groups and other programs.
In 2012, we will grow premium membership to 50 members and perform four Startup Event Accelerators.
Etc.
In 2020, we plan to sell the accelerator to a large service provider, such as a law firm with a significant interest in the startup market.
Additional Information:
N/A