From the blog team: “Building a Sustainable, Scalable Business Panel” by Joyce Kim
Here is an excerpt from Building a Sustainable, Scalable Business Panel by Joyce Kim
- Moderator: Betsy Densmore, Social Enterprise Institute
- Alan Gershenfeld, E-Line Ventures
- Lauri Alpern, ROI Ventures
- Paul Lamb, Man on a Mission Consulting
Nice gems of advice:
Alan - make sure you have a clear understanding of the impact you desire; constantly ask how does impact align with how you are making money - if there is a misalignment, do not start until the alignment issue is solved.
Lauri: Questions to ask yourself - what is your passion? what drives your resource engine? what can you be the best at? also, you need an engaged and informed BOD, educated BOD is not enough.
Paul - three key points - 1) most ventures suffer from lack of a key business model; don’t try to be everything to everyone; make sure your business model or tagline fits on a t-shirt. 2) do your diligence on your industry and competitors. 3) many ventures have a lack of focus on marketing, esp in early stages. you need to be able to sell both the social story and the financial story to different audiences; some people react to one more than the other, so be flexible in your pitch.
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