The Tudog Group -

Franchise Funding Options

craig@tudog.com (Craig Frank) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:42:40 +0000

The attributes inherent in purchasing a franchise often make the search for the start up capital worthwhile. In many cases franchises provide you with the sole opportunity to own and operate your own business because they come as turnkey operations. This not only provides the know-how and support you might otherwise not have, but more importantly, it makes it affordable because the franchisor has already engaged in the costly product development, operations and systems creation, and certain marketing activities that would have put the cost of entry too high if you needed to do it all on your own.

Elevator Pitches

craig@tudog.com (Craig Frank) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:39:09 +0000

By way of confession, Tudog has never really liked elevator pitches. In the frenzied times of the Internet bubble, elevator pitches were introduced as a way for companies seeking funding to reach out to venture capitalists who were seeing hundreds of deals a week. The idea was that if they (the VCs) could get the fund seekers to give them a boiled down (30 second – as if during a single elevator ride) overview of the business, they would be able to determine whether it interested them enough to want to hear more. Tudog saw this as (a) awfully arrogant, (b) nearly impossible, and (c) most likely a recipe for some really bad investments. As we saw it, if a company can actually say all there is to say about their product, market, business model and management in 30 seconds then they haven't thought enough about these critical things. And if an investment company only has an interest in judging companies based on 30 seconds, then they are not taking their responsibilities very seriously. Elevator pitches, we claimed, were silly. Giving a company 30 seconds indeed forces them to pinpoint their core competencies and value to the market, but it also teaches them to throw out all the “how to” that form the very foundations of a good business. What you would wind up with were great ideas with no business models.

Capital Recruitment (more)

craig@tudog.com (Craig Frank) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:45:17 +0000