“Financing a New Business” by Phil Stone is targeted mainly at people with little or no previous commercial experience looking for easy-to-understand advice on how to start their first business from scratch.
The book gives basic and practical information on how to go about raising finance from a variety of sources to allow the entrepreneur to get his new business off to the best start. It focuses mainly on raising debt finance rather than equity, which is a more complicated and arduous process, and this makes it of less value to those with larger aspirations.
That said, the book is comprehensive in its wide range of basic debt finance methods, making it a useful initial roadmap or framework for the budding entrepreneur to get his or her bearings.
There is a section on creating a business plan, which offers some solid guidelines and addresses several key points about clarity of language, complete honesty in what you pitch to investors, and the importance of putting yourself in the shoes of both the customer and the investor.
In an appendix there is also a business plan template, which gives a standard and acceptable framework; it could have been beneficial to include an example of a real plan to bring this to life, and to give more of an idea of the style and tone required in the finished document.
It provides some useful business techniques that will help people to create a compelling business plan (such as the SWOT analysis), but could have reinforced more strongly the important point in that it is wise for the new business person to consult, discuss and debate with anyone willing to be bored for half-an-hour.
This is an absolutely crucial part of the creative and rigorous process and ensures that everything has been thoroughly thought through. Also it is always wise to practice the presentation to the would-be investor over and over again until word perfect.
The book contains a useful, though slightly limited, list of contact details at the back which would help the aspiring entrepreneur with a good initial navigation around many key organizations.
This review was written by Paul Humphries, Business Development Director at Opta, the business creation company.
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