Who or what are business angels?

 Business Angels provide business funding from private, unregulated sources. This could satisfy a need for capital investment that cannot be raised personally by the business owners themselves, or raised by way of loans from banks etc. Business angels funding is money that investors put into a private company in return for a shares in the ownership of the business. It is also called ‘equity finance’ and because this type of finance is reliant on shares of the company being used as equity, it is not available to businesses that operate as sole trader or partnership.
Business Angels are usually wealthy people with a high net worth, they are private individuals, or groups of investors, looking for opportunities to invest money in businesses with the aim of making a substantial financial return.
A typical, business angel may have owned their own successful business in the past, or they may be experienced executives who have been made redundant and wish to find another job by investing in to someone else’s business as a business angel.
Business angels often invest in businesses during the start up or expansion period and they may invest either alone or as part of a syndicate. As well as money to invest, they often have a wealth of commercial experience and, if they have earned their wealth by building businesses themselves, they may also bring their contacts with them.

Tags: build, business, businesses, buy, cash, existing, opportunity, product, profit, purchase
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What does a website designer do?

A website designer creates the web pages that make up a website. These can satisfy a variety of functions, from providing basic information about your business, its products and services to enabling customers to buy online and contact details. Many website designers can handle all aspects of website development work involving search facilities, complex graphics, multimedia advertisements, blogs and dynamic news pages, databases and search engine optimisation.
You should be thinking of hiring a website designer if you are looking for help toward any of the following:
• A basic website that introduces your business, its products and contact details.
• An online shop so customers can order and buy goods online.
• Design of an online database for easy access to information relevant to your business.
• Design of an elaborate, graphical or interactive site to promote specific new products or services.
• Update an existing website that you have that is out of date.
• Maintain and repair any existing your websites problems.
• Register domain name or names for you.
• Make sure that your website is accessible to visitors with disabilities.
• Host your website on a secure reliable server.

Tags: database, designer, pages, web development, website
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Have you researched your competitors?

When planning to start up a business or enter a new market place, it is essential to research your competitors thoroughly to ensure you or your service or products can be different from your rivals, or you may want to offer something unique to potential customers that will make them buy from you rather than someone else.

So what exactly do you need to know about your competitors?

The questions below will give you some ideas for gathering information about your competitors and help you understand how they may relate your own business.

1. How do your competitors’ products or services compare to yours, and how can you make yours differ from theirs?
2. How do their prices compare with yours? Do they offer any special offers, discounts, guarantees or services?
3. How does the quality of their products or services compare to yours is it / are they better (or worse) than yours?
4. Do they offer any add-on features to their product or service that increase its attractiveness or value to their customers?
5. Are they undertaking any research and development that would affect the future positioning of their products?
6. How large is their customer base?
7. Who are their customers? What are their demographic characteristics? E.g. where do they live? How old are they? What gender are they? What are their occupations? How much do they earn? What sort of things do they spend their money on?
8. What share of the market does each of your competitors have?
9. How do they promote / advertise? Where? What strategies are they using?
10. How much are they paying their staff? What other benefits do they offer them?

Tags: advice, business, help, idea, new business, research
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Buying a Business

Why do you want to buy a business?

Consider your objectives well before you start looking for a business to buy. Ask these questions:

• Do you want to buy so that you can run your own business?

• Is buying a means of expanding an existing enterprise?

• Are you hoping to build up a business and sell it on for a significant amount of money?

Things to consider when choosing a business to buy

The type of business you buy will depend a number of key factors:

1. Your own knowledge and skills

• Do you and/or any prospective business partners have any experience, knowledge or skills relevant to your target business? Consider If you (or they) do not have experience, is it relatively easy to acquire?

• Will it continue to exist within the business after you have bought it?

2. How you will fund the purchase?

• What financial resources do you need to buy a business?

• Besides the initial purchase price you may have to make further investments in the company for continued success.

• There will also be costs, such as professional fees, when the buying the business. These can amount to thousands of pounds depending on the nature and size of the business being bought.

Most people cannot afford to buy a business outright and will need a loan from the bank. You may be expected to contribute 25-50% of the purchase price and the bank will want to look closely at your background and personal resources, as well as the target business’ finances.

• Before agreeing to a loan. Speak to your bank in general terms about buying a business to get a feel for how much you may be able to borrow.

• Alternatively, you could look for others who will invest their money in return for part-ownership of the business. Family or friends might consider getting involved when the purchase is a small business. With a larger purchase it could involve business angels or equity from venture capital firms. You’ll need to be clear about what is expected from investors and whether they want to have some sort of control in the management of the business. See BIF 40 A Summary of Sources of Finance for Starting a Business for related information.

3. Business location

• Can you be flexible about the location of the business?

• Is it practible for you / or would you be prepared to travel long distances or even relocate your home to buy the right business?

• Or are you only interested in looking at a businesses very close to where you live?

• If the business is based from home, would you be happy with this?

4. Timescales of a purchase

• Be prepared for the buying process to take some time, but also, ensure you’re not pushed or pressurised into completing the sale before all of the checks you or your adviser consider necessary are carried out. You may, though be able to achieve a discounted price if you are in a position to complete the purchase quickly.

5. Existing staff

• You’ll need to develop a good relationship with your future employees because you’ll rely on them in the early days of ownership, be aware that the staff employed by a business can be crusial to its ongoing success. Talk to staff before you complete the purchase so that you can assess how they feel about the change of ownership.

• Conversely, poorly motivated or badly trained staff can contribute to business failure. Are you capable of addressing these issues? And if you decide to buy a business that is not profitable but has good growth potential, consider that you might have to make redundancies. Make sure that you understand your responsibilities under employment law and redundancy legislation

Tags: business, buy, purchase
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