Starting a Business in Berlin

50 51 Starting a Business in Berlin A Beginner’s Guide The founder (or team) Explain to your reader what it is that makes you or your team especially well-qualified to meet the challenge ahead. Commercial expertise and a knowledge of the sector can be decisive: you will have to back these up in your CV and provide documentation. The business idea Make a convincing case about what it is that makes your product or service new, better and more useful. In particular, what is the likelihood of it sustaining a long-term demand? Don’t forget that while being able to do something more che- aply but to the same standard may still be an improvement, this alone may not be enough in the long term. You must be able to put clear blue water between yourself and your com- petitors if you are to stand a good chance of surviving. Market analysis Describe and quantify your market (size, sales figures) and demonstrate your knowledge of how it works. Create a graphic representation of your potential target market, for example, based not only on age, sex and income, but also on their status type (student, manager, pensioner) and spending behaviour (“conformist”, “extravagant”). Also demonstrate that you are familiar with your competition and take them seriously. WHAT SHOULD I INCLUDE IN MY BUSINESS PLAN? You will find detailed suggestions on how to organise the content of your plan by using the enclosed links and reading the relevant literature. So instead, we will concentrate here on the most important aspects of the document and the most frequent omissions within its overall structure. In very general terms, not every section will be equally relevant to every start-up project. The same applies to the length of your document: there is no standard size. That said, fewer than ten pages of text (with single-line spacing and font size 11) would be slim indeed, and fewer than six pages practically emaciated. Of course, this is without the sets of figures and any annexes. Executive summary This is your opportunity to dazzle your reader. You should stress the advantages that only your start-up project can provide. If you like, you can include promotional claims, but you will then have to back these up in the chapters which follow. The most important information to include in the summary is the business concept, the expertise of the start- up team, the benefit to customers, the business’s USP, the potential level of sales and return on investment, the busi- ness’s legal form and its capital requirements. Basically, your readers should be able to decide whether they want in or out on the basis of the executive summary alone. First steps  existenzgruender.de/en Select: „Your first steps“ CHAPTER 4