Some questions we need to think about regarding presentation I was watching a BBC programme on TV last night that showed about 10 people presenting their business idea to a panel of investors. The show prompted some questions that perhaps are relevant to us:

1. Who are the panel? What are their interests?
   
2. What questions can we anticipate from the panel?
   
3. Have we got a clearly defined exit strategy?
   
4. What are our expectations from the business?
   
5. Do we expect any of the panel (the investors) to contribute to running the business?
   
6. What is are unique selling point (UPS)?
   

The panel of investors were quite harsh and if it was not obvious where any profit would be made then they were not interested. This made me think that we need to expand our idea into a bigger more viable investment option. I have identified the following strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in our current idea:

• We will not make any money from offering service in one locality though initially Durham will provide the perfect test bed for optomising the service
  
• Within three years, students will be joining the workforce, therefore it is important to develop a branded website that they will continue to use wherever they move to in the UK
  
• All large university towns should be targeted initially
  
• Research teams should collate information about each takeaway in a town, noting those popular with students.
  
• Takeaway menus should be put online free of charge for first year
  
• Marketing team should advertise heavily to students, focusing on first year undergraduates
  
• Slowly introduce and feel our way into processing online orders on behalf of takeaways
  
• Employ a techinical director to co-ordinate website and managing online ordering
  
• Employ an marketing manager to co-ordinate team of marketing personel
  
• Employ finance director to manage money matters
  
• Employ Managing Director to oversee business
  
• We will need team of sales and advertising people
  
• Requirement for 1 or 2 website designers
  
• After 3 years it is important to have created a brand that students will be able to continue to use and distribute by word of mouth in their place of work whatever the UK location
  
• Based on a figure of 1,000,000 students attending university (i'll get an accurate figure later), if only 5% of these students actually stick to using website after graduation, we will have around 50,000 customers after 3 years. With a tried and tested website, takeaway and delivery service already in business, word of mouth and a co-ordinated ad campaign around the time of graduation we should be able to increase number of users.
  
• After 3 years the business' main income will come from advertising revenue on the site as we should have a very heavy user base which advertiser's will flock to
  
• Think about possible companies who would want to advertise on site
  
• How much can you make from online advertising?
  
• After 3 years our business model should be mature enough to add new services and charge more to takeaways
  
• Our main competitors are: supermarkets selling convenience food; restaurants within walking distance; takeaway companies already offering online ordering such as dominos pizza (they are introducing sms ordering early this year)
  

So how much do we need to get things up and running? Even if we get the money required to finance what is the chance of success and when will we start to make money?

Ultimately I guess our vision is for everyone who is online (this number is steadily growing) and orders takeaway food (this number is rising due to less time, more hectic lifestyle, convenience is king and a number of other factors) to do so by browsing our website.

We need to think about when and what to charge to the takeaways for including their menus online. To infiltrate and popularise the idea we may have to have a large investment or borrowing to fund the set up costs of researching and advertising takeaways and paying for server space and paying all the staff. However, thinking big and long term I think this could pay off. Let's do some sums.

Obviously none of this is set in stone so please add your thoughts and criticisms and then somehow we will manage to form a coherent idea by friday (?) and start with the business plan.

By the way, we need to have a draft presentation done by week beginning 10th January and presentation needs to be handed in to Lynda Anderson by 12.00 noon on Friday, 14th January. The timetable does not say when we hand in Business plan though  ¶ 9:12 am