Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

Recently I had the opportunity to review a stack of business plans as part of a screening process for a venture capital conference.

Each business plan represented a company hoping to present at the conference.  The plans varied greatly in quality and substance.  One plan got particularly little attention because the product description included the following phrase:  "potentially award winning."  At that point, I stopped reading.  This was certainly the weakest boast I’d ever read in a business plan.

My experience tells me that what investors like to see in a business plan is clarity and substance.  Clarity is a product of using language that describes your products or services to people who are not experts in your field.  Substance comes from data and detail that demonstrate your key points; i.e., specific historical revenue growth data and documented market size data support your projections.

Just for fun, I've launched a web site to facilitate recognition of people, products, publications and corporations that are Potentially Award Winning.

Now, let me invite you to nominate a person, product, blog or company that you think is "potentially award winning" and tell us why.

(Please remember that this is a family friendly venue!)