The best entrepreneurs and executives at fast-growing companies have the ability to move efficiently and profitably from ideation to execution, and then from execution back to ideation and then back to re-focused execution. And they do so regarding all aspects of their businesses -- marketing and sales, operations and finance.

Most entrepreneurs and managers of companies seeking outside capital vastly underestimate how long it will take them to successfully complete a financing. Here's the reality check: in our experience, we've seen that, on average, a company and a management team seeking financing should budget between 500 and 1000 work-hours to the capital-raising process, spread out over a 6 month time period.

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Can be read here at - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/10/ten-questions-1.html - all aspiring entrepreneurs should take in this advice - in general Guy's blog is one of the best (if not the best) out there re venture capital, entrepreneurship, and technology.

A business plan, in its essence, is the process of mapping out with as much accuracy as possible, what the future of an enterprise or business initiative will be. To forecast effectively, the business plan strategist must intelligently evaluate and synthesize available industry and market data into a plan of action supporting credible market and financial projections. To do so effectively, it is paramount to efficiently differentiate between business data and business intelligence.

When working with our clients to develop their business plans, we often reach a place where a fear arises that can best be illustrated by the moment where entrepreneurs asking the question, "What if this doesn't work?"

Entrepreneurship and business planning, by their natures, inherently contain the very real possibility, and often probability, of goals not being attained -- and of the corresponding losses of time, money, reputation, and often the concurrent growth of self doubt.

With financial headlines dominated by the recent declines in the stock and bond markets, a creeping sense of economic foreboding has entered into the thought and decision-making processes of managers across the corporate spectrum.