Question: 4-5 pages, single spaced, with 1-inch margins on all sides. Text must reach the bottom of a page for that page to be counted toward length requirements.
Purpose: The purpose of a business prospectus is to secure support for a planned product or service. You will use a business prospectus to showcase information necessary for investors to determine whether they want to fund your venture.
You are welcome to present yourself as the head of a pre-existing (small) company seeking additional funding, or as an entrepreneur looking to launch a product or service. You are seeking funding either way, and so your goal is to ensure that potential investors will be persuaded by the components of your prospectus.
Paper structure: For this assignment, I suggest following the process described in Ch. 14, on pages 374-75 (beginning with "Creating Successful Business Plans"). Please note that, depending on your chosen product or service, some of the sections listed on pages 374-75 will not be applicable. As a baseline, I've compiled a list of required and optional sections below.
Required Sections:
1. Summary (of prospectus overall)
2. Mission and objectives
3. Products or services
4. Market and competition
5. Design and development plans (if you are describing a product)
6. Operations plans (if you are describing a service)
7. Overall schedule
8. Critical risks and problems
9. Financial projections and requirements
Optional Sections:
1. Company and industry
2. Management
3. Exit strategy
Secondary Sources: You will need to reference at least 2 secondary sources within your prospectus. These can be popular sources or academic sources-in either case, they will need to have a clear connection to one or more of the following: the product or service you're proposing, the problem your product or service will solve, the industry/market you will enter, or the customers you want to reach.
(Sources must be formatted using either APA or MLA-style citation guidelines.)
Formatting Note: Figures, tables, data sets, or images may not exceed 1/3rd the length of the page they're on. Multiple figures, etc. may be used within that 1/3rd space. Any elements that go beyond the space restrictions will not count towards page count, and the course Paper Length policy will be applied accordingly. If an element won't fit within 1/3rd of a single page, place it in an appendix along with an in-text reference for your reader.