Business Development Tools - A Business Angel Perspective
Can a business angel be a “development tool” for startups? How can strategic planning, an active network, and customer relationship management help your startup company's growth? Stay with us, and through the article, you’ll find the answers.
But first of all, let’s see: What are business development tools? They are techniques and means to support you in achieving your business goals. Business development tools are as old as production, trade, and business are – the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Mesopotamians surely compete on who invented marketing and CRM (customer relations management of the time such as chitchatting with their clients on preferences, values...).
The benefit of using such tools is to utilise the expertise and practice offered without the need to re-invent the wheel. These solutions are especially helpful for startups with limited resources and expertise, and many of them are widely known to the public... but there are exceptions! We are offering to take a new look at the topic – a perspective of business angels.
Business angels (BA) are private investors who look out for talented startuppers with prospective ideas but usually with products and services not yet introduced to the market. Using the angel’s funds, expertise and network, the startupper has a much better chance of survival and flourishing. Based on that, we can already say - that a key business development tool is the involvement of an angel in the business!
To be more specific, we have to identify the key elements of BA activities. Apart from the financing, the BA helps by mentoring the startupper team. The most important business development tool is the strategy tool in business - strategical planning. So startup teams must ask themselves: What is the right approach and strategy for our product or service? What is our unique selling point? How replicable is it? Do we have all preconditions under control to produce/offer this product or service? Do we have an efficient production chain? Do we have the right team in house? A business angel can help to ask all these questions – typical issues raised at any pitching event – and the BA can also help to find the right answers with the expertise under their belt.
Another popular development tool for a startup is CRM – customer relations management. The emphasis here is not on automation or IT; rather, taking it literally – manage your relations with your buyers, create the opportunity for iterated feedback. Why exactly? Because products and services which are so close to the innovation phase need intense and valid customer feedback toallow for flexible modifications and improvements. First customers count as the demo group, as testing beds for the pilot of products/services. The term “user innovation” points to the innovation happening with the close involvement of end-users , building on co-creation, hoping for perfecting the products offered, so they definitively meet client expectations.
A further popular business development tool to highlight here, under the business angels' expertise list, is networking. Whether it allows the startup team to meet further investors or to meet potential clients – is up to the given situation. The BA can be especially facilitative in matchmaking with B2B customers, bringing in established companies as potential buyers. Networking can also be useful in inviting further expertise needed for the innovation process, assisting the startup in navigating the local innovation ecosystem.
Instead of just summing up, we invite you to learn more about the business development tools offered by angels. Join Women/Business/Angels’ breakthrough training series in the framework of the WINGATE project. During the seven-session training course, you can learn about multiple topics from the innovation ecosystem through the investment procedure to mentoring. Start-ups can learn and grow through an angel that offers mentoring besides pure funds. The events – taking place on 3rd May, 7th June, 4th October, 8th November and 6th December 2022 at 6 PM CET, are available in person and online. We aim to answer the following questions:
- Who are the business angels, and what do they do? Why does it make sense to become an angel investor? How to manage risks and build your portfolio? Why join an angel investor group?
- What is an angel investment? What do we mean by due diligence? Why do angel investors work in syndicates? What makes a good exit?
- Why become an investor? What is your role in the value creation of a start-up? Where and how to find other investors to join forces with?
- Why become a mentor? What is your role in the value creation of a start-up? Where and how to find other mentors to join forces with?
- How to build a portfolio of mentoring and angel investments?
Participation in the training series is FREE of charge, but pre-registration is required. For each training session, you can book your place at the events created on the Meetup.com page, whether you want to participate live or online via Zoom. The Zoom link is provided on the Meetup event page:
How to be a successful business woman in 2022
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most successful of them all? A simple question and two answers: Siri and Alexa. What they have in common? They know everything and do nothing like a traditional woman. 2022 lights up a completely new environment, based on a complex human communication, strong IT knowledge and continuous education.
To be a successful Romanian business woman today requires a huge ability to reinvent yourself, to come out of your shell and discover the new digital world.
The last years, label the business woman mostly on fine arts on Etsy and cosmetic Kardashian influencers, with a modest 37% percentage in owning a local company.
What can we see today? Romanian women that build personal brands in all industries, education, social entrepreneurship, IT and the list doesn’t have a gender profile.
Their success comes from the courage to reinvent all the business environment, shifting from old society mother role to an emphatic leader who knows that family is a part of her gift in this world. A successful business woman is the one who is able to make from her life choice, the path for her family and close friends. The one who knows that a strong network, an aspirational mentor and a continuous education, can reinvent the world.
Business woman education/ skillset needs
Our children spent half of their life in a digital world and our grandchildren will work on their avatars from their early age. As we love them and want to be part of their life, we should embrace technology with enthusiasm. The business values are the same since the beginning and the human evolution shaped them throughout the society needs. If we believe that our knowledge and experience should be the foundation for the future, we should educate ourselves in the spirit of the new technologies.
IT Technology is above all, a tool that should be, if not mastered, recognized as a complex communication channel to a huge potential market. Today, a business without a strong community is a dinosaur. The networking skills doesn’t place the modern business women in the center of the universe. The new leadership requires to be yourself part of the network. Carrying, giving and in the end, receiving, means to create a solid community with the same goal, the profit for everyone.
Business woman connections to gain via events
If we want to be heard, we should not yell to the deaf. Google ads will put your nice logo everywhere until nobody will care about it. Clicking, liking, hugging and smiling at others life will not pass your values in community. We are humans and above this, women. We grow with eye-to-eye connections, real smiles, and stories that we want to discuss for hours. Our profit is measured in success not only in money.
A business woman needs roots in the community, to share the past and build the future. We are delicate mechanisms shaped in flash and light and we need to shine brighter than our computer screen. The new business world freed up a big space for us, and is our duty to be part of the network, to make it work on the way that we desire.
Successful business woman examples
The key to success is often the ability to change, as Einstein said, and we dare every Romanian business woman to put the seeds of their knowledge and values in all the fields that life puts close enough to touch it.
In Romania, we have a beloved example of a new value, Simona Halep. A successful young business woman, that translated every drop of sweat on the way to Mondial tennis champ, in clean money, rock-solid family business, and her story has just begun.
It’s not all about our business success, which is nice and fulfilling, it’s about a better world for the same stardust we are coming from. Success is mirrored in the eyes of your community, your closed ones and the beautiful moments of this life. Dare to be an educated, connected and meaningful better version of yourself, in business and in life!
Online training platforms
Today everything is online, so why should not be the education? The premise „nowadays, you can find everything within a few google searches“ is positively correct, so you don’t have to worry about buying expensive books anymore, rearranging your time to fit the timetable of the lectures and most important you can take the same lectures over and over again. These are millions of lectures, videos, and blogs, free or paid, ready for you to expand your horizons or learn something completely new.
Online learning platforms provide you to gain unlimited knowledge from spheres that you are interested in and that can help you grow yourself as well as your business. Online learning platforms have experienced incredible growth in the last few years, especially after Covid-19. The unbreakable piece of evidence is the increasing number of people becoming interested in online learning – either to learn a new skill or to teach online.
What is an Online Learning Platform?
An online learning platform is an information system that provides a safe learning environment where anyone can take online courses. For decades, education was related to strict classrooms with whiteboards and uncomfortable desks. Now, people of all ages and experience levels have far more options, including online courses. Online education comes in so many shapes and sizes and we have an endless amount of opportunities to learn new things.
Advantages of free online training platforms
Whenever you pay for a course – you will to finish it, wheater you are eager to learn or not, you will finish it because you paid for it and you don’t what your money to parish. But, when lectures are free, besides learning something new you develop a different side of yourselves. Free online training platforms help people develop discipline, accountability, and time management, and most important foster personal growth and development. The Wingate platform will help you through it.
Free online training platforms reduce the pressure you could have while taking expensive, paid courses, and give you the possibility to study according to your learning style. Without previously mentioned pressure, continued learning keeps your brain doing what it does best: thinking. A benefit of free online classes is that you can work your brain out anytime, anywhere as long as you have an internet connection.
A great example of a free online course platform is the Google Analytics Academy. Google provides anyone to learn analytics with free online courses. Analytics Academy helps you learn about Google's measurement tools so that you can grow your business through intelligent data collection and analysis. This is a very smart move because Google learns you for free how to create campaigns and put much more money while creating campaigns on Google. This is a real win-win situation.
On the other hand, the advantage of free online course platforms lies in the situation that maybe you just want to pursue a hobby or interest, or expand your career horizons and if the courses weren’t free – you would never enroll and gained the priceless knowledge.
In the end, sometimes you will not be satisfied with the lecturer or knowledge that you gained during the paid courses and you could lose hope of enrolling in another one. So, try out different free online platforms and find one that suits you the best.
Best online training platform examples
There are numerous online learning platforms and depending on their advantages and disadvantages you can decide which one fits your requirements the best.
The Best 5 Online Learning Platforms of 2022:
- LinkedIn Learning (Lynda) – offers over 15,000 courses in 7 languages and focuses on helping individuals invest in their professional development.
- Pros:
- Highly recognizable and valued in the B2B community
- Offers certification upon course completion
- Cons:
- Expensive
- The quality of the courses is ambiguous, needs course research before enrolling
- Udemy – has over 40 million students and 50 thousand instructors and subject matter experts creating online courses.
- Pros:
- Geared towards self-paced learning and video courses
- No need for highly technical knowledge
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- Cons:
- Very limited interaction with students
- The quality of the courses is ambiguous, needs course research before enrolling
- Coursera – a platform with 23 million users, that is dedicated to offering high-quality online training courses worldwide.
- Pros:
- Offers a variety of learning options and activities
- Awards students with different types of certificates and degrees
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- Cons:
- Courses may require users to have prior knowledge of the subject
- Expensive for degrees that take 2-4 years to complete
- Skillshare – has more than 4 million students and up to 24,000 lessons in various disciplines.
- Pros:
- Offers a supportive discussion forum where students exchange feedback
- Provides the ability to take many courses for the same price
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- Cons:
- Class content limited to only four categories
- No certificate of completion or any other formal recognition
- edX & Open edX – has powered over 8,000 online courses from 100 prestigious universities and businesses that are currently offering higher education in many disciplines.
- Pros:
- App available on iOS and Android
- Interactive online classes, allowing students to chip in
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- Cons:
- Discussion forums seem to be outdated and difficult to navigate
The advice – check them all and find one which will give you the best cost-benefit score.
How can a business benefit from an online training platform
Maybe you will ask yourself if the online training platforms can benefit your business?
Many modern organizations and entrepreneurs have discovered that training through online courses helps to lower costs, increases productivity, and ultimately boosts revenue. The maintenance costs of an online training platform are minimal when compared to expenses with face-to-face classes.
Online training platforms are in a constant state of update as the market changes at the speed of light, so more up-to-date courses will appear. This requires a learning program that is agile enough to reflect these changes almost in real-time.
By stepping into learning platforms, you access the community of people with the same learning or business goals and together you can interact, and exchange questions, and ideas. That community allows you to get answers and different opinions on various questions about the prospect of your business.
Also, if you already know in which field you want to improve your knowledge in, online training platforms provide different courses that target only the specific field that you want to perfect.
So the answer is yes! The only constant is the change, and the change is self- and business development.
Successful people who learned via online platforms
Nowadays, a lot of successful people are eager to share their experiences gained via online platforms and throughout their business paths. Examples are numerous but here we point out André Eikmeier, Founder of Good Empire, Jessica Osborn, Founder & Chief Content Creator at Jessica Osborn Coaching, Marketing Strategy, Kate Toon, Founder of The Stay Tooned Group, and Marijana Marinković, Founder of „How to...?“ educational platform.
Besides entrepreneurs, famous people who finished education online are Steven Spielberg, Venus Williams, Shaquille O’Neal, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Marcia Cross.
To sum it up
In the light of Nelson Mandela's words “Education is the most powerful weapon you can choose to change the world”, we invite you to check out the training materials which will be available on Wingate's free online learning platform.
The only question remaining is this: Will you become a part of it and explore the limitless knowledge and experience exchange that the Wingate platform will provide?
Wingate – Partners meeting 27.08.2021
We have an extremely meaningful 1 year behind us in the project, which until now - adapting to the current world situation - could only managed online.
We had just waited long enough for the opportunity to meet in person, so at the end of August we took it to deepen the working relationships and collaborations known only from the online space to offline meeting room.
Although there were regular consultations in the background in order to reach and serve our target group as effectively as possible, a strictly online discussions certainly has their drawbacks.
… interpersonal chemistry, team building is important!
In the Wingate project, in addition to creating a highly innovative e-platform with vast professional knowledge - where we will offer free trainings, workshops and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs, we also aim to strengthen regional cooperation between partners.
In the Wingate project, in addition to creating a highly innovative e-platform with vast professional knowledge - where we will offer free trainings, workshops and networking opportunities for women entrepreneurs, we also aim to strengthen regional cooperation between partners.
We hope that the personal meeting will give further impetus to the realization of our project with even greater enthusiasm and vigor.
Special thanks for the Royal Norwegian Embassy for their representation with Mr. Håvard Austad Counsellor joining us at our Partners' Meeting Networking Party.
Thank you for the proactive cooperation of our partners:
- National Association of Entrepreneurs (ANAA)
- Women/Business/Angels Association (WBA)
- Serbian Venture Network (SEVEN)
- Kvinner i Business (KiB)
- SKC-Consulting Ltd. (SKC)
$15 billion to help women in developing countries access jobs
G7 foreign and development ministers meeting in London at the beginning of May will invest $15 billion in development finance over the next two years to help women in developing countries access jobs, build resilient businesses and respond to the devastating economic impacts of COVID-19.
They will also sign up to new global targets to get 40 million more girls into school and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 in low and lower middle income countries by 2026.
Educating girls is one of the smartest investments we can make to lift people out of poverty, grow economies, save lives, and build back better from COVID-19. A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live beyond the age of 5 years, twice as likely to attend school themselves – and 50% more likely to be immunised.
COVID-19 has had a disproportionate and profound impact on women and girls, including losing precious school time, reduced access to lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services, a spike in gender-based violence, and increased risk of job loss. Now, these fresh commitments by the world’s leading democracies, driven by the UK, put gender equality at the heart of global co-operation to build back better from COVID-19.
Even before the pandemic, women in developing countries had significantly fewer economic opportunities than men and shouldered the majority of unpaid care work reducing their time for paid work. COVID-19 has compounded this, with new research showing $1 trillion could be lost from global growth as female workers fall out of the workforce.
Me, as an investor
In the framework of the WINGATE project, Women/Business/Angels Association has organized a forum on the evening on 29 June 2021 around the theme of “Me as an investor”, with the support of the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation. The goal was to show the aspects and details of business angeldom, to introduce newcomers – both entrepreneurs and potential investors - to the domain and to elaborate a bit on the tricks and treats of being an angel.
While Barbara Verő, WBA Club Director opened the forum live from the TRIP ship in Budapest, speakers also joined us via Zoom from all parts of Europe.
First, Eszter Szabó, President of WBA spoke about WBA’s mission and goals, then Renata Anna Jaksa introduced the WINGATE project, this international collaboration aimed at supporting, training and connecting women entrepreneurs and business angels. Trine Skymoen, Ambassador of Norway reminded us about the place of women – which is “at the helm, in the office, in the lab, in space and so forth” and urged business and society to “play football without benching half of the team – the women”. She urged women to dare to take the lead, dare to step out of the shadow and make their own initiatives.
Then Amparo de San José Riestra, CEO of the prominent Spanish IESE’s Business Angel Network and Board Member of EBAN urged angels and angel networks across Europe to share knowledge and collaborate with each other. Closing the first part of the programme, Ivar Siimar from the Estonian Business Angels Network emphasized the importance of syndicated angel investments – which allows to “combine your knowledge and expertise with other investors” and to learn by doing while risking only a limited amount of funds.
The next panel discussion, moderated by Imre Hild, WBA Training Director, offered a complex view of the dilemmas of angel investing. Participants were: Júlia Sohajda (Vespucci Partners), Bea Bedő (Impact Hub), Zoltán Kovács. The qualified investors pointed out the role of angels – “be part of the team but not the boss”, and the need for openness and curiosity – “it is not the who-knows-best, but the how-can-we-learn”.
The forum was concluded with a lovely networking opportunity on board above the Danube.
// The Wingate project benefits from a € 1,824,320 grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA and Norway Grants Fund for Regional Cooperation.
Romanian excellence of women entrepreneurs recognized at the "WOMEN GALA IN ECONONY" Bucharest, May 19, 2021
The Women in Economy Gala wich took place in Bucharest on May 19, awarded the romanian excellence of the business women at national level, who performed in a year in which we marked the darkest period in the world in the last decade. The National Association of Entrepreneurs, as organizer, together with the National Confederation for Female Entrepreneurship CONAF marked the return to normal, after a difficult pandemic period.
With a tradition in the Romanian entrepreneurial environment, the Gala brought together famous personalities from the political and economic environment: First Woman President of the Senate, Anca Dragu, President of the Chamber of Deputies, Ludovic Orban, Minister of Labor and Social Justice, Raluca Turcan, Minister of Health, Ioana Mihaela , Her Excellency Mrs. Ambassador of Estonia in Bucharest, Ingrid Krassel Vinciguerra together with personalities from academic field, non-profit organizations, national and multinational companies, nationally and internationally renowned entrepreneurs, representatives of the local and national press.
20 business women, brave women from Romania, story entrepreneurs who found themselves involved and committed and who showed courage and unity, received awards of excellence in various fields in which they performed during 2020.
The first woman President of the Senate, Anca Dragu, welcomed the progress made by Romania in terms of equal opportunities and the role that women have in Romanian society. She assured that it will facilitate the way of women towards entrepreneurship and implicitly towards economic prosperity. In his turn, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Ludovic Orban, reminded of the performances and achievements of the ladies and encouraged them to become models for young women who want to build a successful career.
Estonia is a model of good practice in terms of gender balance. Her Excellency, the Estonian Ambassador to Bucharest, Ingrid Krasel Vinciguerra, urged the ladies "to believe in them, in the power to change mentalities, taboos and follow their dreams." Only in this way, she said, " we can show the whole world who and what we are."
You can watch the event on Wingate project Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/wingateproject/videos/504999333957606
