FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip September 5, 2008

Early-Stage, Funding-Bound
Clean Energy, High Tech and Life Science
Entrepreneurs and Intrapreneurs
are cordially invited to
FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip
scheduled for
Friday, September 5,
8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
at Cooley Godward Kronish, LLP
3175 Hanover Street in Palo Alto.
Register for $80-90 for 2 entrepreneurs at
https://secure.thriva.com/Reg/Form.aspx?IDTD=1007596&IDRPH=1059087
by Thursday, September 4 at noon.

FountainBlue’s 'Your Positioning' workshop is the first of a three-workshop fall 2008 series to be conducted on the first Friday of each month for three consecutive months. The workshop dates and topics for this series are below:
• September 5 – Your Positioning
• October 3 – Your Pitch to Investors
• November 7 – Your Meeting with Investors
This particular workshop on 'Your Positioning' will help entrepreneurs through think through their company’s offerings and the market opportunity, and then communicate that opportunity succinctly and compellingly to strategic investors.

In this workshop and the other workshops in the series, entrepreneurs will partner with other entrepreneurs in non-competing spaces, to learn best practices and immediately apply these learnings to their own companies. Below is an agenda.

Agenda for the ‘Your Positioning’ Workshop:
8:30 Networking and Registration

9:00 Welcomes, Thank Yous and Introductions

9:15 Top Ten Mistakes in Business Plans
Your business plan is the most important document you'll write as an entrepreneur. It can be the ticket to funding, and interest from potential clients and partners. Learn what NOT to do so you can develop a hard-hitting, compelling business case for your company.

10:00 Break

10:15 The Positioning
Before you can pitch your company to raise funds or attract strategic partners and alliances, you've got to perfect your positioning. This session will provide you with a systematic approach to help you better determine your all important market definition and value propositions. This program features a hard-copy, walk-away tool that helps define these for a technology based start-up company. Participants will be taught how to use this tool which is based on a case-study example of a real startup

11:45 Lunch Break and Networking

12:15 Do It Yourself Customer Research, featuring Dave Kaplow, The FactPoint Group.
Walk away with five powerful and practical techniques from market research pros to validate your customers’ real pain points and the value of your painkiller.

12:45 Workshop Debrief Session, with Feedback Given and Homework Assigned

1:00 Adjourn and Networking

About the Funding Road Trip Series:
• For more information about FountainBlue’s Funding Road Trip Series including testimonials and speaker bios, please visit http://www.fountainblue.biz/fundingroadtrip.html.
• These events are for Silicon Valley-based high tech, life science and clean energy entrepreneurs from the FountainBlue community and beyond.
• The interactive and collaborative nature of this initial workshop requires two representatives from each start-up company to attend.
• Additional representatives from the same company may attend for a nominal additional fee.
• Each session will start at 8:30 a.m. and end between noon and 1 p.m.
• Space is limited so we strongly suggest early pre-registration.
• No service providers are allowed, unless they are invited speakers or current sponsors.
• Through the end of July, we invite you to become a Founding FountainBlue community member by visiting http://www.bigtent.com/hosted/fountainblue/invitation?hosted_key=7c64713f1bb5ca6734f2cbe8830e7f0a. From there, you are welcome to join the clean energy and any of the other FountainBlue communities.
• Please note that membership is free for the remainder of 2008 and there will be a 25% discount for all future annual memberships. More membership information is available at http://www.fountainblue.biz/aboutus/membership.html and at https://www.bigtent.com/groups/fountainblue.

Whether you are a serial entrepreneur, or someone playing with an idea in the back of your mind, you are sure to benefit from the information presented, the connections made and the peer-to-peer knowledge shared.

We hope to see you there!

Official Website: http://www.fountainblue.biz/fundingroadtrip.html