A Collection of Free Resources For You and Your Venture
by Anthony Nassar
This
article is a selection of resources and tools available on
the Net at no charge. It's organized in 3 sections:
- Business resources
- Website resources
- General interest
Whether or not you're bootstrapping, I trust that
you'll find something here that you can use or learn from.
As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions of
other links you’ve found useful.
1. Business Resources
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Vision to Reality: A series of
tools & techniques including:
- Financial model templates (generic and service
business)
- Business plan and executive summary templates
- Accounting policies and procedures
- Discussion on valuations
- Other resources
Please note that you will need to register online
before you can access some of the above resources.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ MoneyTree Survey: Very useful
venture funding statistics by region, industry, stage of
development, financing sequence, VC firm, and Investee.
StartupJunkies.org: Good source of information
specific to start-ups. Topics include market research,
business modeling, business planning, finance, valuations,
incorporation, and other information.
Salary.com: Salary and compensation data by job
category and region. Aside from its many obvious
applications, I rely on this source when developing the
staffing part of a financial plan.
US
Patent & Trademark Office: US Patent and Trademark
applications filing, status checking and search.
California Secretary of State - Business Programs:
Information about starting a business in California,
California business search, and business entities
(Corporations, LLCs, LPs, etc…).
Bureau of
Labor Statistics: Labor economics and statistics.
US
Census Bureau: Census and economic data.
Small Business Administration: Information about
starting, financing and managing a small business.
Internal Revenue Service: Tax information, rules,
publications and forms.
Google Directory of Venture Capital: List of venture
capital firms in the Google Directory.
WorkIt:
A very useful service that keeps start-up professionals
abreast of events and networking opportunities in the San
Francisco Bay Area.
Blogs:
Venture Blog,
Brad
Feld,
Seth Godin,
Tim Oren,
Martin Tobias, and many others that can be found
listed or linked to in the previously mentioned blogs.
2. Website Tools
Whois: Domain name availability.
Link Popularity: Reports the link popularity of a
website on Google, Altavista and Hotbot.
Mike's Marketing Tools: Search engine rankings, link
popularity checker, top 500 searched internet keywords,
and other tools.
Alexa:
Search the web and get information on reach, rank and page
views for any website based on visitors who have the Alexa
toolbar in their browser. I rely on the Alexa metrics on a
regular basis to monitor the relative popularity of
Venture Momentum’s website. It’s sort of like getting a
grade on my homework in a huge class comprised of millions
of webmasters.
Wayback Machine: Did you know about this cool tool?
You can see archives of your website or someone else’s.
3. General Interest
Online
Dictionary,
Thesaurus, and
Translation.
WhitePages.com: White pages, business search, area
code lookup and zip code finder.
Weather.com: Weather news and forecast.
Mapquest: Maps and directions.
Shopping.com, and
BizRate.com for shopping comparison.
Online Metric Conversions: conversions of area,
distance, speed, weight, temperature and many others.
Z-Score (at creditguru.com): Developed by Professor
Edward Altman from New York University’s Stern School of
Business to predict bankruptcy of publicly traded
companies. The score was derived based on data from
manufacturing firms. Valuebasedmanagement.net also
provides the
Z-Score formula with 2 different sets of weights to
score both public and private companies. Note that these
models are not applicable to start-ups.
This article was first published in the
December
2004 issue of our e-zine, Propel Your Venture.
Show me the list of
Articles on this website
Disclaimer: The information in this article (the
"Information") is current as of December
2004.. The Information is intended solely to illustrate general
concepts and guidelines on various business subjects. It may not apply
to specific situations. The Information does not constitute accounting,
financial, tax, legal or other professional advice. You are urged to
consult with a qualified professional who can understand your specific
situation and advise you accordingly. No Information creates a warranty.
All Information and links to other websites are provided on an ‘as-is’
basis without any warranties, express or implied, including warranties
of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. In no event
shall Venture Momentum, Inc., its authors, publishers, contributors and
editors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential,
or punitive damages of any kind whatsoever arising out of your use of
this article, the Information, and/or links to other websites regardless
of the cause of action.
Copyright ©2004-2012 Venture Momentum, Inc. All rights
reserved.
