The AVC Smart Startup Guide was written for entrepreneurs who need to create cashflow now with minimal up-front investment.

From over two decades of entrepreneurial experience,  I have come to divide them into two groups based on how they handle the start-up phase. The first group weds itself to a particular product which requires a certain sum of capital to launch. This group then takes the traditional approach to start-ups by first writing a business plan and then looking for investors to provide the funding. The problem with this approach is that most start-ups are never able to raise the necessary capital and, therefore, either die on the vine or finally morph into something else more do-able after six months of a futile capital quest.  The second group consists of entrepreneurs who announce their intentions to go after a given market opportunity and are, seemingly magically, in business a month later with bona fide customers and sales revenues.

What is the difference between these two types of entrepreneurs? What is the magic used by the second group? These are the questions that inspired the research which culminated in The AVC Smart Startup Guide.

The AVC Smart Startup Guide introduces a systematic new way of thinking about start-ups called the Smart Start-up Model TM. The Smart Start-up Model applies the latest in business modeling research to help you create a "transition phase strategy" whose objective is to quickly create positive cashflow for you. Once you have cashflow life becomes much simpler. Cashflow not only enables you to pay your bills but it places your company into the "stream of opportunities" that established businesses enjoy.
The Smart Start-up Model is derived from the strategies used by America's most successful small private companies which launched without outside capital.

The objective of this manual is to help you to discover how to get into a cashflow positive situation first. That pet project requiring investor capital may, therefore, have to wait six months or even a year. First things, first, as they say. Shoot for cashflow immediately. Do not make the traditional mistake of wasting 6 to 12 months writing a business plan and then shopping it around to investors. Very few companies succeed at raising capital from outsiders.

Think of entrepreneurs as being a bit like chefs. Some chefs are very rigid in their style requiring that a specific list of ingredients be made available to them before they can start cooking. This is fine as long as you are not too hungry and can wait for the required ingredients to arrive. However, if you are hungry now and lack the cash to buy more groceries, you will need to be flexible and work with what you have.

Other chefs, the more entrepreneurial ones, will not wait for someone else to deliver a bag of groceries to them, but will instead immediately begin to search the pantry, refrigerator, and vegetable garden for what's available. They then use the items at hand to create a feast.

This is what true entrepreneurship is all about.

The AVC Smart Startup Guide defines two basic start-up models: the rigid Sitting Duck Model wherein nothing can happen until a specified sum of money is raised, the flexible Smart Start-up Model, a transitional model, which helps you to get started with whatever you have at hand.

In entrepreneurship it's all about cashflow and paying your bills. It's not about wasting a half year or more of your life shopping a business plan around to strangers as the bills stack up at home and your spouse fumes.  Take my word for it, you may love a certain widget which you want to introduce to the world, but you will love positive cashflow even more. If your widget requires a lot of money to launch, focus on cashflow first and launching the widget second.



If you are not ready for the 200 page AVC Smart Startup Guide just yet, why not check your startup strategy against the strategies used by the founders of highly successful startups? There are many common elements amongst these startups. The closer your strategy follows theirs, the more likely you are to succeed.

Research conducted at a number of top universities suggests that entrepreneurs can dramatically boost their chances for success by applying the right startup strategy and going after the right opportunity.

Order the 11 page report now. It comes in PDF (electronic) format readable with a free copy of Adobe Reader 6.0.

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