QUESTION 1 (COMPULSORY) Madam Michelle Sumnaya is in the process of putting together a monthly magazine directed toward executive women in the workplace. The objective of this magazine is to provide information useful to women who are pursuing various careers. The first issue is scheduled to go to press in 90 days. Some of the articles included in this issue are “Managing Your Time for Fun and Profit”. “What You Need to know about Dressing for Success”, and “Money Management: Do It Like the Experts”. A section is also devoted to successful women at work entitled “Women in the News”. Other features include a question-and-answer section that responds to letters and inquiries from readers, and a stock market section that reviews industries or companies and points out the benefit and risk associated with investing in them. After collecting the pro-forma invoice from the printers, she realized she could not fund the printing and distribution of the magazine since she had used all her money in the initial preparatory stages of the magazine. A friend advised her to submit a business plan to a Venture Capitalist that would assess the economic potentials of the business and possibly assist her. Madam Michelle’s business plan consisted of six parts: an executive summary, a business description, a
manufacturing segment, a management segment, a milestone schedule segment, and appendix. After seven days, the business plan was returned to her with a revision letter, asking her to rewrite some segments of the plan, “this plan is incomplete and cannot be favourably reviewed by us. If you would provide us with the following additional information and submit the rewritten plan within the next 14 days, we would be happy to review the plan and give you our final opinion within 3 working days”. As a student of Entrepreneurship Development, Madam Michelle has approached you for help and you are required to rewrite the following segments of the plan:
i. Venture’s identity
ii. Motivation for starting the venture
iii. Mission statement
iv. Merchandize
v. Management
vi. Markets