Scuba Solutions took first-place in the 2011 Graduate Track

With the help of the 2011 Southern Nevada Business Plan Competition, Scuba Solutions is on track to debut its first product to the scuba industry. As the contest’s winner, the fledgling business received the startup capital it needed to fly.

In November, Scuba Solutions is scheduled to debut the Easy Tank Strap at the DEMA Show 2011, an international trade-only event for the diving, action water sports and travel industries.
The group’s initial idea revolved around a product to help scuba divers carry air tanks to and from the water. Since the contest, the original handcart design has evolved into a tank strap.

"The Tank Tote was a lot more complicated and expensive to build," said Alex Strabala, one of the winners. "This is a better product."

The original tote was priced at about $250. The strap is estimated to retail at $59.99.

Last year’s judges said the group ultimately was chosen based on whether it would open its business. All agreed Scuba Solutions would.

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Truckee Meadows Community College graduate Katie Knapp, armed with a business plan developed during college courses and a $5,000 award from the 2011 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition, has opened a boutique flower shop in downtown Reno.

Bumblebee Blooms Flower Boutique offers custom floral design work, gourmet gift baskets, decadent chocolates and bath and body products in the Sierra Vista building on S. Sierra Street near the Truckee River.

Knapp’s business plan, which included detailed research and focused on strong marketing, collected third place in the Nevada Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology’s Governor’s Cup competition in April. The $5,000 prize helped Knapp open the doors of her business in July.

“The Governor’s Cup not only helped me get the financing I needed to start my business and make me more appealing to the banks, it challenged me to overcome my hesitations and critically think about my business plan,” said Knapp. “It also supplied me with very useful information and feedback from people within the business community and helped to get me the contacts I needed for future clients.”

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The subject of this post is common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when producing documents that describe their companies.  I referred to ‘business plans’ in the title of the post for brevity, but everything below applies equally to executive summaries and introductory PowerPoint decks.

Earlier today I polled my partners with the question “what are the common errors people make when writing their business plans?” and the following list is an amalgam of their responses and my own thoughts.

1. Hard to pick out the key messages – either because the document is too long, lacks a concise executive summary, is poorly structured, or is poorly written.  Some of the worst business plans look more like novels than whilst the best ones resemble well organized text books.
2. Poor financials – the most common mistakes are either to miss out the financials entirely (including the amount of money to be raised), to have too short a period of time before the money runs out, or to have absurdly optimistic growth projections.  One of my partners said that once revenues are over $1m per month growth greater than 200% pa takes a lot of explaining.

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Exciting news about TIKI ICE, a winner of the 2010 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup Collegiate Business Plan Competition.

Their delicious, healthy, all natural frozen fruit ices – in addition to currently being available by the pint at all Las Vegas area Whole Foods Markets – will also be available for sale at southern California and Nevada Albertsons stores.

This means that TIKI ICE will be available in a few short months at 250 stores in all!

NCET congratulates Jean Bridges and wishes her much future success.

More info at www.TikiIce.com

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Jean Bridges and Robert Bateman didn’t come up with a high-tech, costly business model to impress the judges when they competed in the 2010 Donald W. Reynolds Governor’s Cup.

To compete in the business plan competition for college students, the future entrepreneurs instead developed a plan to make all-natural Italian ices in colorful packaging and sell the healthy treats at a small stand.

They also came up with a catchy name: Tiki Ice.

The simplicity of their business model made Tiki Ice turnkey ready. Last summer the partners opened a stand in the popular Town Square shopping center. And in March they started selling packaged Tiki Ice in Southern Nevada Whole Foods Markets.

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