As the University of Nevada, Reno College of Business hosts its annual Business Week, the College welcomed to campus today alumnus Rick Sontag, who brought a special gift to the University and its students – a $1 million check.

The gift will establish an endowment in the University of Nevada, Reno Foundation with the goal of presenting an annual Sontag Entrepreneurship Award of about $50,000 to a student or group of students who demonstrate an ability and intention to start or expand a business.

Sontag, who earned his bachelor’s degree in physics at Harvey Mudd College in 1964 and then his master’s degree in physics from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1966, presented the check to College of Business Dean Greg Mosier and Vice President of Development and Alumni Relations John Carothers after addressing students this afternoon at the University’s Joe Crowley Student Union Theatre. Sontag shared with the students that while at Nevada, he had an epiphany that he was “more interested in the administration and management of science than actually doing the sciences,” so he decided to get his MBA.

“It’s easy to get channeled into a certain direction because people see you are good at it, but I think in the end, you have to follow your heart and your intuition,” he said. “You have these inner voices telling you what you ought to be doing and you need to listen to them.”

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Katie Knapp brushed aside the nightmarish economy and put her faith in the American dream — and started her own business.

"I didn’t want to sit around at home wondering where my next job is coming from or wait for someone to make it happen for me," she said.

So in July, Knapp opened Bumblebee Blooms Flower Boutique in a 900-square-foot shop on Sierra Street in downtown Reno.

"I figured the economy won’t get a whole lot worse and has nowhere to go but up," she said. "I prepare for the worst and hope for the best."

Knapp, 41, admits she has the luxury of a spouse with a solid job to back her up, but she insists her stubbornness in the face of recession helps set her apart as an anomaly in the nation’s beleaguered small-business world.

Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics show 2.1 million fewer Americans were self-employed in August from the peak of 14.5 million in the pre-recession days of December 2006.

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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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