Listmania!

The Whole MBA Thing

Amazon: Listmania! - The Whole MBA Thing

The first thing to understand about Duns and Bradstreet (D&B, DnB), is that you do not HAVE to buy anything to receive a Paydex. D&B will tell you otherwise but it is not true.

The first thing to do is get a D&B number and this can be done through three ways:
First you can go online and get a number for free. It will take 30 days to get the number. It has been some people’s experience that they do not get a number after 30 days and when contacting D&B they say “all you are applying for is a marketing number and you have to buy creditbuilder.” This is not true.
Second, you can call 866-705-5711 and state you are applying for federal grants/contracts and you need a duns number. They will give it to you on the spot with no solicitations.
Finally you can purchase creditbuilder which will include a duns number and you also will get the number right away. Also if you speak to a rep on the phone they sometimes give you the option of buying creditbuilder lite. This can be different prices as it is not listed on the website but others have paid $199 or $250 for it.

How to get corporate credit.

CreditBoards - Duns and Bradstreet-Your Credit File

Or: Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can
work 16 hours/day for yourself?

I've been a consultant of one form or another since 1985 when I started
my old company, V-Systems, with a friend from college, and actually did
bits and pieces of consulting as early as 1982. I have been asked often
about the business, and I decided to write this up.

Please note that I am providing observations from my own personal
experience, but I am not providing tax or legal advice. You need
to pay somebody for that, and I'm not qualified.

Furthermore, I am not even attempting to make this a comprehensive
guide for everything required by one in or contemplating the
consulting business. I am purposely omitting whole areas,
such as licensure, insurance, and negotiating — there are other
books for that, and this isn't trying to be one of them.

These sections (except the last) aren't in any particular order.

This is a pretty good introduction to consulting, from a guy with plenty of experience, and a low dork handicap.

So you want to be a consultant...?

Alacra provides access to more than 100 premium commercial business databases that contain financial information, economic data, business news, and investment and market research. Alacra provides the requisite information in the appropriate format, gleaned from such prestigious content partners as Thomson Financial™, Barra, The Economist Intelligence Unit, Factiva, Mergerstat� and more.

This place has the worst, slowest loading, piece of dogshit web page ever. In fact, I had trouble memeing them because their index page contains no text. Fuck their webmaster.

Still... useful source of information, albeit expensive.

Alacra Business Research

Here's all the practical information you need to organize, finance and run a new enterprise. Start-Up & Emerging Companies: Planning, Financing & Operating the Successful Business brings you the legal and business savvy of leading experts from law, investment banking and venture capital firms. You'll find extensive coverage of significant topics, such as: the venture financing process and negotiating strategies; corporate, securities and tax laws; the interplay between business and legal considerations; limited liability companies; strategic alliances; employee benefit plans; stock options; contracts; accounting procedures; intellectual property strategies; and developments in Internet law and e-commerce.

Dunno if this is good or not, but...

Start-Up & Emerging Companies: Planning, Financing and Operating the Successful Business, With Forms on Disk - LawCatalog.com

1.0 Executive Summary

Sample Software Company is an S Corporation founded and entirely owned by Ralph and Mabel Smith. The company was founded in 1993 and has received no outside investments. Sample sells three different software products that command impressive market share. Ralph and Mabel are interested in taking the company to the next level achieving $3.8 million in sales by 2000.

Sample software publisher business plan, linked from SBA recommended site.

Software Publisher Business Plan - 1.0 Executive Summary

Templates for Your Business
Browse SCORE's template gallery, which contains real business plans and financial & accounting statements created by the Seattle, WA SCORE Chapter. Download templates and work with a SCORE business counselor to plug in the numbers. Learn more about SCORE "Counselors to America's Small Business."

To use these templates, click on the links below and choose “Save this file to disk”. Save the templates to a desired folder on your hard disk drive. You may open them from this location by double-clicking the file names. You can save these templates as Word documents (.doc), Excel spreadsheets (.xls) or PDFs (.pdf).

The SBA links here. Plenty of sample business plans for free.

Business Plan Template Gallery

Business Plan Basics

A business plan precisely defines your business, identifies your goals, and serves as your firm's resume. The basic components include a current and pro forma balance sheet, an income statement, and a cash flow analysis. It helps you allocate resources properly, handle unforeseen complications, and make good business decisions. Because it provides specific and organized information about your company and how you will repay borrowed money, a good business plan is a crucial part of any loan application. Additionally, it informs sales personnel, suppliers, and others about your operations and goals.

Good basic source on how to write a business plan.

SBA - Business Plan Basics

] If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next
] to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn
] something important about business school. You don't even
] hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike.
] There are only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice
] in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical
] backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
] Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the
] technology business tend to come from technology, not
] business. So if you want to invest two years in something
] that will help you succeed in business, the evidence
] suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an
] MBA. [3]

This is an excellent article. One hint, though: Your angel money doesn't have to amount to much if you're willing to work in a shack in India ;)

How to Start a Startup

] Canada's high-speed Internet service providers have been
] far more successful than their U.S. counterparts in
] signing up residential customers, a study to be released
] Monday says.

I want my gigabit networking!

Just be happy you don't have to pay by the megabyte, like we do in Moscow.

Evidence that US regulatory environment is slowing broadband adoption