MaRS Entrepreneurship 101 Series

As our speaker Kerri Golden said last night, building a good financial plan requires a information about the marketplace you are entering: competitor’s market share, pricing strategies, manufacturing costs, etc.

Question of the Week
How does one get this sort of information about the competition? Does anyone out there have good ideas for ferreting out this sort of closely held information? Obviously, publicly traded companies in comparable sectors offer a great source of published material in annual reports, etc. There is also the route of pumping sales reps from the competition for information at trade shows (particularly at the bars at said shows!). What other ideas can people suggest?

Downloads*

• Session video presentation - Dial-up connection (mp4)
• Session video presentation - Broadband connection (mp4)
• Presentation: Fail to Plan: Plan to Fail (PDF)

*Please note that you will need a player such as Quicktime (free) to view the mp4 files and Acrobat (free) to view the PDF slides.

Up-Start Competition Update

• Eligibility for the Up-Start Competition has changed: The designated head of the team must be enrolled in Entrepreneurship 101 and have attended a significant number of lectures, in either the 2006-07 program or 2005-06. The venture must be a truly new seed venture, that has not attracted investment from outside angels or other investors (personal investment from team members excepted).
• The deadline to get your Phase 1 two-page business description has changed to this Friday, March 9th.
• Up-Start Competition Update (PDF)
• View the full competition details

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