Raising money is just part of life for an Internet entrepreneur—and an opportunity for a lot of interesting questions from potential investors. The one that baffles me most is when they pore over our business plan and then ask a detailed question about the financials out in year five.
Year five? It’s not that what’s in the business plan isn’t my best estimate of what will transpire: It is. I spend a lot of time making make sure all of the information and figures are congruent and consistent, even out in year five. But the odds of us actually hitting the year five plan as written are 1000:1.
It’s not because I’m bad at forecasting. It’s because we’re starting a new venture, and we’ll learn things along the way that will enable us to adjust our path. Which I think is a good thing and part of the fun of building something new: You’ve got to be willing to adjust along the way—and get good at it!
It’s not enough, of course, to be willing to make changes to the business plan. It’s critical that you’re gathering feedback from customers and using that information to make adjustments to your products and services. Over this past year we’ve received great feedback through Creative Byline Client Services (and one of the pieces of feedback is that you love our Client Services service. Thanks!).
So a couple of months ago we set out to determine what we could do to make Creative Byline a more valuable tool for connecting writers and editors. We did surveys and phone interviews with writers, we spoke with editors, we brainstormed, we tried to get a sense of where the industry was headed (both for writers and for written content). Then we adjusted our plan. And we think both our publishing clients and our writer members will like where we’re headed.
So, in August we’ll formally drop the “Beta” from our site name and introduce new capabilities and services for both writers and publishers. I doubt these are the last changes we’ll see for Creative Byline before we get to year five of our plan, but for right now, they’re feeling right on target. We’ll share more details over the next few weeks.
