How Business Angels Source Investment Opportunities

Businesses are starting up everyday but many remain starved of the vital funding and help they need to grow. Business angels are expected to help plug the gap but what methods do angel investors use to find the businesses that they choose to invest in?

It is not especially hard to find things these days. In the 21st century pretty much everything you need to know about established businesses and the people who own them can usually be found online.

Just tap in a combination of either an individual name and company name or address and in seconds - unless that business is cut off from civilization based in deep in the tropical rainforests of Borneo - you will soon find what you are looking for.

But what if business is a start-up or seed stage business? And one that has yet to set up a website, with an owner who has little or no online coverage. For all the potential angel investor knows, that business might as well exist beneeth the canopy of some remote rainforest.

The problem then for business angels - who are a fairly secretive bunch - is finding the right opportunities out there, somewhere. This is no easy task when all the usual methods of finding information simply do not work.

One possibility is to join a business group on networking websites such as LinkedIn. You'll find a stream of pitches from people all over the world asking for financial backing. Here you have the opposite problem, some of these may turn out to offer a great opportunity, but you would need to devote a great deal of your time sorting through the online jungle to discover whether they are genuine.

The trouble is being faced with too many opportunities or too few.

You might also try backing someone you know. But if you do not know anyone starting up a business anytime soon you would trust to make good use of your cash, the best way to find opportunities is to join a network.

Before you go ahead though it might be worth finding out how the network sources its investment opportunities. After all the websites and online business groups that have sprung up in recent years the method your average business angel network uses to find businesses may surprise you.

A recent report by the UK's Department of Business Innovation and Skills found that the most common method for recruiting entrepreneurs and business propositions used by business angel networks in the UK was not through the Internet, websites or even through events - the most common method by some distance remains good old-fashioned word of mouth, with referrals from banks also featuring highly.

Even more surprisingly websites and information fairs rank third and fourth and articles in the press did not feature at all. This tells us a lot about the way business angel investment works in the UK. Aside all the hype about speed funding events taking place around the country and a few notable successes, business angel investing is still rather informal compared to VC investing. Often it is a case of who you know including a high proportion of friends and family and old fashioned networking.

Many entrepreneurs who do not know a business angel are likely to miss out on potentially valuable funding and advice for their business as a result and the business angels themselves will miss out on a potentially lucrative opportunity. After a number of business angel groups becoming established in the UK in recent years, the sector remains low key.

Those involved in the promotion of business angel investing need to promote them more broadly and raise awareness of what they have to offer. There should be more transparency surrounding investment failures as well as successes so that those individuals who want to invest can navigate their way through the jungle with more confidence and advertise what they have to offer to those start-up enterprises vital to the recovery.

How to Get a Mobile Phone Repaired

Mobile phones have become quite a part of our lives. We require a phone quite frequently, whether we are at work or at home. If your phone stops functioning, that becomes a cause of serious concern. The first thing that you should do is to send it for repair work at a mobile phone repair shop.

Every manufacture has its own repair station. They have technicians available who figure out the problem and hand over the repaired phone to you.

These days, with the growing demand of cell phones, the manufactures are bound to manufacture them in large numbers. It is quite possible that some handsets might have a manufacturing default in the process. If you have bought a handset with such a fault, then it is replaced by the manufacturer immediately.

Generally all the handsets come with a 1 year warranty period, if the damage is caused in this period, then it is repaired free of cost. Any physical damage is not included in this.

If the fault occurs after the expiry of warranty, then you have to pay for any repairs. Apart from the cost of the damaged part, you also have to bear the service charges. It is always better to ask the total cost of repair beforehand because sometimes this cost is more than the cost of a new handset.

So instead of paying the same amount, you can get a new handset for yourself. You can also get it repaired from a local repair shop. Local dealers charge comparatively lower fees.

Some Ways Of Repairing Your Phone Yourself

If your phone gets drenched in water, then remove the battery immediately and place it in a cool dry place so that the battery is not damaged. Do not use the phone if it gets heated up regularly after talking for some time. Instead go to the mobile phone repair station and inform them about the same. Your phone might be faulty and it might explode if used repeatedly.

You should also take care while downloading something from the internet or through the Bluetooth technology. You might download viruses which can harm your cell phone by deleting the contacts and corrupting all other files. Some viruses can damage the whole software and you have to get the software installed again. Therefore you should download only from known and trusted sources.

If your phone gets damaged, then don't panic. You can apply any of these measures, if they don't work, then take your mobile for repair to a mobile phone repair shop.

Nokia E72 - A True Business-Class Phone

The latest Nokia E72 is yet another BlackBerry-style device from the handset manufacturing giant and it seems that Nokia wants to keep milking the growing demand for such smart-devices in the market. The E72 is a follow up on the E71which was released last year and it comes with few upgradaes like enhanced software and an improved camera. This one comes with a 2.36 inches TFT screen of 320 x 240 pixels resolution along with a full QWERTY keypad. The keypad appears to be good with distinct keys and should aid texting messages and mails. The phone integrates with email clients and business systems such as Microsoft Exchange apart from mailing applications like Hotmail and Gmail. Messages can be sent and received in the form of SMS, MMS, Email and IM. Also included are an optical trackpad and an accelerometer sensor that facilitates UI auto-rotate.

The Nokia E72 is a Symbian S60 device and it runs on a 600 MHz processor from ARM that ensures high speed and response time. Apart from the 128MB RAM, the device incorporates an internal memory of 250MB storage which can be easily expanded to 16GB by using external microSD cards. The phone-book in this handset can store unlimited contact entries and fields and also keeps records for dialed, received as well as missed calls for an entire month. This Class32 GPRS device comes along with a built-in WAP 2.0 / xHTML, HTML web browser that allows the users to access mobile Internet. Wi-Fi allows the device to access any local area network or to synchronize with a laptop or a PC, while Bluetooth assists in convenient data sharing between compatible devices.

Most interestingly, the Nokia E72 also includes a 5 mega pixel camera with a resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels and features like auto-focus and LED flash. The music player which can cope with MP3, WMA, WAV, RA, AAC and M4A file formats turns out to be really versatile. The music can be restored either in the speaker-phone or on any standard headphone which can be plugged in the propitious 3.5 mm audio jack. The video player on the other hand can play WMV, RV, MP4 and 3GP. And the entertainment does not stop there-a stereo FM radio with RDS feature is also included so that users get to listen to their favorite radio stations.

On the inside, the Nokia N72 is just a quad-band GSM phone that also supports tri-band 3G network. 3G enables high speed data download through HSDPA at the rate of 10.2Mbps. Released in October, 2009, this handset is currently available in interesting color schemes of Zodiac Black, Metal Gray and Topaz Brown. Other important and useful features that have been added in this ensemble include Digital compass, Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF), Flash Lite v3.0, Push to talk, Voice command / dial, Organizer and Nokia Maps 3.0 application. The standard Li-Po 1500 mAh battery turns out to be really efficient with a talk time of 6 hours and a standby time of up to 576 hours while using the device in 3G service. Considering the fact that the previous E-Series models- E71 and E63 have gone down pretty well with the people, we can only expect that the E72 does good business.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Ocean Freight

Ocean freight is one of the best ways of transporting goods to places around the world. Oceans cover most of the landmass of our planet because of which they provide people with a easy mode of transportation. During the industrial age, ocean freight was the only means of transportation used by the industrialized countries such as England and France. With the advancement of technology, planes started being used to transport goods as they offer people with a faster mode of transporter. Despite the popularity of projects as a means of transportation, the demand for ocean freight has not decreased.

Advantages

The various advantages of ocean freight are as follows:

1. Cost-effective - compared to air freight, ocean freight services of not cost a lot of money. They offer companies with a cost-effective means of shipping all kinds of products. Companies need to make sure that they do not spend a lot of money in shipping the goods they manufacture or export, so that they can reduce their cost of operation. By opting for transportation through ships, they can save a lot of money and reduce their operational cost in the process. This helps them to sell their products to the end-users at very affordable prices, providing them with an edge over their competitors.

2. Ideal for heavy goods - companies that import heavy goods such as automobiles, industrial parts, machineries etc. will not be able to use the services of air freight services as airplanes can not transport such heavy goods. Even if they do, the cost of transportation will be too high and outside the budget for many businesses. This is why, business organizations opt for shipping heavy goods through ocean freight as ships are capable of carrying all kinds of heavy objects. Beside, they will not have to spend a lot of money in the process as well.

3. Environment Friendly - airplanes consume a lot of fuel and in the process, they leave a very large carbon footprint, which is very harmful to the environment. Carbon emission leads to increase in temperature of our planet and disruptions its ecological balance. Ships on the other hand, leave a very small carbon footprint as they do not consume a lot of fuel, in comparison to airplanes. They are very environment friendly and offer companies with an opportunity to transport all kinds of goods, without causing minimum harm to the environment. This helps business organizations to improve their brand image.

Disadvantages

The largest disadvantage of ocean freight is the time taken to ship the products. Many times, business organizations need to provide faster delivery to their clients and during those times, they need to opt for transportation through airplanes as it is the faster than ocean freight. These days, the threat of ships coming under attack by pirates is very high and when the pirates attach cargo ships, they steal the products being transported, resulting in a loss to the companies which use ocean freight for shipping and transportation of goods.

Types of Innovation

Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation while innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialization.

There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as constituting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.

There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialization. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that investment in developing and commercializing those ideas will not be wasted.

Types of Innovation

Tidd et al (2005) argue that there are four types of innovation; consequently the innovator has four pathways to investigate when searching for good ideas:

a) Product Innovation - new products or improvements on products. The new Mini or the updated VX Beetle, new models of mobile phones and so on.

b) Process Innovation - where some part of the process is improved to bring benefit. Just in Time is a good example.

c) Positioning Innovation - Lucozade used to be a medicinal drink but the was repositioned as a sports drink.

d) Paradigm Innovation - where major shifts in thinking cause change. During the time of the expensive mainframe, Bill Gates and others aimed to provide a home computer for everyone.

These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with an Innovation Bible, Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http: // www .aging-creativity.com /

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Kal Bishop, MBA

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The Value of Depreciating Business Assets

A lot of times when we ask new clients if they know what depreciation is they respond, "Yes it is when your car loses value." While this is one type of depreciation, it is not what depreciation means from a tax stand point. Depreciation in relation to taxes is when a company buys an asset, like a computer, vehicle, building, or equipment, and instead of taking the entire expenditure in the year of purchase, the asset expense is taken over several years.

For example, if you purchased a computer for two thousand dollars, you do not deduct the $ 2,000 right away. You would take a portion of that deduction every year for five years. Thus, the computer is depreciated over five years.

Depreciation is helpful because most businesses have less income and more expenses the first couple of years. Since a business buys the bulk of its equipment at the start of the business, depreciation allows you to extend the discounts to years when the business has more income and needs to take more discounts.

The type of asset you are purchasing determines how many years it is depreciated. The typical years are 3, 5, 7, 15, 27.5 or 39 years. In addition, there is extra depreciation that you may be able to take the first year you purchase an asset. This is the section 179 depreciation. For example, some types of vehicles can be depreciated almost entirely in the first year, and depending on your net income, other equipment can be deducted a hundred percent in the first year. With these types of flexibilities you can strategize when and how much to depreciate to give you the best tax savings possible from year to year.

For example, if you own an established business and are making a large profit and you buy new equipment it may be beneficial to deduct 100% of the equipment that year because it would offset your income. Another example is if you have a large windfall that is not normal every year so you want to take additional depreciation the year you buy some equipment to help offset your gain. Other new business or even established business that do not have a lot of income have the flexibility to take the expense of the equipment over the appropriate amount of years to spread out the expense and benefit from the expense in years when they have higher profits.

Depreciating your assets can be a little tricky. There are many rules and many ways to strategize using those rules. It is important to educate yourself on tax topics like depreciation and consult with a tax professional to make sure you are doing things correctly.

Make Money With Low-Risk Investments

A novice investor would get baffled with the research and market analysis, numbers or choosing from an array of investment options.

To begin with, it would be wise to invest in low-risk, moderate yield and short term options. The disputes earned can be re-invested in other options later. One can avoid high-risk options which can bring high yields, but crash badly if the market falls.

After making a few purchases, one will get the art of choosing a good combination from many investments. This is termed as diversification of funds. One can choose from the following:

Money market fund: safe investment with less than a year for maturity. Money from this fund is invested by the firm in low-risk options. The returns suffer only if the option fares poorly in the market. Mutual fund is used to diversify money in safe securities like Treasury bill, commercial paper, or banker's acceptance.

Treasury bill: a security option floated by the government. It can have maturity term in days, weeks or months. The bill is purchased at a value less than its face value and subsequently redeemed for a higher value at the time of its maturity.

Certificate deposits: money is deposited in banks for a fixed time period at a fixed rate of return. This is a low-risk investment with term varying from few months to 5 years during which money can not be withdrawn.

A small sized capital, patience for long term maturity and learning the tricks of good, diversified investments. These tracks qualify for an investor who will reap high returns by diversifying money in different trading options.