Remember my interview with Stewart Craine, Director of Barefoot Power, discussing his goal of bringing energy to the poor? He chimes in today with an update:

Frank, I am pleased to be able to share some special news with you. The Barefoot Power team has just won 3 of the 4 product quality awards offered by Lighting Africa, an IFC / World Bank project.

PR_LA2010_awards_FINAL-3.pdf (application/pdf Object)

We even got 2nd prize in the 4th category. Against 22 competing suppliers including giants like Philips, this is wonderful recognition after 5.5 years of hard work, and my thanks to you all for getting us this far. Please find attached a press release, and below a link showing 4 of our team receiving the prizes last week in Nairobi.

Demand, as always, is still out-stripping supply, emptying our warehouses, and increasing quickly - we are doubling revenues every 4-6 months. Considerably additional working capital to make more lamps is very much required, and I hope some of you may be able to assist in this regard (email for further details). We are on track to deliver our promise from 5 years ago, that 1 million people will get lamps by 2010, and we will have created a profitable business model that serves the energy needs of the poor.

From here, we expect explosive growth to reach 5 million people or 1 million households by 2012-13, and continue to show strong leadership in the sector. I hope you can join us for the full ride! Apologies to any recipients who have received this news twice. Apologies also to many that I have not contacted recently - it has been a busy time!!!

Warm regards,
Stewart Craine
Director
www.barefootpower.com
Skype: barefootpower

What's the minimum viable feature set for a software product? Startups have limited resources, so how do they balance their ambitions with their finances?

Startups need developers, but in a shaky economy many good developers are staying with their current employers. How will Los Angeles find the talent to power all the technology startups that are itching to get going?

SoCal CTO blogger Tony Karrer still writes code at his TechEmpower development firm in Los Angeles. Once a month he runs the LA CTO Forum in Santa Monica which keeps him in touch with the issues early stage tech companies face, one he calls the founder-developer gap. How does he find good technical talent? He taught CS for 11 years, so he met a lot of good talent along the way.

Show #293 (38:12) Listen

Broadening horizons and learning about angel investing the world round, that's why the Italian Angels for Growth sent a delegation of four to Angel Capital Association's Annual Summit in San Francisco. Hear them share their insights as the conference winds up.

Show #292 (19:07) Listen

My team, AlcoGum, wins 3rd Place in the UCI Business Plan Competition!

Finishing 'in the money', AlcoGum proposed a bubblegum to determine blood alcohol content. It's byline: Safe to Drive? Chew on It! Who wants to carry a battery operated breathalyzer when they're going out with friends for the evening, but a pack of gum? Now you're talking.

Does it work? Too soon to tell, but it seems quite do-able. The team had the clout to pull through with day jobs at Edwards Lifesciences, Allergan, Goldman Sachs and a dentist for good measure.

Congratulations to Ana Sengupta, Charlie Chand, Jonathan Kuo, Anna Chand, David Chun and Tim Patz. Now, where to celebrate?

Sequoia funded Mahalo, Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs, Inc., he's a serial entrepreneur who's created a new angel investing model, the Open Angel Forum.

Just as you might expect, Jason offers great advice for angel investors, great advice for entrepreneurs.

Show #291 (31:08) Listen

I'm a judge in a local university's business plan competition. Over the past few years I've been involved in different ways in the UC Irvine, Paul Merage School of Business, Business Plan Competition. Last year I was invited by a mentor to critique his team's PowerPoint presentation. They came in 2nd place. This year I'm mentoring a team all my own and enjoying it very much. However, the ideas here come from my role as a competition judge. There's a large field of 15 finalists and I'm a judge for the 4 software sector finalists, so there's no overlap, no conflict with the team I've mentored. Over the past week I've had to review these 4 business plans and fill out an evaluation form. In the process I've found myself lamenting several consistent issues, so I'm going to wrap them all up here in these ten ways to game, I mean win the competition.

#1 Be kind to the judges.

You haven't met them, you won't know who they are until judgment day, but take it from me, they're all busy. They've committed a day to act as judge, plus a chunk of their weekend has been given up to critique your plan. How to be kind? Make your plan readable. Take a little time to add some eye candy to your submission. For example, a full page of blocky paragraphs fatigues me before I even settle my eyes upon it. Can you break it up with a few graphs, or a sidebar panel with a couple of bullets to accent some of your major points? Put a little background color into that sidebar, shrink the font size a bit, adding a little variety to the page, so my eye is tantalized. Give me some sizzle!
#2 The first part is the Executive Summary, so let's get off to a good start, please. Don't beat around the bush, don't begin by telling the history of the personal computer, or as one unfortunate team did, a litany of medical afflictions affecting the human race. Yikes! Get right to the point. Don't start with a Mission Statement. Tell me in no uncertain terms what you do, who you do it for and how you're gonna make money. Come on, let me get on board right away! Then I can start tracking you, I'll be more patient as you later describe the history of the personal computer or the medical woes facing humanity.

#3 It would be nice if you could see the evaluation form I'm using here at the finish line. It asks me to critique you on 7 different sections of your plan, score you on a scale of 1 to 5 for each and make overall comments, too. Unfortunately, most of the plans I'm reading don't match up so well to the categories I'm scoring. Yes, it's subtle and I'm sure it's all there, but if your section headers don't line up with the evaluation form then I've got to go interpreting; this does not lead to higher scores.

#4 I wanted to push this further down the list, but I just bristle at this: the revenue forecast. These are so detached from reality. My 4 plans get increasingly more incredible, ranging from $50M, $60M, $70M to $161M in year 5! This does not happen in the real world. Remember my day job, I'm past Chairman of the Tech Coast Angels and I see a lot of pitches with revenue forecasts. So get real. Your investors will be thrilled if you can get to $10M in some reasonable time frame. More likely, you'll be back for more money in less than 2 years, saying what everyone says: "it's taking longer than we thought". Investors won't believe your numbers anyway, so your over-sized hockey stick betrays your naivete.

#5 Don't be too specific. Truncate those big numbers and use a legend, like ($000), then round (down would be fine, see #4). Avoid specificity. Numbers like $14,820,647 don't make a stronger case.

#6 This is business. Someone on your advisory board is a passionate member of a local Christian mega-church? That's nice, but keep it the hell out of your business plan. This is a great way to alienate a judge. What if I'm an atheist? How do you think I'm scoring you on this? You better pray I don't score you the way I'm feeling on this issue...

#7 Valuations. Brought to you by the same financial wizard who's crafted your hockey stick (see #4) your plan goes on to brag that once you hit $5M in revenue that that justifies a $29,191,183 valuation (see #5). There's only one formula for determining a valuation: what the market will bear. You have no idea what investors or acquirers will feel makes good business sense 3 years from now, so drop the whole idea. As an investor I can get some idea what your valuation might be by looking at your revenue, so let's omit valuations from the business plan.

#8 The raise. What can you do with $100k? By definition, these are all seed stage businesses. No one's going to front you $1.6M or $2.4M on unproven technology. In this economy you'll find it challenging to raise $100 or $200K for a prototype. So pay attention to what's going on in the marketplace and put together a plan that credibly steps you through a seed stage round of financing.

#9 Likely returns. What makes a good invest-able company? "Never discount greed," but a 7,510% return? This is a business plan not private placement memorandum, not your slide deck, so keep the "want to buy a watch?" tone out. I can tell by your credible revenue forecast that I'll get a good return on my investment. The off-the-chart ROIs smack of a presentation to dentists, to dumb money, not to the professional investor. The business plan would not suffer if you omitted these pie-in-the-sky ROI claims.

#10 Save some equity. You can't sell 72% of your company in the first 2 rounds, you'll need more for management and the option pool. Without enough incentive your key hires will eventually walk away.

#11 You're young; have some fun. Any opportunity to add a little humor to your entry would be well received. When I'm winding it down at the end of the day, sharing a few memorable moments with my family, it's the funny little things I'm inclined to share. Lighten up and give me a funny story to share.

JC Munoz (right) and Nils Galdo Nogales (left) of Chile Global Angels join me for a chat at the Angel Capital Association's Annual Summit in San Francisco.

After an Executive MBA at MIT, JC decides to return home and create an angel network that not only assists local entrepreneurs but connects them to Chilean executives around the world. So it takes more than just money to be a member.

It's another Weekend Edition of the Frank Peters Show!

Show #290 (17:48) Listen

Eight angels groups pass the hat in, arguably, the largest ever syndication effort across New England. In the process, some interesting lessons for future syndications emerge.

The largest syndicate deserves the largest ever panel discussion on the Show. Meet Incentive Targeting CEO Win Burke together with investors Paul Silva, Michael Mark, DR Widder and Ty Danco.

Show #289 (39:31) Listen

My week in San Francisco began Tuesday at QB3 at UCSF Mission Bay. Douglas Crawford invited meet to speak to his mostly life science lunchtime audience. It was a great time, a very warm reception. Then I got this letter. Hope you enjoy these occasional Letter of the Week posts.

Hi Frank,
I have had time to look at your

beautiful, autographed book from the luncheon at qb3. I have also just looked at the Frank Peters Show. Very interesting.

I've had a nagging thought that I wanted to clarify to you since Tuesday. I have a background in the arts. I love music, dance and the visual arts. I remember feeling "discriminated" against even in high school in the 1960's because those areas were of no "worth" career-wise. Despite that, I went on to minor in music at Brigham Young University.

I made the comment to you that I was surprised and grateful you shared the portion of your life about your expertise in photography and that it was of the dance studios. Especially when we were eating lunch at a biotech campus. I remember holding my breath at your courage. You were a success and it was something of great beauty and worth. It is something we all need to be reminded of in our culture today. Thank you so much.

I also learned a great deal from your sharing your comments about angel investing. I will go back and review your blog sites to learn more. I'm very grateful to you in many respects. It's wonderful that you and Doug were able to connect and that you were able to be our guest speaker.

Take care.

Regards, Vickie H.

The Angel Capital Association at its Annual Summit in San Francisco presents the Luis Villalobos Award to an entrepreneur from Seattle.

Show #288 (31:10) Listen

John May is the 2010 Hans Severiens Award recipient at the Angel Capital Association's Annual Summit.

He says he's coming back in July, but I wonder...

How many people move from Las Vegas to New Zealand for 6 months ever come back?

Well, Bill says he is, so I believe him (yeah, right). Meanwhile he's living in paradise teaching the Kiwis everything they need to know about angel investing and entrepreneurship. He'd be a good teacher because in 2009 he was awarded the Angel Capital Association's highest recognition, the Hans Severiens Award.

So he'll be in San Francisco this week to pass the baton to the new award recipient? No? See, that's what I thought; he's lovin' New Zealand. Andy Hamilton and the ICE Angels are to blame.

Show #287 (30:51) Listen