Purpose and Audience
A small startup provides the service to build website pages with helpful marketing options like clicks’ tracking and advertisement placements. During the last year, the number of customers doubled and now organically grows daily. The business has been started with the team’s own financing, and inevitable expansion requires investment. The co-founders are searching for venture or angel investors to get money for addressing the needs of their growing customer base. To create a proper proposal, they need to present their business description, future developments, provide a convincing explanation of why the company is worth investing in, and consider regulatory disclosure requirements (Hoffmann, 2018). This communication planning paper aims to outline the startup’s business proposal to receive funding.
The purpose of the investment proposal is to get financial support outside of the company, therefore the business communication is formal and external. Such type determines the contents of the paper, its length, and main points to address. Indeed, the formal proposal must include a title page, executive summary, presentations, figures, and, as an external one, needs to clearly describe a company’s services and benefits (Guffey & Loewy, 2019).
Another crucial factor influenced by the purpose of the proposal is that to receive investment, it must include a detailed business plan. Besides, communication with investors requires the co-founders to evaluate the range of information to disclosure and to clarify the juridical responsibilities they intend to get (Hoffmann, 2018). Consequently, to be successful, an investment proposal must present the company’s benefits and approaches to expand it into a more significant business.
Investors are the broad type of audience as they work in various business sectors, offer different types of financial support, and have custom requirements for companies’ executives. The company needs to reach the capitalists from the IT sector or venture firms that simultaneously present the business to several persons of interest. The famous worldwide representatives of the audience are Peter Thiel, Michael Moritz, and funds like Sequoia Capital. From the business communication, investors expect to understand the startup’s service, the plans, and the co-founders’ view, and all of the latter must be evidence-based.
Audience’s Needs and Strategies for Addressing Them
It is critical for the startup to identify the needs of their proposal’s audience, and the planning stage must include the addressing strategies’ outline. During the communication with investors, co-founders need to consider that their audience might not be familiar with the tendencies and consumers’ demands of the given market. Thus, the formal proposal must address their need to understand what business environment the company exists, and include research, background, and problem identification (Guffey & Loewy, 2019). The strategy for this case would be the market analysis exercised through the secondary sources studying and describing chronological, geographical, and behavioral characteristics of the business field (Guffey & Loewy, 2019). The problem which the service aims to solve can be applied separately to highlight the proposal’s urgency.
Another need the investors have before making the deals is to retrieve statistical data about the company: its revenue, production costs, growth and churn rates, and more. To address that vital point of formal business communication, the proposal must include relevant illustrations, charts, and figures (Guffey & Loewy, 2019). During the preparation, co-founders can research which statistics for which periods the investors require and generate comments for the analytics parts when the company experienced falls or breakthroughs. The numbers and financial information is critical for investors, therefore the charts would be located in the first half of the proposal.
Moreover, business communication makes the participants know each other better, and even with the formal language of a proposal, investors will need to explore the co-founders’ visions and understanding of operations. The profound strategy to clarify the company’s executives’ aspirations is to include the equity story in the proposal (Hoffmann, 2018). For instance, Hoffmann (2018) states that it “summarizes the key elements defining the corporation as an investment, its strategy, market position, products, development, and value creation” (p. 5). The brief presentation of such information would address the need to understand why co-founders are seeking investment regardless of their business’ financial data.
Adaptations to Increase The Communication’s Effectiveness
The effectiveness of business communication is vital for the company because the result would provide them with the perspective to grow and expand. Thus, the formal proposal must be carefully outlined and address every aspect necessary to persuade investors. The startup co-founders can use communication to show respect to their potential business partner by writing in a clear and literate language and providing the contents.
Another strategy to save the investors’ time and impact the interaction is to include the proposal’s executive summary. Moreover, Guffey and Loewy (2019) state that “trends, comparisons, and cycles are easier to comprehend when they are expressed graphically” (p. 294). The effectiveness can be increased via the well-constructed visual accompaniment, which reflects the company’s financials and the overall situation in the market. Business communication with investors can be productive if the company’s proposal includes examples and success stories of their clients (Hoffmann, 2018). Rather than incorporating the storytelling into a formal document, co-founders can attach the publications from the media or request recommendations from their significant customers and attach the printed conversation.
Business communication requires both sides to be transparent in their intentions, and the success depends on the applied strategies. Indeed, the proposal for receiving funding for a startup must address the needs of the investors, such as understanding a markets’ trends, products’ potential, and the executives’ aspirations. Written communication provides a foundation to show the required aspects supported with visuals, and in business, the authors must analyze the audience before outlining a document.
References
Guffey, M.E., & Loewy, D. (2019). Essentials of business communication. Cengage Learning.
Hoffmann, C.P. (2018). Investor relations communication. In Heath, R.L., & W. Johansen (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of strategic communication.Wiley. Web.