Category: Investor Education
Have you ever seen a group of young men singing Disney songs while swinging a sledgehammer at a cement parking lot? It’s quite a paradoxical spectacle. During college, I spent a blazing hot summer in Israel helping renovate a community building. Our first mission was to break up a parking lot, but the catch was that we only had one sledgehammer.
Asking someone for money is rarely fun and almost never easy. But if you’re trying to grow your business then you’ll almost always reach a point where you need to bring in capital from outside investors. Turns out, going and getting money from strangers isn’t so different from asking your parents for cash. So here...
Around here, we often say Vicinity is where financial capital meets social capital. Well, if you say something often enough, you should probably stop and make sure people know what you mean. What is social capital anyway? Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone has pointed out that the term was actually “independently invented” at least...
The investment crowdfunding industry is not losing any steam even during…well, you know… the feverish elephant in the room with a dry cough. Though you never know what will happen when the world unexpectedly halts for a few months, there is some rationale to why this little brother of crowdfunding might be showing some extra...
Business acronyms can frustrate new investors. Vicinity is here to help. Read this article and discover the power of ICP, USP, and PMF.
There’s nothing like the Upstate highlands. A green canopy of trees covers the Appalachian slopes like a blanket over the body of an old warrior. ‘Tis a noble region besieged by Big Business and Corporate America. But no more. Communities are rallying around a war cry: “They may take our downtowns, but they’ll never take...
One of the main financial statements you can use to analyze a business is the Profit and Loss statement (aka the income statement, the P&L, or the statement of financial results). What does it do? The P&L measures the revenues, costs and expenses of a business over a period of time. You start at the...
I’m the type who turns buying apples into an arduous process. I’ll skeptically compare the fifty-cent difference between apples, assuming the proper scrutiny stance: arms folded, a slight lean to the torso, and eyes narrowed. Once I’ve established the type and price of the apples I want to purchase, I’ll thoroughly inspect each item. The...
Before we talk about the future, let’s mention a bit about the past. Business owners, sales leaders, finance executives and other stakeholders are all tasked with monitoring basic financial statements. Tools like the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows tell stories about business results in the past. These stories contain lots of...
I’ll never forget pitching two angel investors with my first fully thought-out business plan. I’ve always been a dreamer, a creator, and an aspiring visionary known for the verbal tick, “What if…” But this was the first time I had put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard), pulled out my calculator (iPhone), and drawn up...
