Like Tshombe I wondered how you were going to make a business case for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, well done.

For the opposite view point, local Seattle investor Brian Hilgendorf wrote a great little book a few years ago called Sex, Intimacy and Business that hits this particular nail on the head.

Great stuff Zita, almost like a business version of Conversation Cafe.

The first question any sane or savvy investors will ask when they look at a business investment is “will the dogs eat the dog food”. Coined by the famous VC, John Doeer of Kliner Perkins etc. in CA, what surprises me is that new business owners don’t ask them selves this same question. They seem to get so enamored with their “idea” that they forget that sales is the first cornerstone of any business and before you make a sale you need to know who will buy what, when and why.

So great article Stacy and a great pointer to the first steps in building a successful business venture.

one of my pet topics, I would love to attend but date and time and location won't work for me. If you run one in Seattle I'd love to attend.

Unfortunately I’ve a commitment to beat my body up on a tough hike on Saturday otherwise I would be there. I’ll watch for the next one which hopefully will be sooner rather than later. As its an hour long, one idea might be to run it in the hour before a happy hour.

I'm glad I was able to make it, great job Nancy, you’re a brilliant facilitator and your sense of humor and quick wit is a delight to experience. Count me in for your next one.

Really interesting idea and I really hope I can make it, its just a little early for me. Expect me if you see me and I'll chack that the numbers are ok before I leave for Green Lake.

I missed the naming class (flu - ugh) as I have always found nameing difficult but ince you get one that you like it sorts morphs all of your thinkning and good stuff seems to happen.

To me WonderDraw sounds like a software package from the 90's rather than a service name. The Wonder Bra connection never came to mind even though love their 'one for the boys' campaign which was a great branding campaign.

Personally I would go for it as its memorable and you can use a cool tag line to inform your purpose.

You never know some software company may come along one day and offer you a fortune for the name ;-)

Best deal in town is Fidel Barron call 206 763 9739 or 293 5410. He has a 5 ton truck, will come and load your crap for you and take it to the dump for the dump fe plus $250ish.

I agree that every entrepreneur needs a business plan whether trying to raise money or just making sure you really know where you are going. It?s really an instrument to give yourself the answers you need to make decisions. Sometimes the decision might even be to decide if its time to stop and move onto something else. This most difficult decision of all needs some critical thinking and a business plan can provide the framework for that.

Before writing a business plan you need to do some critical thinking and as a first step in this process I always put together a Business Road Map. The goal is to focuses on the Market Opportunity in terms of market growth and customer problems, the Competitive Risks, and the major Company Milestones for product or service development; business development and of course funding. I put up a sample Road Map on my Google web album http://picasaweb.google.com/frank.devin/BiZPlanImages?authkey=WlcCSaMP9Ts that shows the initial ideas for a catalog content management system developed in 1999 for the following 3 years. This business was pretty much on track until the end of 2000 when the dot com bust destroyed the market opportunity and so it ceased to trade.

Feel free to copy and adapt to your own use and email me if you want a blank version in Word.

cool Dan, the G-Calendar feature will improve my use of biznik.

I don't know if you are familiar with Saul Wurman's Information Anxiety 2 Book. In it he outlines his LATCH organizational schemes - Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy. Each member could be easily assigned a value under the first 4 of these headings, time being how long they have been a member. Then if you put together some sort of sort page with the options under each as a drop down menu any member could slice and dice the membership.

You could use Hierarchy for different classes of members or for geography in which case Location could be the city.

Its a cool book and maybe one for the book club.

It would be really useful if you could add a Biznik event to Google Calandar. I see that you have iCal but that is mostly for Mac Users.