AndyMark.pdf - The Fighting Pi

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Before you approach a bank for a loan, whether it’s for a car loan, a mortgage or to start a business, you have to do your homework. You have to prove to the lending company that you will pay them back. They want to see your business plan and they want to see your three year projections of income. They want to see your financial picture in detail. Andy’s dad suggested that we should FIRST approach locally owned banks. His point was that a locally owned bank is more apt to work with a small business, and they can usually cut a lot of the red tape small businesses have to deal with. There are also other funding sources small businesses can investigate. In some instances both state and federal grants are available. Small Business Innovation Research Awards (SBIR) and stimulus money are both out there. Just remember, there are strings attached! If a small business is looking for investors they may also want to consider Venture Capitalists (VCs) and Angel Investors. Banks want to draw interest from the loans companies use, so they want to keep loaning you money. However, banks don’t like surprises. We have been able to accurately forecast our sales and growth, and our bank appreciates that. VCs and Angel Investors can also provide capital, but they often want a percentage of ownership of the company, or they want a lump sum of cash after a planned company sale after a few years. We have not sought out VCs or other investors for our business growth. Small businesses need to watch all of their costs carefully. They need to know when to spend for quality and when to pinch pennies. Many employees forget to be frugal when travelling on business or paying for meals and hotels because the company pays. We can’t afford to spend much in these areas, so we strive to get the lowest travel rates. This is also true for parts and service sourcing. We look for low cost suppliers of fabricated parts and professional services. However, we also believe that we get what we pay for, and if we are always paying the lowest price, our quality suffers. So, there is a fine line between working hard to find the lowest price and paying enough for a quality part or service. ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ……………………………………………… ………………………………………………
We have depended greatly on many software packages. From valuable CAD packages and office tools to accounting, inventory, and e-commerce tools, we have invested in many useful software products. We utilize e-commerce and have embraced being a web-based company. We used Yahoo e-commerce solutions for the FIRST 5 years until we outgrew its capabilities. Also, in the beginning stages of AndyMark, we chose to be our own distributor, developing our website and ecommerce process while we were also developing our products. We chose to do this since other distributors had no experience serving the FIRST Robotics community, and we only could do this by depending greatly on our software. We figured that the best and quickest way to get our parts to FIRST teams during their build season was to perform our own distribution and order fulfillment. Within a few years, we outgrew the capability of Yahoo e-commerce. At that point, we evaluated many software packages and picked two that now run our web and our inventory management system. We also use reliable accounting software. It can be your best friend! In addition, there are web-based software solutions which integrate the services of FedEx, UPS, and US Postal Service which make our operations very efficient. We use e-mail to communicate with our customers, so we can respond to them when we have time to give them the time they deserve. Also, it seems that we are depending more and more on cloudbased file sharing like Google Drive, Dropbox, and other similar programs. ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… ………………………………………………… …………………………………………………
Page 1 and 2: The FIRST Robotics Competition. It
Page 3 and 4: FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS…. Andy Bake
Page 5 and 6: On a mission (written by AndyMark)
Page 7 and 8: Should your company be a LLC, or an
Page 9: The 2005 omni-wheels created a roug
Page 13 and 14: Don’t sit back and be complacent.
Page 15 and 16: The 2009 Woody Flowers Award Pictur

AndyMark.pdf - The Fighting Pi

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