Objective: Develop a proposal in which you present your business idea to me and explain its feasibility for the Prospectus project--be sure you've read the description for Assignment 3: The Prospectus and the assigned material in the text carefully.

Purpose of a Proposal: In general, a proposal is written to help your audience make a decision about something. In this case, I'll be your audience and you'll be trying to help me make a good decision about your business idea for Assignment 3. In order for me to make that, I'll need you to provide me with meaningful information, presented in a clear, easily digestible way. Since I'm asking you to realize this, you can consider it a "solicited" type of proposal, which means you don't really need to worry about capturing my attention as much as you do adhering to the requirements of my request for proposal (RFP). Those requirements are provided for you in this assignment description.

Paper Structure: Address each of the following items fully and concretely:

• COMPANY NAME: The company name
• PRODUCT OR SERVICE: The product or service your company will provide
• DESIRABILITY: In general, explain why this product/service would be desirable.
• MARKET OPENING: AKA the "problem statement". Describe/explain the specific market opening you think exists by addressing the following (NOTE: it's ok if some of this changes as you continue your research):
  • the specific location(s)
  • some basic info about the specific target market in the location(s) (i.e. demographic info)
  • some basic info about the potential competition in your specific location(s)
• BASIC FINANCIAL INFORMATION:
  • Estimate of total startup costs: This needs to be reasonable/realistic (see "Parameters" in Assignment 3 description) and if it's pushing the limits, please include some detail to explain (e.g., if you've looked into small scale off-shore outsourcing for the production of your product instead of setting up your own manufacturing plant and you have some concrete detail to explain the feasibility.)
  • Some information about what that capital will be used for: This can be pretty general (e.g., things like rent, labor, 3 month's inventory, etc.). In other words you don't have to get really granular and itemize everything.
  • Estimated ask from investors: See Assignment 3 "Parameters" and be sure to include some detail about how you'd like the investment to be structured: a loan? an equity investment? some combination of these? and, what specific terms are you looking for? There are all sorts of options here, so research and choose something that makes sense.
• INTENDED AUDIENCE PROFILE: When you begin drafting Assignment 3 - the Prospectus, you'll want to have a clear idea about who exactly your intended audience is. To get the ball rolling, I'd like you to start thinking about this audience (investors of some kind) here, in the Proposal by considering and describing/explaining the following:
  • What are their needs, values and attitudes?
  • What kinds of logic, reasoning and evidence would they find compelling and what is the best way to present this information?
  • Overall, what will the prospectus need to realize in order to convince this audience to invest.