There are three key Executives needed in a company that is looking for Venture Capital. They are:

The Business Manager works with the Money Manager on the day to day expenses, reviews the "stored" money, but should not be worrying about or working with the "stored" money. The Business Manager also should be there to close the deals with the clients, and should be looking for new clients and partners, as well as managing the day to day operations of the company.

The Money Manager should not be the same person as the Business Manager. Why should the Money Manager be different than your Business Manager? Checks and Balances. You want to have two people keeping an eye on your money. Your Money Manager should be a person that knows how to "store" money for future use, keep good tabs on how the money is being used every day, work with the Sales staff on sales process of selling the product(s), and report to the Business Manager on how the money is being used.

The Product Manager, who may be the Business Manager, assuming (s)he is able to do both, which is often not the case, builds the product(s) that the company sells. (In many cases, the Product Manager is the "Original Founder" and should be the person that finds the Business Manager who can run the business while the Product Manager builds and manages their product dream.) This person should be solely worried about building and enhancing the product, and should work with the Business Manager and Financial Manager to insure they are working within budget, and to the best interest of the company.

Having a Chief Financial Officer that knows what to do when the Venture Capitalist comes to the table with $10,000,000 (and that does happen folks, more and more Venture Capitalist are going away from Milestone based funding, as they have found that instead of looking out for the final product the development team is only looking for milestones, often slowing down development!) is key to many Venture Capitalist agreeing to place money in the company. This person needs to be able to invest or “store” the money in such a way that it is somewhat safely bringing in interest (better than sitting in a bank hopefully), and they need to be able to manage moving money around at the right time for interest, as well as clean cash flow.

In summary, when you are putting together your Executive Team, you need to insure you have a strong Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Product Officer that will allow you to get your product(s) to positive cash flow in the most expedient manner.

Don is a Venture Capitalist with over 15 years of successfully funding early stage Ventures. Information on his fund can be found at http://www.tdbellenterprises.com/fund.html His company also consults start up companies on business plan development and start up strategies, http://www.tdbellenterprises.com

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