Business Prospectus please take a look at the attachments

Assignment 3

Business Prospectus

Rough draft due: Wednesday, May 30th (Bring two copies of rough draft for in-class workshop)

Final draft due: Due date will follow the day and time listed on CWU’s Final Exam Schedule

Length: 4-5 pages, single spaced, with 1-inch margins on all sides. Text must reach the bottom of a page for that page to be counted toward length requirements.

Points: 250

Objective

Write a 4-5 page business prospectus, using at least 2 secondary sources, in which you research and propose a hypothetical business venture to potential investors.

Purpose

The purpose of a business prospectus is to secure support for a planned product or service. You will use a business prospectus to showcase information necessary for investors to determine whether they want to fund your venture.

You are welcome to present yourself as the head of a pre-existing (small) company seeking additional funding, or as an entrepreneur looking to launch a product or service. You are seeking funding either way, and so your goal is to ensure that potential investors will be persuaded by the components of your prospectus.

Note

Strategies for planning and organizing a prospectus are provided on the other side of this sheet.

Paper structure:

For this assignment, I suggest following the process described in Ch. 14, on pages 374-75 (beginning with “Creating Successful Business Plans”). Please note that, depending on your chosen product or service, some of the sections listed on pages 374-75 will not be applicable. As a baseline, I’ve compiled a list of required and optional sections below.

Required Sections:

· Summary (of prospectus overall)

· Mission and objectives

· Products or services

· Market and competition

· Design and development plans (if you are describing a product)

· Operations plans (if you are describing a service)

·

· Overall schedule

· Critical risks and problems

· Financial projections and requirements

Optional Sections:

· Company and industry

· Management

· Exit strategy

Secondary Sources:

You will need to reference at least 2 secondary sources within your prospectus. These can be popular sources or academic sources—in either case, they will need to have a clear connection to one or more of the following: the product or service you’re proposing, the problem your product or service will solve, the industry/market you will enter, or the customers you want to reach. (Sources must be formatted using either APA or MLA-style citation guidelines.)

Formatting Note:

Figures, tables, data sets, or images may not exceed 1/3rd the length of the page they’re on. Multiple figures, etc. may be used within that 1/3rd space. Any elements that go beyond the space restrictions will not count towards page count, and the course Paper Length policy will be applied accordingly. If an element won’t fit within 1/3rd of a single page, place it in an appendix along with an in-text reference for your reader.

Strategies for planning and pre-writing:

Note

All of the strategies we discussed while reading Ch. 1 and 5--and that you put into practice while writing workplace memos and blog posts--will still be useful here. Because the prospectus is a longer assignment, however, the planning and pre-writing stages become much more important. Focus on creating a detailed outline in order to make your drafting process easier and your prospectus more coherent.

Your first steps toward a persuasive prospectus can be broken down into two categories: content and rhetorical strategies. In other words: what are the facts, and how will you choose to present them?

When planning content, focus on big picture questions related to your business. What is your product or service? Who is it for? How will it be priced and distributed? Refer back to what you learned in Ch. 13 regarding researching and processing data.

Once you’ve established the basic information about your product or service, you can start pre-writing notes about your rhetorical strategies. Your audience will comprise investors who are learning about you and your company for the first time. Reviewing Table 14.3 (page 377) will be useful in this stage of planning.

As always, I’m happy to discuss drafts in person during my office hours or a scheduled appointment.

Assessment criteria

Your assignment will be graded according to the following criteria:

Criteria	Description of Criteria
Awareness of Situation (See pages 93-96 and pages 120-126)	Message content demonstrates the writer’s awareness of the particular communication situation, including the general purpose, specific purpose, and the audience’s needs.
Selection of Information (See pages 96-98)	Information included in the message satisfies the audience’s needs in an accurate, ethical, and pertinent manner. If research is included, sources are credible and relevant to the situation, as well as purposefully and properly integrated and cited per assignment guidelines.
Style and Tone (See pages 126-138 and pages 151-157)	The writer’s style of expression cultivates a tone that is appropriate to the purpose of the message and to the audience’s needs. The writer has carefully revised her/his message for readability, clarity, and concision.
Organization (See pages 103-111 and pages 133-138)	The message is reasonable in scope and appropriate in approach (direct or indirect). The main point is clearly stated at the outset and consecutive points and details support the main point in a unified and coherent manner on the sentence-, paragraph- and whole-document levels.
Production Quality (See pages 148-164)	Design and formatting choices are appropriate to the communication situation, and the message demonstrates a professional level of proofreading.