Kauffman Foundation's Top Ten Tools for Entrepreneurs

The Kauffman Foundation (a leading foundation for entrepreneurship) eVenturing website just published a very useful checklist and toolkit for helping entrepreneurs set-up, manage and improve core operational processes. Titled the "Top Ten Tools and Templates for Entrepreneurs," this offering provides practical agreements, models, samples, and worksheets to guide entrepreneurs through starting up and growing their businesses to profitability.

Listed below are the tools most viewed by entrepreneurs over the last year:

• Sample Buy-Sell Agreement: Outlines the concepts and language needed to understand how to set-up a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC)
• Daily Forecasting Cash Flow Model: Provides a sample cash-flow spreadsheet designed to monitor business cash flow on a daily process.
• Due Diligence Checklist: Lists information needed to effectively negotiate a company sale or its purchase.
• Sale Compensation Tool: A spreadsheet tool that the shows the core components of a sales compensation plan, including business development goals, total bonuses and commissions, and sales compensation payment schedules.
• Sample Balance Sheet: This tool uses a sample balance sheet for a one-year-old business and provides a line-by-line explanation of the most common categories used to report the value of a company's assets, liability, and equity.
• Partnering Proposition Worksheet: A worksheet that demonstrates how to facilitate recruitment of strategic partners by establishing processes from first call to deal close.
• Incentive Compensation for Sales Executives: A sample sales compensation plan that illustrates how to keep tract of quotas by department and per representative, commission accelerators, payouts and reporting.
• Sample Multi-Shareholder Agreement: A sample buy-sell agreement appropriate for companies with multiple shareholders.
• Business Strategy Worksheet: A process-based tool to set business strategy and evaluate that strategy against overall growth plans.
• Sample Job Ad: A sample advertisement to recruit a top executive.

Shivonne Byrne, Innuity CMO