Posts Tagged ‘Business plans’

MBA Student Loans – beware!

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

Mint.com has an excellent article on student loans. It highlights a few WSJ articles on this subject too.

The key take away is that student loans have now surpassed credit card loans. So please manage them just like you would any other debt. Mint.com has a few suggestions. Go to a college you can afford! Take the core classes from a community college and transfer credits go to a brand name college for the later part. What was shocking (and I too did not know this) was that these loans have some ugly fine print. Heavy fine print for missing payments, nuisance calls from debt collectors, etc. What is appalling is that these student loans live on even after a student dies. The co-signers need to pay the loan off! You cant even get this debt off in bankruptcy!!

Read this article. Its worth it. Take the news out and tell your friends about it.

Here is an additional tip from us as MBA tutors who can assist you with business plans. Just like you would write a business plan when you think about starting a new business, write up a plan for your MBA idea. Consider the total cost of getting an MBA at the schools of your choice. Make sure you try the full time ones, part time, distance eduction, local colleges, top tier, etc. Compare the cost and the payoffs, expected salaries, how you will finance them, etc. Treat it like a business decision not an emotional one.

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MBAs & the Economics of Cows

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

We truly believe that MBA programs (good ones) are worth every dollar you spend on them and are easily one of the best masters’ programs out there (for most people).  One of the reasons is that an MBA program is very versatile.  If you list out all the sectors or functions that students join after their MBA, you will  probably list out everything under the sun.  An MBA adds value in almost all industries, sectors and roles.

Here is additional evidence why we believe that an MBA is a versatile program. An Economist article on the economics of cows mentions  that Dr Galligan, got an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania after originally studying veterinary sciences. He is now teaching veterinary economics. He has also spent time helping Amish farmers in the past! How much more interesting can life get!?

Here is the kicker! Whichever industry or function you are in one of our MBA tutors can tutor you on a subject that is of interest to you!  The range of concepts we tutor students in is so wide that between our pool of MBA tutors (finance tutors, economics tutors, statistics tutors, accounting tutors and financial modeling tutor) we will have something that is of interest to you! It may be understanding the economics of a cow, calculating the net present value of an asset, figuring out the return on investment of a new project, building a business plan or a financial model for a business plan, or figuring out the marketing strategy for a new market but one of our MBA tutors can help you learn something interesting. Challenge us on this. Give us a call.

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MBA Tutoring Plans & Challenges

Monday, January 4th, 2010
We have been in the MBA tutoring space for more than 2 years now. Our focus areas and the challenges we face are different as time goes on. To give you a glimpse of what our plans for the year are and the challenges we expect, I post highlights from our most recent annual letter below.
MBA tutoring plans and challenges from GraduateTutor.com’s annual letter

I want to first take this opportunity to wish you a happy New Year and great success in your professional and personal lives in 2010.  I have tried to briefly highlight below our focus areas and the challenges that we see for the year ahead as we continue to serve CFA, CPA & MBA students.
As I write our annual team letter, my strongest emotion is one of deep gratitude to each one of you who have been a part of GraduateTutor.com over the last few years.  While we have all played instrumental roles in GraduateTutor.com’s success till date, I want to especially thank our tutoring faculty for their commitment and time with us.  It is the strength of our tutoring faculty that distinguishes us from a host of other players in the market.
Plans for the year
  • We want to continue serving students to the best of our ability.  We believe that the best way to build our business is to build it one hour and one student at a time.  We want all our interactions and activities to reflect this belief.
  • Recruiting outstanding faculty to our pool of great tutors continues to be an area of focus.  We are very selective in who we recruit and so if you know potential candidates, please do let us know.
  • This year we also want to strengthen our existing university relationships and build new relationships. If you know faculty or administrators, do give us an introduction.  We do reward introductions that turn into business with commissions.
Challenges
  • This year, we have seen an increase in low priced and low quality competition.  We expect this to increase in the coming months but will hold fast to our aim to provide high quality tutoring services.  Our emphasis is on helping students learn. Our product is really knowledge and understanding which is far more valuable than solutions to questions.
  • We also see a lot of unethical competition in the form of tutoring services that just provide homework and exam solutions. Once again we want to hold fast to our core values and do not want to do exams or assignments for students.  We are well aware that with more universities going in for graded assignments and hybrid approaches to grading, this is a larger challenge and we count on you individually to take calls on what is right given our philosophy and our emphasis on knowledge and understanding.
  • As we have grown, we are increasingly seeing online fraud. We have enlisted appropriate help and are learning to cope with and counter online fraud.
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Writing Business Plans

Thursday, December 24th, 2009

Today’s WSJ has an article on a trend in business schools these days. With jobs few, business grads are turning into entrepreneurship.

This is in our opinion, a good trend. Entrepreneurship will teach them a number of things that a regular job will not – and quickly. Business plans, cash-flow management, customer service, value to a customer, competition, recruiting, etc become not just terms or concepts these business school grads are familiar with but real issues to deal with directly! It also helps boost the economy as they generate net jobs and value to investors.

A quick bit of advice. Make sure you have a good business plan – We leave it up to you to decide if you want to write it out or just think it through. Here is a quick article on why it is very important to have a business plan.

The MBA tutors at GraduateTutor.com salute this trend and have been helping aspiring entrepreneurs with business plans in a variety of ways. If you are looking at developing a business plan, our MBA tutors can help you in a number of ways be it collaborating with you to write the entire business plan, reviewing your business plan to suggest areas to improve it, providing you research support to find critical data points or building a financial model for your business plan. Read more about our business plan services here. Our MBA tutors have helped a number of our customers who have included business school graduates who just want a second opinion or those who are unfamiliar with business and need a lot of help. We can also draw upon specialists from our pool of finance tutors, accounting tutors, economic tutors and other research specialists depending on your need. We are happy to assist and welcome more entrepreneurs into this world.

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Finance for entrepreneurs starting a business

Friday, May 1st, 2009

What do entrepreneurs need to understand about finance!?  Why do they need finance tutoring!?

Often people think starting a business is simple.  It is simple in many ways but as you get further into the business, there are important decisions to be made that will impact the long term sustainability, profitability and returns of the business / owners / investors.  Here is a sample of terms you need to know when structuring investments:

  • Pay to Play
  • Anti-Dilution
  • Liquidation Preference
  • Protective Provisions
  • Information Rights
  • Registration Rights
  • Redemption Right
  • Conversion
  • Right of First Refusal
  • Restriction on Sales
  • Voting Rights
  • Vesting
  • Employee Pool
  • Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement
  • Indemnification
  • Initial Public Offering Shares Purchase
  • Precedent Conditions to Financing
  • Drag

Be smart.  Work with our finance tutor or our accounting tutor to get the basics right.  Small decisions could make a large impact!

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How to start a business: Business plans

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Graduatetutor.com assists b-school students with tutoring in a variety of subjects.  We are now thrilled to formally launch our business plan tutoring services.

There has been a spurt of new entrepreneurs and we want to do our bit to support them.   See this special report on entrepreneurship in The latest edition of The Economist.  According to this NYT article, more people are now forced to start a business.  It may be that people are tired of looking for work like the title of this article says or it may be that you have less to lose once you are laid off!  Whatever your reason for starting a business is, it always helps to plan well before you do so.
Starting your business is a risky venture.  Statistics show that only one in ten or more businesses succeed.  What can you do to increase your odds of success?

Answer:  Write a business plan before you start a business.

We believe putting down your ideas in a business plan before you start really helps in many ways.  See our business plan tutoring page to read more on how a business plan can help before you start a business and how GraduateTutor.com can assist you.
People get ideas all the time  but unfortunately ideas alone will not create a successful start up.  The idea needs to be implemented.  But even  implementation is not sufficient to create a successful business.  The idea must be implemented in a manner that it must produce more revenues /cash flow than it costs to bring the product or service to the market.

Writing a business plan before you start a business will help you evaluate if your business idea can produce more revenues /cash flow than it costs to bring the product or service to the market.  If the answer is a resounding yes, then it is a wise decision to move forward.  If not, pause and think of a new idea.
We believe that if more people had written business plans before they started their businesses, the statistic that  nine out of ten startups fail would have been so much better!  So take our advice and write a business plan before you start a business!

(full disclosure:  We offer business plan tutoring services! Please don’t feel obligated to work with us.  Just write a business plan before you start a business.)

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