如何赢得商业计划大赛？

和赢得商业计划书大赛相比，创业更是难上加难

    你必须狂热地投入到你的初创公司当中。BlackLocu团队的罗德里格•卡尔瓦略说道：“我以为毕业之后，可以把全部时间用于创业，事情会变得简单许多。实际上并非如此，一切都变得更加困难。”

    赛特说道，向投资者阐述你的想法变得更加容易，因为你已经习惯了在一大群观众面前展示自己；而且，这个过程会带给你许多惊喜和收获。拖挂汽车销售公司AT Dynamics的CEO安德鲁•史密斯仍记得，在公司业务从仅售六台拖车到获得3,500份订单的时候。他回忆道：“工程师们都激动得要疯了，对于我来说，那是开心的一天。”

    当然，“有惊喜的时刻，必然也会有‘老天，我们要完蛋了’这样的时刻，”赛特说道。“要继续下去，必须得有足够多的勇气与毅力，晚上能够睡着，且要维持好各种关系，相对于失败来说，这些事情更加重要。”

像“相亲”一样挑选投资者

    投资伙伴形形色色，各不相同。并非所有合作关系都是平等的。赛特说道：“在选择投资者时，必须非常谨慎。这种关系如同婚姻一般。”不论创业成功与否，你们都要同舟共济。他说道：“他们必须在你身边支持你。但是，并非和任何一位投资者都能培养出这样的关系。”

    卡尔瓦略表示，他在赖斯大赛上遇到了两位风险投资家，他们对于公司的成功至关重要。他说道：“重要的不是你从投资者那里获得的资金。你必须寻找那些能够提供帮助的投资者。”

    有些投资者的表现，就像直升机家长一样，时刻盘旋在创业者头顶，监视创业者的一举一动；而有的投资者则会给予创业者更多独立性。史密斯表示：“如果你能找到曾经创办过公司的天使投资人，并且他们能够理解创业的波动性与起伏不定的特点，他们就是你的最佳拍档。”（财富中文网）

    翻译：刘进龙/汪皓

Business plan competitions are hard, entrepreneurship is harder

    You must be fanatically devoted to your startup. "I thought that after graduation, being able to focus full-time on the business, it was going to get easier," says BlackLocus's Rodrigo Carvalho. "No! It just gets harder from there."

    Pitching a group of investors gets easier, Seet says, because you're used to working a big room. And there are some pretty great highs. Andrew Smith, CEO of AT Dynamics, remembers when his business went from having sold six models to logging a 3,500 order. "That was a fun day for me," he recalls. "The engineers went nuts, but I had fun."

    Still, "for every amazing moment, there's a moment of 'Oh God, we're all gonna die,'" Seet says. "It takes a lot of chutzpah to continue and still be able to sleep at night and maintain the relationships that are technically more important than that big exit."

Choose your investors like you'd choose your spouse

    Investing partners come in all shapes and sizes. Not all are created equal. "Just be very careful who you take money from," Seet says. "It's a relationship just like marriage." You should be in the same boat to either success or failure. "They need to be standing by your side," he says, "and that relationship doesn't happen with every investor."

    Carvalho says he met two VCs at Rice who were pivotal to his company's success. "It's not just the money that you're getting," he says. "You should be looking for investors that can help you."

    Some investors act like helicopter parents, while others allow more independence. "If you can find the angels that have built companies," Smith says, "and understand the volatility and the roller coaster [of entrepreneurship], those are phenomenal people to team up with."