Venture Capital and Getting a Professional Image for Your Australian Company  Part 1 © Paul Wetton

Your company should have as polished and professional a look as possible even if it is still in the start up phase and you haven't received funding yet.  In fact, a professional image at this stage will pay huge dividends.  Thinking about your company's image will help shape the type of corporate culture you want to establish someday. 

Let's look at several things you can do:

Get a website.  This might seem obvious but, surprisingly, this is a detail that is often overlooked at the very beginning.  You've probably at least purchased the domain name (I hope!); now make the extra effort and hire a web designer and purchase hosting and launch a site. If you like, contact me and I'll gladly put you in touch with my own web design team.

It's easy to focus all your energy on writing a business plan, researching investors and performing a feasibility study.  While you're doing all those things why not let a website work for you 24/7? 

Your  website should have the following:

• A Good Corporate Image and Logo. 

• Description of the product or service that you intend to sell.  A copywriter can help you with this.

• Contact information. 

• And, perhaps most importantly of all, a squeeze page.  That is, a field about the fold where visitors can type in their e-mail address and put their name on your e-mail list. You should offer an enticement such as a free report or simply offering a special discount once the product is released. 

* The point is to make your site as "sticky" as possible.  If you develop a large mailing list this gives you a little bit of extra leverage when sharing your idea to investors.  A website is one tool that will help you test the market and see if your business idea is feasible

• Make sure all the links work, have someone proofread it; make sure your contact information is easy to find.  You only have their attention for four seconds.  If you make it hard for them to find pertinent information they'll move on.  It's also important that the site loads quickly.  Don't get too carried away with graphics that take forever to load. 

• Traffic.  In the early stage you won't want to spend much, if any, money on online advertising.  But there are various Web 2.0 tools you can use that are free, such as blogs, forums, and social networking sites such as Facebook.  You may want to consider a PPC campaign with Adsense if you can keep the costs low.  You can have the fanciest site in the world but without traffic it won't mean much.  If you already have a steady flow of traffic to your site before your business launches you'll be in a strong position once your business opens.

Ask around and find a competent designer.  If you are under severe budget constraints you can find someone on the cheap on a site like elance.com but it's much better if you can work with one designer for your website and other graphic design needs for consistency.