Assignment 3
Business
Prospectus
Final draft due: 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.
