Dick Barlow the Scientist

Identify the possible problems with Dick Bardow's presentation of his business plan to Ms. Guinn.

Dick Bardow is presented as a studied scientist, passionate about his field and the uniqueness of his product. As the article states, he has earned quite a reputation among his fellow enthusiasts and colleagues from his ability to explain complex ideas. However, when it comes to a business presentation to venture capitalists who are primarily concerned with the ROI (i.e. Return on Investment), the emphasis needs to be placed on the information relevant to the monetizing side of the product.

His experience presenting to those who are of similar technical backgrounds would not have aided him here as based on the information provided, he spent the majority of the time discussing the intricacies of the product itself. More attention should have been paid to the buyer demographic, scope for profitability, and other monetary aspects of bringing the product to market.

Should potential lenders and investors evaluate new ventures that are based on cutting edge technology differently from other business ventures? Explain.

Yes, they should evaluate those new ventures differently than those products which present no significant advances to products that already exist on the market. However, this is not to say they should ignore the underlying fundamentals with respect to returns and profitability. Many products are revolutionary and for one reason or another are either ahead of their time with respect to market potential or simply too costly to package and make available to potential buyers.

Medical products especially, as was presented by Mr. Bardow, may present significant challenges to entry into the market as they are often littered with health and safety concerns for which there are numerous bodies responsible for overseeing their use. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA), one such renown organization in the United States, is often linked with ordering companies to become compliant by having their products thoroughly tested in controlled laboratory environments with increasingly larger test samples. These tests generally migrate from testing those products on animals that have similar characteristics to humans in order to render more predictable results while minimizing the potential for exposing human test subjects to adverse reactions. When this is coupled with the use of new technologies, more stringent testing would need to be conducted which might incur more start-up cost while lengthening the process for returns. While the profitability and essentially the returns may prove over time to be exponentially more than comparable products being reviewed by these venture capitalists, all these factors need to be taken into consideration as invariably these types of products more often than not present higher levels of risk to investors and users alike.

Therefore, while the end result remains the same and venture