Overview:

The Start-up kit is a collection of wiki-based templates, examples and best practices that streamlines business operations management as well as builds better corporate governance for start-up and emerging growth companies that may eventually be acquired or need to raise institutional or VC funding. It can be thought of as a pre-populated corporate intranet.

Benefits for using this Start-up kit:

• Jump-start your operations management. Implementing the Start-up Kit can provide you with an instant structured intranet with pre-populated content.
• Avoid wasting time and money with operational details. The IT department is not taxed with corporate intranet update tasks, employees can quickly find the information they are looking for, and less requests and mistakes are made with centralized content management.
• Increase your company's valuation by establishing corporate governance thereby reducing the Company's risk premium. Since there is an increased emphasis these days on corporate legal and financial accountability, establishing good corporate governance is not only a good idea, but also required if a company hopes to achieve the best possible valuation in a funding or acquisition event.

Examples of specific questions and problems this can solve:

• Who currently has that laptop with the DVD burner?
• What are my Company's significant off-balance sheet liabilities?
• Where was the most recent job posting and what is the status of the candidates?
• What form should I use for and NDA for an industry visitor?
• When are my software maintenance contracts due for renewal?

Background:

The Start-up Kit's content was created by Andy Stack, an entrepreneur who most recently managed his latest company's business operations from inception through to integration into Yahoo! Inc. after its acquisition. The business integration into Yahoo! was one of the fastest completed integrations due in part to the procedures that were in place. Not everything was perfect however, so armed with the knowledge and experience of what was done right and what could be improved, the Start-up Kit was created. It is designed with the end-game of due diligence for an acquisition or funding event in mind. Then, working backwards, the Start-up Kit fills best practices into the areas and functions that matter the most.

Why use a wiki?

In a startup environment, there is not enough people or time to ensure that a particular function is only performed by one person. This may lead to multiple people buying domain names, software and hardware on behalf of the company, or presenting NDAs or contracts to 3rd parties on behalf of the company. This distributed responsibility is essential for survival, however it presents an organization and tracking nightmare. Fortunately, the collaborative features of a wiki allow for these actions to be centrally tracked and updated by anyone.

Additional advantages of a wiki include:

• Information is centralized, not scattered among different files with multiple versions.
• Anyone, not just the technically-inclined, can edit.
• There is nothing users need to install or configure.
• No need to wrestle with Windows' shared directories, drives, or VPNs that are not always available or easily accessible. Anyone can easily and securely access wiki content in any geographic location or network configuration.
• Much cheaper (and much less painful) than an enterprise software installation.

Usage and Navigation:

• Please open up the Workspace Navigation box in the right frame for easier Start-up Kit navigation.
• Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated and can be entered free-form in the Startup Kit Feedback page, or edits can be made to any other page.
• To get the Start-up Kit for your company's wiki, complete the SocialText Request Form and mention that you plan on using the Start-up Kit.
• For other questions, help with the wiki implementation of the kit, or to be notified of updates to the Start-up Kit, please submit your contact info to Andy Stack through the Trellistar form.

Now, to view the Start-up Kit, continue on to the

• Startup Kit Index

Improvements encouraged. Reuse encouraged.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License

Text originally by Andy Stack.