formed from the interaction of these two forces, which appear to be of equal importance. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for the same individual to experience the push and pull effects several times in his or her career, leading to the formation of several start-ups. For example, Gene Amdahi, Seymour Cray, Steve Jobs, Gordon Moore, Bob Noyce, and Bill Poduska each founded more than one new company, most of which are discussed in greater detail later in the book.

Now let's continue with the next segment of the high-tech start-up "program" presented earlier in the chapter:

begin

Once the decision has been made to start up a company, the first step is to write a business plan. Occasionally, entrepreneurs do manage to write business plans while they are still part of another organization. In the case of most successful companies, however, a small core of founders leave their jobs and write a detailed business plan on a full-time basis. This process typically takes from three to twelve months, depending onthetechnology,marketuncertainty,productcomplexity,andmanufacturingprocess.

The standard planning tools used to create the business plan are a personal computer and a spreadsheet program. The importance of the spreadsheet program is that it enables the new company's founders to develop a business plan that offers investors large, but plausible returns. As with all powerful tools, though, spreadsheets are subject to misuse, and the market is littered with hundreds of business plans that tout completely unreasonable and unjustifiable financial numbers. As a result, it is not surprising that high-technology business plans are often perversely described as "that place in time and space where the rubber meets the blue sky."

Because of the range of technologies a new company might utilize and the variety of approaches it could take to structure its program, there are no hard-and-fast rules governing the creation of a business plan. Still, experience shows that short plans are better than long ones, not only because they are easier for investors to read and understand but also because they force the entrepreneurs to think in an orderly fashion.

Because new companies require significant capitalization, the founders must now:

They do this by taking their business plan to venture capital firms, friends, and relatives in an attempt to obtain funding. This process consists of rounds of courtship with venture capitalists, during which the plan is refined, interviews are conducted to select core personnel, and some ad hoc engineering conceptualization is done to refine the product design and marketing approach. Alliances to achieve additional funding may