As Mark Twain said, 'the secret of getting ahead is getting started'. Makes sense. And one of the best ways to get started with your new business idea is to partner with people who share your motivation and bring complimenting skills, experience and resources to the effort. So, you have the business idea, you're eager to get started and you know partnering is likely the best way forward. What's stopping you from taking the next step? Chances are you might be concerned about someone 'stealing your idea'.
Not all new business ideas have a significant intellectual property or confidentiality element. For example, you might be seeking partners to open a popular franchise restaurant. In general, this proposed business idea likely does not have much of a requirement for confidentiality (with the exception of some elements, like location). However, ibovo recognizes that many business ventures do have varying levels of sensitivity and confidentiality. You'll be happy to know ibovo was designed with security as a core focus.
Secure from the start...
Creating a Team Profile is the first step to forming a team around your business idea. This is also where you make some decisions around securing your idea information.
Your Team Profile is basically your pitch to potential partners. Make sure your team description is exciting and detailed. It should explain the overall business or social venture opportunity. You may want to discuss the gap or need, size of the market, revenue potential, etc. While you may want to leave out details you feel are particularly sensitive, you should provide as much detail as possible in this section to capture the attention of other members. Also, enter as many keywords and phrases as possible in the Industry Tags field. This is essential for matching your idea with relevant partnering candidates.
In terms of securing your idea, 'Location Preferences' is your first option. Based on the type of venture you are building, you should determine whether your partners need to be physically close to you, or maybe remote partners are fine but they must be within your country, or maybe you are looking for partners anywhere in the world. By selecting one of these options, you are effectively applying a limit to the members who will be matched with your team roles. Keep in mind, when you create team roles, you can select this default Location preference or you may override it for specific roles. For example, this is useful where you may want to indicate all your operating partners must be within 40 miles of you, but your investors can be global.
After setting your 'Location Preference', you'll be able to set your team's 'Privacy Level'. There are 3 privacy levels that you can apply to your team: Public, Moderate Privacy and Maximum Privacy. You need to determine the appropriate control level for your team venture. Keeping in mind, each incremental level of restriction also reduces your exposure within the community (leading to less partner connections).
- Public: this is the lowest privacy level. It ensures your team roles have maximum exposure within the community, allowing you to reach the greatest number of potential partners.
- Moderate Privacy: this level of security, limits access to your team and team role profiles to only those members who have a minimum relevancy to specific team roles (as determined by the ibovo matching feature). Therefore, if the ibovo matching engine determines a member has a 0% (or very low) relevancy to all your team roles, the member will not be able to access your team or team role profiles.
- Maximum Privacy: this is the highest level of security. It prevents access to your team and team role profiles to all members (even if the member is a strong match to one or more of your team roles). With this privacy setting selected, you will need to find all potential candidates by using Member Automatch (since members will not be able to find your team roles). A Member will only have access to your team profile and team role profiles after you initiate contact by recruting the member.
Flexible security down to the partner role...
Beneath your Team Profile, you'll create one or more Team Roles which describe the partners you are seeking. So you must create at least one team role to begin receiving matching partner candidates; members are matched to roles, not team profile. ibovo gives you the flexibility to alternate controls to limit exposure at the role level.
When creating your Team Profile, you selected a 'Location Preference'. At the Team Role Profile level, you may default to this same setting or you can choose a different 'Location Preference' for this particular role. For example, you may require all your investor partners to be in the same country as you, but you can set a Global scope for your Chief Technology Officer role.
Within the Team Role Profile, you will be able to set the 'Cash Investment' preference option. This enables you to indicate if the member filling this role will be required to make a cash investment in the business, and if so, you will provide a rough estimate of that value. By setting a Cash Investment requirement, you will effectively reduce exposure to those members who have indicated they will not make a cash contribution (or the members cash contribution value is below your requirements).
SSL 128-bit Encryption
While most Internet sites employ SSL encryption technology for payment transfers, ibovo takes it a step further by applying this same encryption standard to your Team Profile. Whenever you, or a community member, attempts to access a team profile, ibovo will create a 128-bit secure connection between the ibovo server and the client's desktop (or other device) before transmitting the Team Profile data. This ensures data is viewable by, and only by, the intended recipient.
Similarly, when you subscribe to ibovo Team Workspace or ibovo Conference to interact and collaborate with your partners, you can rest-assured your data remains safe through the same SSL encryption technology.
Know what you want to say, and what you don't
Finally, the best way to protect your idea, is to avoid posting elements of your business plan that you consider intellectual property or otherwise confidential. To reach potential partners, you need to provide significant details about your business idea. However, you should not reveal the confidential aspects of your business idea. For example, if your business idea relates to an invention, you may decide to avoid detailing the actual product. Instead your Team Description could focus on the market segment that will benefit from the invention, the general problems/gaps addressed by the invention, revenue targets, ROI estimates, etc. Similarly, the Team Role Profile should focus on the responsibilities of individuals applying for the role and does not need to reveal any information you determine is confidential.
As you begin interacting with members on ibovo, you should consider using ibovo Conference to meet with your potential partnering candidates. Use this leading-edge capability to perform virtual 'face-to-face' interviews through web conferencing with your candidates. Plus obtain resumes, research references and obtain any necessary legal guidance before divulging confidential aspects of your business venture idea.
With ibovo's unparalled focus on security and the flexibility available to you as an idea owner, don't hesitate any longer. Start building your team today at www.ibovo.com.
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