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ClubFixit: Diary of a startup
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May 3, 2000: 8:38 a.m. ET
Part I: Refining the business plan to raise money for your dream business
By Staff Writer Hope Hamashige
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Like many people in today's economy, Sean Mullin decided to forego the old "climb the corporate ladder" route to success and make it all on his own.
Be your own boss, start an Internet company and put yourself on the path to untold riches. Those are the things that make up the public and private daydreams of many under-appreciated corporate drones. That is the dream that Sean Mullin, age 25, has decided to chase.
The next time you start thinking about chasing a similar dream, consider this: Sean Mullin has no photocopier. Every time he needs to make a copy, he has to leave home, also known as his office, and find a functioning machine somewhere near his studio apartment on New York's Upper West Side. And to keep the bills from spinning out of control, he works nights, sometimes as late as 4 a.m., as a bartender at a popular tourist hangout.
Is it worth it? Hell, yes, he says. Wouldn't have it any other way, he insists. Why? Because, in his mind, this is the single most exciting time of his life.
At this point, only a few weeks have passed since Mullin quit his law firm job to devote his days exclusively to ClubFixit. Mullin and his part-time business partners have agreed to allow CNNfn.com to chronicle the early days of ClubFixit and follow them as they try to put together a winning business strategy.
The money problem
Setting goals, when you are on your own, is extremely important, Mullin said.  He has two this week. The first is to finish the executive summary of his business plan. He needs to do that before he can complete his second goal: show the summary to several attorneys and get one to agree to take him on as a client.
He needs a lawyer to draft private placement papers. Only then can he approach potential investors and get the thing he needs now more than anything else to get ClubFixit off the ground: funding.
Finding the right attorney can often be a major chore. Not just any attorney will do and Mullin thinks he has lucked out. A senior partner at a major New York law firm gave him a list of attorneys who are best qualified, in his opinion, to work with startup business-to-business-to-consumer Internet companies.
The right attorney can be a huge asset, and not just in drawing up the proper legal documents. A well-connected attorney who has worked with other startups can be instrumental in making contacts with investors and venture capital firms.
Mullin would be happy to put his own personal fortune on the line for ClubFixit. Only problem is he doesn't have one. Likewise, he said, he'd be very pleased if his friends and family would send some seed funds his way. That's not likely to happen, though, because none of them have a whole lot to spare, he said.
"This is a big week as far as getting things rolling so we can start pitching investors," said Mullin.
An entrepreneurial impulse
Mullin and three friends -- Craig Shirley, Mike Fishman, and Maurice Blanco -- started talking about creating a company to put small maintenance and repair businesses on the Internet last November. Months of brainstorming led them from a strict business-to-consumer concept to the business-to-business-to-consumer concept they have now dubbed ClubFixit.
"After talking about it and working through several ideas, we knew we finally had something that would work," he said. Mullin didn't hesitate to quit his job and throw himself into the effort to launch ClubFixit. His partners still have full-time day jobs and work on ClubFixit on their off hours and weekends.
Mullin traces his entrepreneurial spirit to his father in Boca Raton, Fla. The elder Mullin is an inventor, who has several patents to his name, who never held a conventional job.
"Creativity was definitely the norm in that house," said Sean Mullin.
The business plan
The first thing Mullin set about doing after leaving his law firm job in March was to sit down and start writing the business plan for his business-to-  business-to-consumer company. He consulted some books and sought counsel on the Internet before realizing there is no formula for putting together a winning plan.
"It's really a process of trial-and-error," he said. "I also showed drafts to several people and bounced some ideas off of them. It changes all the time."
The process has lasted several weeks, but for good reason, Mullin said. Drafting the business plan translates an idea for a company into an outline for how to run the business. In addition to describing the concept, he has had to identify potential vendors and strategic partners. He has to research and estimate the costs of these alliances and affiliations. And he has had to come up with market research and draft a marketing plan to reach his potential customer base.
Constant revision, according to Mullin, is important, particularly in the early days, because the more refined the plan, and the more information he has, the more compelling the plan will be to potential investors. He has also made substantial revisions along the way as he has received additional market research about the niche they hope to fill with ClubFixit. And he has also made a trip to the New Jersey city where they hope to launch ClubFixit to assess market demand for the types of service they plan to offer.
"We want investors to feel like, when they read the business plan, if they don't invest, they're going to be missing out," said Mullin.
Taming the temptation to tinker
Given the importance of the business plan, it can be tempting to tinker endlessly, but Mullin is starting to feel the pressure to get some money behind this company.
With a little money in hand, he can hire the system operator he has chosen and who is waiting at home in Connecticut for the green light. He can get some more office equipment and start looking for a little office space somewhere in Manhattan. His apartment is barely big enough for himself and his cat, Jack. It's too small for any employees and isn't equipped with a cable modem.
But first, he's got to put the finishing touches on his business plan... 
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