Like baking a cake there’s a recipe that companies need to follow to get the work done.

It’s way too often that a company who is heavily funded, does not have the basic paper-trail necessary, even when their original business-model stayed the same they may still not have a Company Profile. It is even more relevant to have ‘the basics’ when you’re pivoting, as this is the basis of getting serious work to happen.

If you are a frivolous Investor you should consider these documents the cornerstone of ‘Must Haves’ for the company you’re investing in.

• Introduction
• Overview
• Company Profile
• Product Overview
• Getting Started

Why is that so? Each document answers a question. A company that does not answer the 5 questions (how, what, when, why, where) is likely not to follow through on their promise – 

NO MATTER HOW MUCH TIME OR MONEY YOU’VE INVESTED IN THEM

These are the documents and the answers your company should provide:

Introduction

This is the ‘What’. It’s the most important part of the Content. If poorly written the readers will not ‘get it’ in the first line or two. It should give an orientation to the topic, purpose, situation, audience of the Product.

Overview

This is the ‘Where’. This is the main contents of the product and can include examples and illustrations to give context, in relation to factors About the Product. 

Company Profile

This is the ‘How’. This is the document in which the Company tells it’s investors how it plans to ‘keep it up’ and uphold the values and ethics of the Mission Statement. How does the Company ‘do its work in the world’.

Product Overview

This is the ‘Why’. The Product Overview is not really about doubling your conversion rate, it’s about giving a Technical Overview of your features & instead of a list, you get to write all the features in this ongoing document. It’s a very important document and possibly the most important one for both Marketing & Product departments. A must have.

Getting Started

This is the ‘When’. The Getting Started, is sometimes mistakenly called a ‘Quick Start’, but it isn’t. Those are two completely separate documents. The Getting Started is the document or part-of a manual that describes all the button options, drop-downs, radial buttons, filters and UI/UX standard usage of the Product. 

Tip: It is a full-length chapter that enables the User of the system to know in advance where to find things, while at the same time, it magically shortens the User Guide by 25% making it the single most important part of a User Manual.

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