Filling Out Forms, Standing In Line

Here’s a discussion on the use of “intake forms,” i.e., questionnaires that certain investment groups and lenders use as a preliminary step on an entrepreneur’s path toward receiving the funding required to move his business concept forward.  Billy Joel fans will recognize the title here as a line from “Allentown,” a tale of economic woe, worsened by the prospect of wasting time in a bureaucratic morass.   

If you’re applying for a home equity loan to build a swimming pool, intake forms are fine.  If you’re a PhD with a 75-page business plan that describes something unique and wonderful, they’re the wrong approach:

Colleague:  I’m going to try another funding source for the people we’ve been discussing.  This other source usually requires an intake form. Do you think those guys would be willing to stoop to that?

Craig:  Ha! “Stoop.”  I like that.  🙂  The issue with intake forms is that they:

• seek to subtract a tiny bit of work on the investor’s part at the expense of adding a large amount of work on the entrepreneur’s part; this commonly causes bad blood right off the bat and acts to discredit the person who called for the form to be filled out

• pose irrelevant questions that one would never ask in a face-to-face conversation or a phone call, e.g., asking a man if he’s pregnant; this again has a deleterious effect on the relationship.

Let’s try to work around it.