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BDI3C · Exam review

Entrepreneurship: The Venture Exam Review

A practice exam with questions from all 4 units, then the key facts from every lesson, unit by unit. For a deeper look at one unit, open its test review.

Unit test reviews

  1. Unit 1. Enterprising People and Entrepreneurs~20%
  2. Unit 2. Ideas and Opportunities for New Ventures~25%
  3. Unit 3. The Benefits of a Venture Plan~15%
  4. Unit 4. Developing and Completing the Venture Plan~40%

Practice exam

32 questions, the same number from each unit. Each one shows the lesson it comes from.

  1. Unit 1: Enterprising People and Entrepreneurs
    1
    What is the main feature that separates an entrepreneur from an enterprising person?
  2. Unit 1: Enterprising People and Entrepreneurs
    2
    Name one personal benefit of being enterprising.
  3. Unit 1: Profile of a Successful Entrepreneur
    3
    Which statement about Indigenous entrepreneurship is accurate?
  4. Unit 1: Young and Adult Entrepreneurs
    4
    A 16-year-old wants to sign a year-long lease for a market stall. What issue might arise?
  5. Unit 1: Ethics and Social Responsibility
    5
    After a big snowstorm, a student shovelling service triples its usual price. This is an example of...
  6. Unit 1: Entrepreneurs as Agents of Change
    6
    Match each innovation to the kind of change it represents.
    The snowmobile
    The moving assembly line
    Selling through an online store
  7. Unit 1: Assessing Your Entrepreneurial Potential
    7
    Marcus rates the 10 inventory statements as 3, 4, 2, 5, 3, 4, 3, 2, 4 and 5. What is his total score out of 50?
  8. Unit 1: Assessing Your Entrepreneurial Potential
    8
    A student scores 22 out of 50 on the inventory. What is the best interpretation?
  9. Unit 2: Invention and Innovation
    9
    Which of the following is an invention rather than an innovation?
  10. Unit 2: Invention and Innovation
    10
    Name the Canadian province where Cirque du Soleil was founded.
  11. Unit 2: Ideas, Opportunities and Trends
    11
    Name one social trend that could create opportunities for a student venture.
  12. Unit 2: Generating Ideas and Choosing One
    12
    A team rates a costly idea 5 for start-up cost because "it costs a lot". What is wrong?
  13. Unit 2: Marketing Research: Is There Demand?
    13
    A survey of 80 students finds that 20 would buy a $3 granola bar. The school has 900 students. Estimate the number of buyers in the school.
    buyers
  14. Unit 2: Analysing the Competition: SWOT, PEST and Porter
    14
    Which pair of SWOT categories is internal to the business?
  15. Unit 2: Is the Venture Viable?
    15
    Match each service to what it provides.
    Accounting
    Legal
    Banking
    Insurance
  16. Unit 2: Is the Venture Viable?
    16
    Which viability check is most directly affected by a city bylaw requiring a permit for street vending?
  17. Unit 3: Why Write a Venture Plan?
    17
    Which of these is NOT a purpose of a venture plan?
  18. Unit 3: Why Write a Venture Plan?
    18
    Why does a professional presentation (clean formatting, no spelling errors, consistent numbers) matter in a venture plan?
  19. Unit 3: Inside a Venture Plan
    19
    Match each Ride Ready item to the component of the plan where it belongs.
    Survey: 52 of 80 cyclists would pay $50
    The 45-minute tune-up checklist
    Flyers at the community centre
    Break-even at 40 tune-ups
    Two price quotes for used tools
  20. Unit 3: Inside a Venture Plan
    20
    Ride Ready is a service business. What does its production plan describe?
  21. Unit 3: Where to Get Help and Templates
    21
    Match each organization to the description that fits it.
    Futurpreneur Canada
    BDC
    Canadian Council for Indigenous Business
    Small Business Enterprise Centre
  22. Unit 3: Where to Get Help and Templates
    22
    Ride Ready's template has a section called "Retail location and lease". What is the best way to handle it?
  23. Unit 3: Evaluating and Revising the Plan
    23
    Ride Ready's sales are lower than forecast, and it will be two weeks late repaying Jordan's parents. What is the ethical response?
  24. Unit 3: Evaluating and Revising the Plan
    24
    Put the steps for revising a plan after a problem appears in the order of the problem-solving cycle.
    1. 1Implement the solution
    2. 2Choose a solution by weighing cost, time and effect
    3. 3Check whether it worked, and loop back if not
    4. 4Define the problem (bookings are behind target)
    5. 5Research the causes
    6. 6Generate possible solutions
  25. Unit 4: Resources, Rules and Forms of Ownership
    25
    A customer slips on an oily floor at Spoke & Wrench's garage and is injured. Which insurance covers this claim?
  26. Unit 4: The Production Plan
    26
    Spoke & Wrench uses 2 sets of brake pads a day. The supplier's lead time is 5 days and the owners keep 4 sets as safety stock. What is the reorder point, in sets?
    sets
  27. Unit 4: The Marketing Plan for Your Venture
    27
    A refurbished kids' bike costs Spoke & Wrench $30. What is the price with a 50% markup on cost? Answer to the nearest cent.
    $
  28. Unit 4: Financial Goals and Start-Up Capital
    28
    A student dog-grooming venture has one-time start-up costs of $4,250. Its monthly operating expenses are $1,150, and the owner wants a two-month operating reserve. What is the total start-up capital?
    $
  29. Unit 4: Financial Goals and Start-Up Capital
    29
    If Ava's Cycle Works' net profit came in at $2,175 instead of $3,105, what would its ROI on $8,700 of start-up capital be, as a percentage?
    %
  30. Unit 4: Cash-Flow Projections and Break-Even
    30
    What is the name for regular rises and falls in sales that happen at the same time each year?
  31. Unit 4: Financing the Venture
    31
    Put the steps of getting a small business loan in a sensible order.
    1. 1Accept the loan agreement and receive the money
    2. 2The lender assesses the five Cs of credit
    3. 3Make the payments on schedule
    4. 4Calculate start-up capital and how much must be borrowed
    5. 5Complete the venture plan, including the cash-flow projection
    6. 6Meet the lender and present the plan
  32. Unit 4: Completing and Presenting the Venture Plan
    32
    Which closing line best makes "the ask" at the end of a pitch to a lender?

Key facts by unit

Unit 1: Enterprising People and Entrepreneurs

Enterprising People and Entrepreneurs

  • Enterprising person: sees opportunities and acts on them with initiative, creativity and resourcefulness, in any role.
  • Entrepreneur: starts, organizes and owns a venture and bears its financial risk.
  • Intrapreneur: an employee who innovates like an entrepreneur inside an organization; the employer owns the result and bears the risk.
  • A profile of an enterprising person covers characteristics, skills, motivations, abilities, attitudes, aptitudes and contributions.
  • Every entrepreneur is enterprising, but not every enterprising person is an entrepreneur.

Profile of a Successful Entrepreneur

  • Common characteristics: initiative, persistence, calculated risk-taking, creativity, self-confidence, adaptability and goal orientation.
  • Key learnable skills: negotiating, interpersonal, money management, selling and planning.
  • Characteristics are personal qualities; skills are learned through practice, so most can be developed.
  • Entrepreneurs take calculated risks, not wild gambles.
  • Successful entrepreneurs come from every background, including First Nations, Métis and Inuit entrepreneurs.

Young and Adult Entrepreneurs

  • Common challenges for young entrepreneurs: capital, credit history, experience, credibility and networks.
  • Common advantages for young entrepreneurs: energy, tech fluency, fewer obligations, knowledge of the youth market and time to recover.
  • Credit history: a record of how reliably a person has repaid borrowed money; lenders use it to judge risk.
  • Futurpreneur Canada supports entrepreneurs aged 18 to 39; Ontario's Summer Company program helps students run a summer business.
  • Compare young and adult entrepreneurs using typical patterns, not stereotypes.

Ethics and Social Responsibility

  • Ethics: principles of right and wrong that guide behaviour; business ethics apply them to business decisions.
  • Five ethical practices: honest advertising, fair pricing, safe products, fair treatment of workers, and protecting privacy.
  • Social responsibility: a business's duty to everyone it affects, including the environment, the community and people with disabilities.
  • Social enterprise: a business whose main purpose is a social or environmental mission, funded by what it sells.
  • Ethical tests: Is it legal? Honest? Fair to every stakeholder? Would I be comfortable if it were posted online?

Entrepreneurs as Agents of Change

  • Agent of change: a person or organization that causes something important to change.
  • Local entrepreneurs affect communities through jobs, spending, leadership, sponsorships, scholarships and new services.
  • Three kinds of entrepreneurial change: new products, new methods of production and new ways of doing business.
  • Analyse effects on three groups: workers, consumers and business people, with positives and negatives for each.
  • The same change can help one group and hurt another.

Assessing Your Entrepreneurial Potential

  • STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result, then name the skills shown.
  • A self-assessment inventory rates statements (for example 1 to 5) and adds them to measure where you stand.
  • Use your lowest-scoring areas to choose development goals.
  • Ways to measure and develop interest: internet research, a mentor, interviewing an entrepreneur, job shadowing, a small venture, clubs and competitions.
  • SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Unit 2: Ideas and Opportunities for New Ventures

Invention and Innovation

  • Invention = something new to the world (Velcro, basketball, the Internet).
  • Innovation = a new or improved version of something that exists, or a new way to make, deliver or use it (cellphones, flat-screen TVs, coloured ketchup).
  • Every successful invention or innovation satisfies a need (must have) or a want (preferred way to meet a need).
  • An invention becomes a business only when an entrepreneur organizes money, people and marketing to bring it to customers.
  • Most ventures, including student ventures, are built on innovation rather than invention.

Ideas, Opportunities and Trends

  • Idea = a thought about a possible product or service. Opportunity = an idea that can become a profitable business.
  • The four opportunity tests: customers willing to pay, can be acted on, right timing, available resources.
  • The same need can be satisfied in different ways (Western or traditional medicine; organic or conventional produce), and each way can support businesses.
  • Economic trends (youth income, gig economy, online shopping) and social trends (aging population, cultural diversity, sustainability) create new needs and wants.
  • Ventures succeed by spotting an unserved need or want and responding to it before others do.

Generating Ideas and Choosing One

  • Brainstorming rules: no criticism, go for quantity, welcome wild ideas, build on others' ideas, record everything.
  • SCAMPER: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, Reverse or rearrange.
  • Idea sources: personal observation, the internet, magazines, conversations.
  • Decision-making model: define, list alternatives, set and weight criteria, evaluate, choose, act and review.
  • Weighted score = sum of (weight × rating); weights add to 100%, and every criterion is rated so higher is better.

Marketing Research: Is There Demand?

  • Primary research is collected by you for your question (surveys, observation, interviews, focus groups, test sales). Secondary research was collected by someone else (Statistics Canada, city hall, chamber of commerce, school board, industry reports).
  • Good survey questions are neutral, ask one thing at a time, and are specific; the sample must represent the target market.
  • Target-market characteristics: demographic, geographic, socio-economic, psychographic.
  • Buyers = % who would buy × population; Sales = buyers × purchases per buyer.
  • Survey answers overstate real demand, so adjust estimates down and confirm with a test sale.

Analysing the Competition: SWOT, PEST and Porter

  • Direct competitors sell the same product to the same customers; indirect competitors satisfy the same need in a different way.
  • Market share = your sales ÷ total market sales × 100%.
  • SWOT: Strengths and Weaknesses are internal (you control them); Opportunities and Threats are external (you do not).
  • PEST: Political, Economic, Social, Technological factors in the external environment.
  • Porter's five forces: threat of new entrants, supplier power, buyer power, threat of substitutes, rivalry among existing competitors. Stronger forces mean lower profit potential.

Is the Venture Viable?

  • A viable venture can realistically start, operate and earn enough to keep going.
  • Services a venture needs: accounting, legal, banking, insurance, consulting, web. Each adds a cost and reduces a risk.
  • Six viability checks: start-up capital, target-market size, technological feasibility, personal skills and interests, regulations, competition.
  • Go = all checks pass; Revise = fixable failures; No-go = a failure that cannot realistically be fixed.
  • A no-go is a good decision, not a failure: return to the decision matrix and test the next-best idea.
Unit 3: The Benefits of a Venture Plan

Why Write a Venture Plan?

  • A venture plan is a written description of a business idea, how the business will operate, who it will serve, and how it will make money.
  • Its four main purposes: a road map, a test of the idea on paper, a tool to attract funding and support, and a set of goals to measure progress against.
  • A formal, accepted structure lets readers find what they need quickly and shows the writer which parts are not thought through yet.
  • Banks want repayment; investors and venture capitalists want a return; suppliers want to be paid on time; partners want clear roles and profit shares; the entrepreneur wants a road map.
  • Return on investment:

Inside a Venture Plan

  • Order of a venture plan: title page, table of contents, executive summary, business description and mission, marketing research, resource analysis, production plan, marketing plan, financial plan, appendices.
  • The executive summary is written last, because it summarizes decisions made in every other section, but it is placed first because many readers read only it at first.
  • Marketing research proves there are customers; the marketing plan explains how the venture will reach them (product, price, place, promotion).
  • The financial plan holds start-up costs, funding sources, a projected income statement, a cash-flow projection and the break-even point.
  • Appendices hold the evidence: résumés, survey results, quotes, licences and detailed spreadsheets.

Where to Get Help and Templates

  • Small Business Enterprise Centres (SBECs) give free, confidential advice and workshops to people starting a small business in Ontario communities.
  • Futurpreneur Canada supports young entrepreneurs with financing, mentoring and free planning tools; BDC is a federal Crown corporation that offers loans, advice and free templates.
  • Indigenous entrepreneurs can turn to organizations such as the Canadian Council for Indigenous Business (formerly the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business) and Aboriginal Financial Institutions.
  • Women's enterprise organizations, settlement agencies and ethnocultural business associations offer mentoring and workshops for women and newcomer entrepreneurs.
  • A template is a starting point: adapt the headings to your venture, write in your own words, and check every number.

Evaluating and Revising the Plan

  • A venture plan should be flexible (has options), ethical (honest forecasts, disclosed risks, promises kept) and adaptable (reviewed and rewritten as facts change).
  • Conditions that may force a revision: a new competitor, cost increases, a supplier failing, a recession, regulation changes, and lower-than-expected sales.
  • Profit = units × (price − variable cost) − fixed costs. Break-even units = fixed costs ÷ (price − variable cost), rounded up.
  • Because fixed costs do not shrink, a percentage drop in sales causes a larger percentage drop in profit.
  • Community members (entrepreneurs, bankers, advisers, friends and family, customers, suppliers) test the plan from outside and point to sections that need revising.
  • A thorough plan lowers start-up costs, the amount borrowed and the break-even point, which reduces financial risk.
Unit 4: Developing and Completing the Venture Plan

Resources, Rules and Forms of Ownership

  • The resource plan covers land, buildings, capital, equipment, services and people needed to operate.
  • General liability covers harm to others from operations; product liability covers harm from what you made, sold or repaired; property covers your own things; business interruption covers lost income.
  • In Ontario, a business name other than the owner's legal name must be registered with the province.
  • A small supplier has taxable sales of $30,000 or less over four consecutive calendar quarters; above that, HST registration is required.
  • Sole proprietors and general partners have unlimited liability; corporation shareholders and co-op members have limited liability.
  • A partnership should always have a written partnership agreement covering contributions, profit split and what happens if a partner leaves.

The Production Plan

  • Every production plan follows input, process, output, with a quality check before delivery.
  • Time per unit is the sum of the step times; capacity = hours available ÷ hours per unit, rounded down.
  • Job production makes one custom unit at a time; batch production moves a group through each step; continuous production runs non-stop.
  • Choose suppliers on price, quality, reliability, terms and location, not price alone.
  • Reorder point = daily usage × lead time + safety stock.
  • FIFO means use the oldest stock first; just-in-time means stock arrives just as it is needed.

The Marketing Plan for Your Venture

  • A direct channel goes from business to customer with no intermediary; an indirect channel uses one, such as a retailer or consignment shop.
  • A promotion strategy states the goal, target market, message, tools, timing, budget and how success will be measured.
  • Markup % ; margin % .
  • Cost-plus starts from cost, comparative starts from competitors' prices, and psychological pricing adjusts the final number so it feels lower.
  • Penetration starts low to win customers; skimming starts high and lowers the price over time.

Financial Goals and Start-Up Capital

  • Four financial goals: break-even point, projected profit, return on investment and market share. Each should be SMART.
  • Start-up capital one-time start-up costs operating reserve.
  • Operating reserve monthly operating expenses number of months (often 3).
  • always state what the investment is.
  • using the same unit on top and bottom.

Cash-Flow Projections and Break-Even

  • Net cash flow total cash receipts total cash payments.
  • Closing cash opening cash net cash flow, and each month's closing cash is the next month's opening cash.
  • Profit is not cash: timing, non-cash expenses, loan principal, drawings and inventory purchases all make them differ.
  • Break-even units always rounded up to a whole unit.
  • Break-even in dollars break-even units price.
  • Units for a target profit rounded up.

Financing the Venture

  • Debt must be repaid with interest but keeps ownership; equity needs no repayment but gives up ownership and a share of profits.
  • Simple interest: , with as a decimal and in years (months ).
  • Total repaid principal interest; equal payment total repaid number of payments.
  • The five Cs of credit: character, capacity, capital, collateral, conditions.
  • Trade credit (e.g. net 30) lets a venture pay a supplier later, moving a payment into a later month.

Completing and Presenting the Venture Plan

  • The overview opens the plan: executive summary, mission statement, vision statement and goals.
  • Mission: what the venture does, for whom and why, today. Vision: what it aims to become in the future.
  • The executive summary is a one-page snapshot that appears first but is written last.
  • Revise so every number and assumption agrees across sections, e.g. start-up capital equals total financing.
  • Use spreadsheets with formulas for financials, word processing for the written plan, and presentation software and charts for the pitch.
  • A pitch ends with a clear ask: how much, for what, and how it will be repaid.