Big Bad Summary

It's been a couple of weeks since I've written anything here.  What can I say?  Raising money is boring.  In an effort to balance the homebrewing content, here's a timeline of our startup process:

-Summer 2006: loved my job at J.T. Whitney's, but the pay was lousy. Reasoned that if I wanted to earn a decent living, be in charge of a brewing operation and stay in Madison, I'd need to open my own business. Decided it would be a distributing brewery so I wouldn't have to mess around with food service.
-Late 2006 or early 2007: asked Jane to be my business partner. I'd brew the beer while she marketed and sold it.
-February 2007: Moved to Vermont for a 10-month job at Otter Creek Brewing so I could familiarize myself with bottling.
-Sometime in 2007: Vermont was beautiful, my co-workers were great and the pay was good, but the nature of brewpub work was a lot more fun. Jane and I decided the business would be a pub.
-December 2008: contract at Otter Creek ended. Moved back to WI and stupidly decided not to get a job so I could open the business faster.
-January 2008: began researching information and writing a business plan.
-February 2008: decided to call the business RePublic Brewpub.
-May 2008: met with a lawyer about business structure and hired him to write an operating agreement (the LLC equivalent of corporate by-laws).
-July 2008: began looking for locations in Madison. Reviewed projections with an accountant. Started writing a Private Placement Memorandum (PPM), aka a formal investment offering. Registered the business as an LLC.
-August 2008: received our initial operating agreement. Obtained an Employer ID number from the IRS.
-October 2008: Finished the initial business plan. Began meeting with securities lawyers to discuss investor solicitation strategies and ensure that our PPM complied with securities laws.
-November 2008: Started working with a commercial realtor.
-December 2008: retained a securities lawyer to review our PPM. Started working with an architect.
-January 2009: hired a graphic artist and a web designer. Opened a money market account to deposit investor checks. Finished the initial PPM and started looking for investors.
-April 2009: began talking with bankers about loans.
-May 2009: began looking for locations in Sun Prairie.
-June 2009: chose a location and began negotiating our occupancy.
-July 2009: began working with a construction manager and received our initial construction estimate.
-August 2009: secured the location. Registered as a future payer of Wisconsin business taxes. Received our initial floor plan.
-September 2009: registered our investment offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission as exempt under Regulation A, Rule 504.  Wisconsin's "25 or fewer non-accredited investors" exemption didn't require registration. Took a food safety course to comply with state regulations (the business needs a certified food manager. It'll eventually be Jane, but she won't be able to take the course for a while and we didn't want that to slow us down).

Throughout this process, Jane and I gathered knowledge to refine our business plan. Understanding what we're trying to do has definitely been the most time-consuming aspect of this project, and it's become obvious to us how the owners of brewpub chains are able to open their subsequent locations much quicker than their initial locations.