Business Plan
At the simplest level, your business plan needs to communicate enough about you, your venture, and the investment opportunity to make investors want to meet you to learn more. If it leaves too many unanswered questions, it won’t adequately convince anyone of anything except that you don’t know how to write a business plan. If it’s too long and boring, you won’t hold the attention of your reader. As in the Goldilocks story, it has to be just right.
General Comments about Business Plans:
The format for a business plan will differ depending on the nature of the business and the purpose for the plan. For that reason, canned business plan formats rarely work because they have an uncanny knack for giving the reader the distinct impression that they’re looking at an amateur effort. The fact is, and this should be no secret, the thought process involved in creating the plan is as important as the plan itself. Shortcuts don’t help.
Neatness counts! Don’t even think about submitting a handwritten or, for that matter, typewritten business plan. In this day and technological age, there’s simply no excuse for typos, white-out, or misspellings (we always have to have the computer’s spelling checker check that one). If you can’t manage to make your business plan look professional…the plan that’s supposed to help your raise thousands or millions of dollars…how are you possibly going to manage a successful business?
Tips for structuring your business plan:
• Start with an attractive cover, and we don’t necessarily mean a pretty picture. Put the most impressive thing about the venture right up front–52% Return Expected On Negotiated Sale To IBM In Four Years.
• Include your name, address and phone number on the cover page.
• Assign a number to each copy of the plan that you distribute, and record recipients name and telephone number.
• Include a table of contents and tabs for major sections.
• Include a statement, early in the plan (perhaps on the cover or in the table of contents), something like this: The contents of the plan are confidential and proprietary. Readers are not permitted to copy or distribute the plan, in whole or part, without the express consent of the Company.
• Make your plan easy to read and easy on the eye by choosing an easy-to-read font and font size.
• Use bold type to emphasize key points or, better yet, use about a third of each page width for bold margin notes that summarize key points.
• Use charts and other visual aids to summarize data (but make the background data available too).
• Be sure to include a last-revised-date on the plan.
• Number the pages.
• Put it in a three ring binder or some other binding that will make it easy for the reader to make copies if they want to show it to associates.
• Include any appropriate disclosures and disclaimers needed to comply with securities law.
• Be sure to document your sources of information. Sentences that start with: Experts agree…are always suspect.
• Name drop–if impressive people or companies use, endorse, or have anything to do with your product or company, be sure to mention them…but assume they’ll be contacted for verification/opinions.
• Include testimonials, relevant articles, or anything else that supports your contention that you have terrific prospects for success.
• Include photos or samples of your product if feasible.
• Include a list of customers, suppliers, investors, industry experts and other references.
