A step by step guide to writing a Business plan
April 11th, 2008 by admin ! 81 viewsDo you need to write a Business Plan? Many entrepreneurs tend to think that writing a business plan is a waste of time. The final outcome shall never be what you plan for. You will do well to read the following quote by Dwight Eisenhower, one of the most successful generals of world war-II.
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Advantages of writing a business plan When you sit down to write a business plan it makes you think critically about various aspects of your business. If you are multiple partners working together then it helps bring out any difference of vision to the front quickly. Last but not the least you need a well written business plan to get funded. (most of the time)
Put on your investor hat: Think like an investor, who is going to put money into the belief of couple of 20 odd years old kids. What will you like to know. Following is the list that I have identified for mywalkin.
- Business/Problem description: What business are you in? Is there a real problem you are trying to solve?
- Competitive analysis: Are there other players out there trying to solve the problem. Who are they? What will you do different?
- Market strategies: How will you get your initial users? How will you grow from there? How do you intend to monetize? Will you charge your users? Who are the target advertisers?
- Development and Operations plans Talk about how you will tackle the development issues. in my opinion, timelines are more important than the technical nitty gritties. However if you are developing a highly technical product then you may want to talk about the technology details as well. Show that you understand the challenges of developing the product/website
- The Team This part is really important for funding. Talk about the team members, their background and how they add value to the entire idea. It is a good idea to show that they are complementary to each other.
- Financial Factors This is the section of the business plan that many technical entrepreneurs dread. The idea is not to find the exact profit per year. It is more about checking all your assumptions about how you want to earn profit from your venture. Done properly this will help you to identify the important factors that will determine revenue growth. One such exercise helped us identify the importance of retaining users for traffic growth.
Do not obsess too much with data at the initial stage. Just go ahead and write a businessplan. As you get more clarity about various parts, go back to the plan and modify the plan and add more data and backings.
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