Expert Advice on the Importance of Business Plans

Tim Berry

Tim Berry is a widely recognized authority on business plan writing and business planning. He is an expert business planner as well as creator of Business Plan Pro, a comprehensive business planning software. His advice and expertise is renown, as he is also a best-selling author and prolific writer, whose blogs can be found at TimBerry.com, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Forbes, Amex Open Forum, and many others. (2015)

As a member of an angel investor group, Berry looks at over 100 business plans a year, and has a clear idea of what is required for a business plan to be successful:

-Have a good summary in the beginning of your document, as many investors won’t even look past that

-Highlight your management team so that your investor can weigh their risks

-Show signs of high market growth potential with clear numbers

-Have all your ducks in a row, and make sure that these important details are in the summary

-Engage your reader with stories. Be brief; yet offer a deeper look into the players of the company and their vision

All of these suggestions are key in forming a worthy business plan, and I plan to implement them all. Keeping things concise while making your summary an interesting story that will pull in your reader is incredibly valuable insight. That is my intention with my business plan.

References:

Writing your business plan just got easier. (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2015, from http://www.paloalto.com/business_plan_software/features/expert_guidance#ixzz3nIh3xNus

Berry, T. (2005, September 11). What Investors Look For in a Plan. Retrieved October 3, 2015, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/79834

Berry, T. (2014, July 14). Hard Truths About Business Plans and Angel Investors. Retrieved October 3, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-berry/hard-truths-about-busines_b_5585232.html

Will Hsu

Will Hsu, co-founder of the LA-based start-up accelerator MuckerLab, is another expert who has something to say about business plans. Hsu created MuckerLab, an angel investor crowd-sourcing site for pre-seed technology companies. MuckerLab offers more than just funding though, “MuckerLab is a mentorship-driven, pre-seed startup accelerator focused on working with a small number of exceptional technology entrepreneurs to help them launch and scale their businesses through collaborative ideation, productization, go-to-market, marketing, user acquisition, sales, legal guidance, and fundraising.” (MuckerLab, 2015)

Given his expertise working extensively with startups on every level, he is a source that I wanted to research more. He had some radical but relevant input. Here is what he had to say:

-Don’t write a business plan. Get a few whiteboards and hash-out the same items you would put into a business plan

-Go right to creating your product and selling it to your customer, so you can gather data, then take it back to your whiteboard and edit, edit, edit…until you get the right results, risks, and strategies

-For courting investors, create a short 10-15 page presentation instead. Highlight data that helps them understand how much product-market risk has been mitigated

- Rank what you believe could be major reasons your business will fail; e.g. "my price is too high". (Zetlin, 2013)

According to Hsu, investors are looking for actual data of your company’s success in the market…so give it to them. Run some launches and get going with what you can, by cutting out the months of research required to write a business plan and have a faster time to market, building their products and selling to their customers. I can definitely appreciate this perspective, and have already been taking this approach whilst I research and write my business plan. I have already created a presentation pitch for one of my businesses. And when I meet a worthy investor, I will be able to demonstrate tangible evidence of our projections and vision of the market with a thorough yet concise business plan. I love the idea of the white boards and have been planning to purchase a few for this exact reason.

Hsu and Berry have given me much validation for the approach I was planning to take with my own business plan. I am learning that “the business plan” is much more of a stylistic document than I’d thought. It is not so cut and dry. Creativity is required.

References:

MuckerLab. (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2015, from https://angel.co/mucker-lab

Zetlin, M. (2013, January 31). Write a Business Plan or Not? 2 Experts Debate. Retrieved October 3, 2015, from http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/should-you-write-a-business-plan-2-experts-debate.html