Ask YC: Resources for Writing Business Plans?

6 points·sabat··3 comments

Yeah, I know: a lot of startups don't need business plans. You can bootstrap.

Some ideas don't fall under that tent, though, and will require some funding -- therefore, a business plan.

Does anyone know of good examples online (real-world plans would be awesome), guides, wisdom, advice? Please share.

The last time I checked there weren't actually any good books or websites on writing business plans. There is a business plans for dummies book, but it's really bad.

The startup wikia has a decent template and some links:

http://startup.wikia.com/wiki/Business_plan

There are lots of different templates. The important thing to remember is that you shouldn't feel compelled to put everything on the template into the actual business plan. A lot of the categories just don't apply or are of trivial importance for any given startup. The best way to learn is to find examples. The libraries at most business schools will have examples of student created business plans. Since ideas tend to overlap, there will almost certainly be several business plans that are similar to your idea or are at least in the same genre.

The Thousand Rand Challenge materials, while not the format you want, ask some useful questions:

http://startup.wikia.com/wiki/Thousand_Rand_Challenge

Sorry for the disjointed nature of this post, I just had a quadruple espresso and I don't normally drink coffee.

I've used the Scotiabank business plan writer before and fount it to be pretty good. It is an online app now but the last time I used it, the writer was a standalone program. I imagine that it's the same though.

http://cgi.scotiabank.com/planwriter/scotia_sb.html

Here's a good starting point...

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/07/how-to-write-a-.html

There's tons of gold in his blog. Go mine it.

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