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Comment by medianama | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you should participate in a business plan contest if you are really serious about that start up.

The whole process is a distraction and doesn't bring any value. The downside is that you'll waste a lot of time filling templates and doing stuff that doesn't matter at this stage. You may also get demoralized if jury/public doesn't get it and thinks its trash. For all you know, they might not be the segment you plan to target..

If you are serious - Move forward and build the product and show it to real customers that you plan to target. That's probably the only way to know if it'll work or not.

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I actually thought about that before. I mean, if you're really serious about a project, do you really need some jury that, as you say, may just distract you? If you're really serious you'll find a way. BTW, same goes for that talent reality shows: if you really have talent and really want to sing for example, it's pretty sad that you waited until a show appeared. If it's really something you always wanted to do, how come you weren't actually doing it seriously?

But I applied for different reasons. Not only was I awaken from my no-idea-where-I'm-going state but I benefited also from various people coming to workshops to talk about different business subjects and how to write a business plan for investors. Some of this stuff was very beneficial to me at this point.

Now I know I will continue pursuing my plan no matter what happens on this contest (although the prize would be nice to get me started on my plan so I have something more than an idea to show to the investors).

At this stage - building the first version of the product is more important than writing a business plan. You don't want to change priorities because of some contest. Successful start up is more important than wining a beauty contest.

If you can build something that a few people find valuable then you can start thinking about business plan to scale it further... Without the basic product, there is no business and there is no need for a plan.

Of course, all this is based on the assumption that the first version can be built very fast without incurring any significant cost.

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