Business Plan For Startups

Try this exercise: For now, your goal is to write something quickly and move to the next sections.

As you develop your business plan, you’ll find ways to revise this headline to more accurately summarize your unique business, vision statement, and the specific value you bring to customers.

More importantly, your entire business model relies on having enough paying customers to fuel your daily operations and growth.

For this section, we’ll list the groups of people who could possibly buy your product.

Focus on matching each problem with a specific solution.

Combined, these solutions form the foundational elements for you to focus on as you build your startup.

A nicely worded example is: Use this section as an opportunity to leave the office and interview real customers.

Ask people if they experience the problems you believe are worth solving.

This is the headline of your entire business plan so it should give a basic overview of your idea, and then get someone excited to hear more.

You may be tempted to insert a marketing statement here. If I sell yogurt, I might think my headline should be “smooth and creamy and organic.” If you’ve written a customer-facing statement like that, try rewriting it to communicate the key elements that investors, partners, or employees would ask to hear.