Business Plan – 8-12 pages
00: Cover (this cover letter or email should always include the ask)
(In a full package, your Executive Summary, 2-pager, would be here)
0: Table of Contents
1: Company Purpose & Overview: Define the company or business in a single declarative sentence
2: Problem: Describe the pain of the customer (or the customer’s customer) that you will reduce or remove. Outline how the customer addresses the issue today.
3: Solution – Business Overview, Products and Services: Demonstrate your company’s value proposition to make the customer’s life better. A few sentences describing what your solution is to the market pain, plus high-level description of how it works. Show where your product physically sits, if essential. Provide use cases.
4: Market size & Marketing plan: Identify and profile the customer to whom you cater. Calculate the total accessible market, serviceable market and share of market within the serviceable market.
5: Why Now? Set-up the historical evolution of your category & define recent trends that make your solution possible and probable.
6: CompetitionSector: List your competitors & competitive advantages. Your current situation in relation to them and future competitors – what might emerge as your market develops.
7: Product: Product line-up (form factor, functionality, features, architecture, intellectual property). Development roadmap the status of your product: complete and in production, in early trials, etc.
8a: Business Model: Revenue model, pricing, average account size and lifetime value, sale & distribution, customer pipeline. How you’ll make money and grow your business.
8b: Operations: How does the operation work? What are the most specific needs, resources within the team and local context and milestones or sticking points for growth.
8c: Risk & Defensibility: A few short paragraphs describing how your intellectual property or market position will be protected from competitors, how you’ll mitigate risk for financiers.
9: TeamManagement & Advisory Board: Founders and Management. Board of Directors/Board of Advisors. Local, staff, volunteers/interns, other advisors. It’s ideal to show a diagram of relationships. Other Company Information: Location, Founding Date.
10: Financials to Date & Projections:
P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, Cap Table, The Deal
Funding History & Current Debt
Total Money SoughtFor What Use – this is what you wanted in your ask
Source of money sought – patient capital or equity investor, grant, donor
Funding history if any, money sought, source of dollars sought: venture capital/angel investors/loans/grants/etc., anticipated use of funds, last year’s revenue, three-year forecast, monthly burn rate, projected cash flow positive date.
11: Growth Plan & Key Milestones: First Year, Year 3 &Year 5: A timeline of the deals and achievements that are accelerating and will accelerate your company’s growth. Be specific in describing the stage these deals and achievements are in currently. Be specific about points at which you make significant steps forward, including connections to market or cash flow/revenue increases.
12: Impacts: economic development, environmental and social impacts – how will this be measured
13: Endnotes: Why Engage As an Investor?