It\u2019s the traditional foundation stone of a new enterprise, but the humble business plan has undergone a bit of an image change in recent years. Some even claim that start-ups don\u2019t need to bother with one.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In an interesting debate played out on US site Inc<\/i> recently, entrepreneur Will Hsu claimed start-ups should jot some ideas onto a whiteboard and get out there into the marketplace and start selling and then adjust accordingly.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest risk in starting a company is the so-called \u2018product market fit risk\u2019 \u2013 it is the risk that the target customer will not purchase or use your product at the price you have decided to charge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cAn entrepreneur’s time and energy should be put into solving that problem by talking to as many customers as possible and continuing to iterate the end product and the pricing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Time spent on writing a 40-page business plan would be better spent talking, selling, and understanding customers and their needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Countering this, law firm partner David McShea pointed out: \u201cMany business ideas sound great \u2013 until you really stop and think about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cWriting a business plan may actually convince you to dispense with or change your original business concept and create a better, stronger business concept instead. It is much cheaper to do this on paper than with a payroll.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an interesting debate that may convince you to go out all guns blazing without a plan, which has its merits.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But even if you have a particularly nimble, fast-moving start-up, it\u2019s worth putting together a basic business plan, to satisfy the legion of investors, bank managers and partners that will demand to see one before they back an untested start-up.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Put simply, Australia isn\u2019t quite ready for an army of business plan-free ventures. This may well change, but until then, you need to get a basic business plan up and running.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So how do you go about writing your first plan? Business mentor Dr Colin Benjamin says that you should think about your plan in the same way that a chef thinks about their next menu.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has to have all the ingredients that the customers want and have what\u2019s necessary to make the restaurant succeed as a business,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cA good business plan is first and foremost a guide to doing what has to be done to make your venture work, then it is an aide to getting the support of others, but ultimately it is the path to the core job of any business \u2013 creating new customers and rewarding the investors.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThe right size is not a question of the number of pages or an excess of detail but how easy it is for the reviewer to see that you have been through a thorough planning process.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Story continues on page 2. Please click below.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s the traditional foundation stone of a new enterprise, but the humble business plan has undergone a bit of an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}