Comments on: Anatomy of a Good Business Plan – Combination of Strategic, Operational and Tactical Plans!

By: Pradeep

Pradeep — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 06:37:36 +0000

Hi Ishwar,
Could you please share a template or advise from where we can get a format. Know what to write but was looking for a better format to express myself in better way that could make sense. I am looking for angel investors btw.
Thanks

By: business plan-structure, sections and financials-what makes a good bplan |Technology and Business Startups in India

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:42:21 +0000

[...] of a course called Business Plan Workshop at the INSEAD business school. And given the last column (Anatomy of a good business plan), I thought it would be good to also talk in some detail in this and the next columns about one of [...]

By: Ishwar

Ishwar — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:36:43 +0000

Thanks Sanjay, the basics of financing can certainly be undertaken without a finance person on the team.

I was more worried about whether investors would look for depth of understanding like Equity / Debt, Understanding of financial ratios etc. Your answer certainly puts that to rest.

Additionally the point about cycle times is extremely interesting. Certainly a takeaway for me

By: korde

korde — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:13:59 +0000

Sanjay – Most of startups do not have a revenue figure in mind. Infact, if you look at startups like youtube, flickr – they didnt have a revenue model.
How does one take account of that?

Success parameter could be no. of users over a period of time, but VCs will typically lask – how will you make money

How does one handle that?
I look fwd to your comments.

By: Sanjay Anandaram

Sanjay Anandaram — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:07:46 +0000

Ishwar, thanks for reading & for your observations. You don’t need a finance person to figure out how much money you need to achieve milestones that you’ve set for yourself . You need business savvy. If you have truly done a bottoms-up analysis about what it takes to build your offering, to sell, to acquire, support, and retain a customer, and if you factor in cycle times required to hire, build, sell etc, you can get a pretty good picture of what is required. And that’s what investors are looking for – do you know your business?

By: Ishwar

Ishwar — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:52:14 +0000

Sanjay, My first business plan faced exactly this situation. Tons of data on the industry. It had a lot on the actual idea, but it kinda got lost in the maze, due to excessive information.

I think the next one has been kept really simple, no fancy data on industrynumbers. The topline and bottomline are derived out of a bottom up approach. How many visitors, how many conversions expected, average value expected etc.

This is better in comparison to a top down approach which assumes industry value and a certain share of category within a certain period of time.

Now it looks more realistic to me. But what does one do, if we don’t have a finance mind on the team. We have no idea of how much debt vs equity, Roadmap to an IPO / acquisition etc. Brownian motion is highly possible

Business model and bottomline can be determined but the aspects above are tricky if you haven’t specialised in it.

Wonder if a plan void of this will still be looked at by Investors positively, because the way our team was looking at it – this competency can be something the investor brings on board