{"id":535,"date":"2011-10-18T23:04:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T03:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/?p=535"},"modified":"2024-06-06T23:26:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T03:26:14","slug":"thoughts-on-business-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/18\/thoughts-on-business-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Business Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At last night’s Digital Media Marketing class, one of our guest lecturers, JB Rudelle<\/a>, serial entrepreneur and current CEO of criteo.com<\/a>, gave his perspective on startup business plans: they’re good for two things, self-assurance, and convincing other people to leave their comfy jobs and join your cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sentiment very much reflects the presentation given by Eric Hippeau<\/a> a few weeks back – the pitch that intrigues Eric is simple, understandable, answers a few basic questions, and that’s it. With regards to disruptive innovation, it seems perhaps there’s a paradigm shift with respect to the use of business plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s in a Business Plan?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A startup’s business plan is supposed to detail the vision, value proposition, revenue and expense models for the next 5+ years, competitive (SWOT<\/a>) analysis, management team resumes, and operational details that when combined define how a new company is going to launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my limited experience (case studies and Stern group projects), the business plan is a fairly lengthy and involved document. It’s one of those reports where you fudge the margins and flood with diagrams in a hope it then meets the minimum page requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plan vs Pitch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The business plan is often used to support a pitch for venture capital financing, for example. Yet, as noted, it seems that more often than not<\/a>, common wisdom dictates that the business plan is a tool for the entrepreneur, more than anything else. Writing a comprehensive plan requires answering the tough questions, and having such a plan is evidence that those questions have been considered, even if the answers might be crap. Consider noted entrepreneur Steve Blank’s comments on business plans<\/a>: “they’re a waste of time.” Stern Marketing Professor Jeffrey Carr<\/a> once noted to me that having a business plan is all well and good, but having it just allows for checking off that box that says you have it – that you, the entrepreneur, have done your homework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder whether things have changed since 2005<\/a>, or whether this perspective is held by just a minority of the VCs in the industry. There’s so much literature and in the news as of late similar to Ready, Fire, Aim<\/a>, that maybe in the new attention deficit era of modern technology, taking the time to write or read a lengthy business plan is too disruptive to the idea itself; that is, by the time the analysis is done, someone else who skipped the writeup has already beaten you to market (though whether it’s a with a better product is a different but very much related question).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At last night’s Digital Media Marketing class, one of our guest lecturers, JB Rudelle, serial entrepreneur and current CEO of criteo.com, gave his perspective on startup business plans: they’re good…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-topical"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/pexels-photo-1181345.jpeg?fit=1880%2C1255&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1SwZ6-8D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1732,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/1732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.craigperler.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}