Techpreneurship: Why Do a Business Plan?

Jeff Amerine

Techpreneurship, with Jeff Amerine

(Jeff Amerine is an IA advisor and officer with the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. Each Thursday, his Techpreneurship blog will appear in INOV8. Drop him a line in comments.)

There’s a lot of debate these days about the virtue of startups having comprehensive business plans versus just executive summaries and a solid Powerpoint presentation.

In Silicon Valley, an executive summary with a good pitch might be enough.  In the center of the country and back East, not so much.  Not surprisingly,  investor expectations vary by region.

The key message in deciding what to do for a business plan is pretty simple:  know your audience!

Here are a few other things to consider.

The “business plan” is not nearly as important as the depth and strategy that goes in to the planning process.  Techpreneurs need to have clear direction, clear objectives, a sound business model, realistic financial projections, and an ability to communicate that story with impact.

The ability to communicate your value proposition in meaningful way to investors, customers, your team and potential hires will be crucial to your success.

Here’s a different approach to contemplate as you get started.

After you have researched, vetted, and scrutinized your next big technology-venture concept, take a stroll over to www.equitynet.com, sign up for free, and input your plan in their Enterprise Analyzer.

The Enterprise Analyzer guides you through answering all the relevant questions that you need to know in order for your business to succeed. In this mode, it is in reality an expert system that ensures you’ve thought through every critical aspect of your business.

The best part is the output can be the nucleus of a solid business plan plus much more.  Enterprise Analyzer will compare your probability of success, potential return, and risk profile against a set of parameters that have historically been key venture performance indicators.

In addition, you can use the tool to run a variety of scenarios to make sure your thinking is sound.

Once you’ve completed the Enterprise Analyzer process, you can make the resulting comprehensive report available to a variety of public and private funding sources around the state that have elected to use this tool as a standard part of the application process.  These groups have standardized on Enterprise Analyzer as both a means of ensuring decision-makers have a standard format for review and because of the value-added assessment detail the tool provides.

The tough yards are done at this point in your planning.  Next, spend the time to create a crisp, market data-driven executive summary.  Get it done in 1-2 pages.  From that, figure out how to tell your story in a compelling Powerpoint using Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule (10 slides - 20 minutes - 30 font).

Finally, crystalize your value proposition into a 30-second elevator pitch that everybody on your team can recite.  This is the key attention grabber that will get you the next customer or investor meeting you need.

The process I described above will give you a solid set of planning and presentation documents that you can build from as needed.  You can layer anything else you need (remember – know thy audience!!) on top of this good foundation.

For more on Equitynet, an Innovate Arkansas client, and the Enterprise Analyzer, check them out at www.equitynet.com.

Let me know your thoughts!

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