

Ask YC: do you have a business plan? - mixmax

Do you have a formal business plan with budgets, market research, marketing plan, etc. or do you simply have an idea that you work on, hoping that somebody will like what you build?<p>Personally I write concept papers that discuss what the product is, why it is great, who will use it, and a rought sketch of where the money will come from.<p>What do you do ?
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davidw
1) Write scripting language for mobile phones.

2) ....

3) Profit!

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mixmax
To add a bit to the above.

Having done startups with investors I know that formal business plans are
invaluable to them, preferably printed on nice glossy paper with lots of
whitespace and nice pictures.

But when it comes to actually doing what is stated in the businessplan after
you have your funding things seem to change so fast that either you have to
spend a lot of time updating it, or else just leave it and go and make your
product work.

I tend to opt for the latter.

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NoBSWebDesign
Funding and outside influences aside, writing a business plan is still one of
the most important aspects of developing your product. When working on an
idea, if my product isn't important enough to warrant a couple days pouring
over the market research and putting something together, then the idea isn't
worth developing.

This is especially true if you have more than one person working on the
project. You need to make sure everyone stays focused on the big-picture goal,
and that everyone is equally aware of the target market and projections for
the company. You don't have to get incredibly specific in the plan though.
Feature changes shouldn't need to be included in updates to the plan. But if
your project is changing directions or target market, then the changes should
be researched and plan updated accordingly.

That being said, I almost always leave out financial projections until later
in the game after v1 has been launched, because even most investors will know
that this section is complete BS before that point.

Oh, and all of this should of course be filed under "IMO".

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wastedbrains
The closest thing we have to a full business plan is all the work done for the
YC App. The first time we did it we didn't see the character limit so our app
was something like 10+ pages. We edited the whole thing down but kept the
original and called it our pseudo business plan.

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sgoraya
Well, in my humblest of opinions, a full fledged business plan is not really
necessary until you are looking for angel and institutional funding - Although
you do not necessarily need a fully detailed business plan for angels, I think
it adds a level of professionalism and lets potential investors know that you
have thought out your business

If nothing else, putting together a BP is a great exercise for you and your
team to go through to minimize risks \--

My company has ~15pg BP at the moment

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Stubbs
I'm currently writing one.

My business is struggling to get a merchant account because it's basically a
3rd party processing app, which most banks wont touch with a barge pole.

The business plan will be used to illustrate what the business is, how we
expect it to make money and how we expect to try and grow the business. Using
that we can hopefully either convince a bank that we're not the fraud risk
they assume we are, or attract an investor to give the company more
respectability..

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fiaz
1) conceptualize

2) implement (keeping in mind things will change)

3) get feedback (indicating how I will change things)

4) scrutinize what I have conceptualized or implemented against feedback I get

5) continue on to either step 1 or 2 depending on what happens in step 3 and
what I choose is the focus of step 4

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fiftyone
I got one, I used Business Plan Pro software, pretty friggin cool if you ask
me. I had no idea about how to do a business plan before but it's pretty good
at guiding you threw it.

www.BusinessPlanPro.com

It's like 100 bucks but ... * cough ... * cough ... Usenet Cough.

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Hexstream
1\. Build it; 2\. They come; 3\. Profit!

I don't have any formal business plan, but I already know exactly what my
audience is, why they NEED what I'm building, and how they'll find out my
product exists. It's a niche thing.

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DaniFong
That depends on what you mean by the word 'a'.

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nostrademons
We have one, but it's more a general roadmap than a specific plan that we
follow line-by-line.

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alaskamiller
1) Not fail

2) See 1

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edw519
"what the product is, why it is great, who will use it, and a rought sketch of
where the money will come from"

This may sound strange, but I use the first page of my website as my "business
plan". No sense working on anything else until it answers all of these
questions in an instant.

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brlewis
The first page of my web site answers those questions...

<http://ourdoings.com/>

...but I don't think that constitutes a business plan, not by a long shot. I
need business plan help, big time.

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NSX2
The hard part is not writing a business plan. The hard part is tossing all the
junk out.

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sonink
its fine as long as your business plan is not a plan for you to build your
business ..its only purpose is to look good on paper and get the money
in....somethings are best use and throw

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wumi
what's a business plan?

