Writing a business plan is difficult, time consuming, tedious, but completely necessary.
I often get asked why I felt the need to write a business plan if I already had funding. The answer is that the process itself is such a helpful exercise in channeling your thought process. You might have a fantastic idea, the market might be clearly huge, and the margins might be intuitively enormous, but if you don’t put it all into paper you can easily miss potential pitfalls, roadblocks or other such things. Most of the times, the obstacles can easily be prevented if you are aware of them.
Secondly, by writing a business plan you assure yourself that you will think of everything and not miss opportunities.
Thirdly, a business plan gives you an easy to distribute platform for feedback. As soon as I had written ours I sent it off to our board of advisors. I was fortunate enough to have some incredible people, with much more experience than I have, who gave me incredible ideas.
Finally, and most importantly, a business plan lets you define a strategy. You might think you have one, but until you test it from the vantage point of marketing, financing, business development, and the competition, it really is not a strategy, but a hopeful path to your goal.
One final piece of advice: If you are planning to write a business plan, make sure to co-author it, because having someone to challenge every idea and word will lead to some great conversations and a much more solid strategy.
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