"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.

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.

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

It may sound strange, but I think that it is actually a pretty good idea. Needs to be coupled with thoughts on what direction ou are moving in etc. of course.

But the general thought isn't bad at all.

I carry a hard copy of it everywhere. When anyone asks what I'm working on, I hand it to them. If they don't "get it" immediately, I know I still have work to do.

That doesn't sound strange - that sounds like something you'd do if you wanted to create a business :)

Btw, what is your website url?

Unpublished. But you'll be one of the first to see it.

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.

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".

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.

1) Write scripting language for mobile phones.

2) ....

3) Profit!

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

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..

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

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.

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.

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

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

1) Not fail

2) See 1

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

what's a business plan?