At my university there is a course on entrepreneurship, and this small book is the learning material.

I feel I have learned a lot about planning for a startup from this book. Some things that years of reading HN posts have not taught me.

It sort of led me to believe starting a business without writing a business plan with these 8 chapters (so at least ~8 pages) is a fools errant, and at best is taking needless risk.

Is there anyone who has experience with writing a good business plan before going into business, is there a sort of business that just wouldn't benefit from this at all? Why?

The 8 chapters are:

summary: An executive summary of the entire plan, for the busy VC to get a small idea of what the plan is all about.

idea: The business idea in detail, what is the opportunity, the proposed value?

team: Who will be leading this venture? Why?

marketing: How will people know about you, how will you make money?

business system / organization: How will the product/service be built/delivered? What will happen when it's done, will it ever be done?

schedule: When do you think what will be done, what decision will then be made?

risks: What can go wrong? What will you do when it goes wrong?

finance: How much money should I give you? What will you spend it on?