What happens when you write a business plan? A slide created by Abhishek Jain and shared under creative commons licence.

1. Business Plan: Experiences
What happens when you write a business plan
Abhishek Jain
abhishek@zeusnumerix.com
Presentation available under creative commons license:
Freely copy give credit

2. Overview
 Business Plan Basics
 Background
 Customer / market analysis
 Competitor analysis
 Our resources
 Future outlook
 Financial requirement
 General
 Raychand and Gyanchand
2 Biz plan experiences

3. Disclaimer
 I am not founder, was involved very late in biz plan making
 I cannot tell how to write a successful biz plan
 There are N number of ways to screw up a biz, I can cover very
few of them
 Many of them have to be discovered
 I have a habit of PJ but they convey the point
 Use of he/his is because I am unfortunately a human male
 No matter how many times it is told, entrepreneurs will usually
make the same mistakes for the first time; don’t worry
 This is strictly personal opinion and not my company’s so any
brickbats are on me!
3 Biz plan experiences

4. Purpose of the Business Plan
 Is always unclear
 For incubation
 Be quite honest in projections
 For a VC/Angel
 Be generous; you will be caught anyways
 For internal consumption
 Whom are you lying to
 In all above cases be honest in the DNA of the company being
created; wrong DNA is like a child with bad habits
4 Biz plan experiences

5. Background
 Talks about
 How the company is forming/was formed
 Members
 Area of work
 Growth for already established companies
 Pitfalls
 Not everything can be revealed
 Prof Abhishek Jain / Dr Abhishek Jain (I am not a Prof)
 What will I not do
 Too much of projections; poker face doesn’t help
5 Biz plan experiences

6. Customer/Market Analysis
 Who is my customer
 Location of the Customer
 His social status
 Selling proposition
 Emerging trends
 Pitfalls
 Not considered generally in initial plan; very important
 As techies we always forget how our target will behave
 Will this be a spoilsport
 Love for our technology may blind us
 10% syndrome
6 Biz plan experiences

7. Competitor Analysis
 Who is my Competitor
 Where is he
 Potential competitor
 Gap between us
 Strength and weakness
 How to fight them
 Pitfalls
 May not consider all of them
 May overlook
 Not easily found out
 Overestimation
7 Biz plan experiences

8. Our Resources
 What do I have
 Financial
 Human resource
 Assets
 Intellectual Property (IP)
 Pitfalls
 These are usually limited and unaccounted
 Are they really a resource; can we project them
 Outdated mostly
  Do we own some
8 Biz plan experiences

9. Financials
 Financials are different for not started and start-ups
 Profit and loss
 Burn rate and break-up
 Future projections
 Revenue streams
 Pitfalls
 P&L is hard data do not play with it
 Burn rate is OK, but break-up usually creates tussle
 Don’t talk in thousands of crore easily
9 Biz plan experiences

10. Future Outlook and Fund Requirement
 Both go hand in hand
 Blossoming future outlook and small fund requirement ????
 Can we diversify
 What are the opportunities
 ACTION PLAN – always missing
10 Biz plan experiences

11. General
 Make a plan because it is required by somebody!
 Outsource a biz plan?
 Data collection
 Idea value
 Different partners
 Action orientation
 Marketing focus
 Time spent in making
 Criticism of biz plan
 Motivation
11 Biz plan experiences

12. Raychand and Gyanchand
 People who have never opened a company
 The Mr Know alls
 They may motivate or be pessimistic
 Both cases they misguide
 They are all out there
 Call themselves Gurus
 How to identify them
 Tall claims with not fact backup
 Me my and myself
 RUN RUN RUN
12 Biz plan experiences

13. Read
 Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey Moore (For start-ups)
 Mahanayak – Viswas Patil
 Maverick – Ricardo Semler
 Why men don’t listen women can’t read maps – Pease
 Foods that fight pain – Dr Neal Barnard
 I Dare – Kiran Bedi
 Wings of fire – HE Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
 Straight from the Gut – Jack Welch
 In search of excellence – Thomas Peterson
 Built to last – Jim Collins
 Good to Great – Jim Collins
 Scientific American Magazine
13 Biz plan experiences

14. No Pain No Gain
 If you cannot write a plan you cant do a business
 A bad plan means many years lost
 Bad plan strong competitor
 Even politics affects us; know your surroundings
 Plan B: Can we adapt
 1965 war
 Happy writing !!!!!!
 For an exercise write a life plan or even life partner plan!!!!!
14 Biz plan experiences

15. Thank You