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December 07, 2006
The new Business Plan..
My partners and I were fortunate enough to be asked to present at OSU and my alma mater University of Oregon this week. We spoke to a few entreprenurial undergrad and masters classes- all of which were focused around building business plans. Considering Userplane never really had a traditional business plan and none of us had masters degrees - it seemed ironic. Regardless it allowed us to take look back over the past few years.
Userplane grew organically with guiding principals, a financial forecast and a product plan - not really a traditional business plan. As I look at more and more internet businesses - it seems the traditional business plan format often does not support the dynamic and often unknown aspects of a .com business. Planning of course is critical to any venture, but a traditionally formatted business plan I think fails to capture the potential value, success and failure in a .com business.
I would propose the following structure for .com startups:
1. Business Overview (simple)
2. Wireframes + product walk through
3. Revenue model (and lets keep the CPM's realistic ok)
4. Technical development plan including timeline / scaling for the first rebuild
5. Key Staff and equity distribution
6. Competitors
7. "How you get your first X users"
8. Exit or Maintenance Strategy
And if you add in Web 2.0 theory:
9. Widget distribution strategy including:
API strategy
MySpace integration
10. 3rd Party mashups
11. Coopatition
Posted by Michael Jones at December 7, 2006 01:57 AM