A year ago I took A course of business models from Model-Z (It is good). It was my starting point of learning of a new direction in possible business paths.
in the situation, we have today – when a new disruptive businesses created quickly.
business landscape changes every 1.5 years or sometimes a couple of weeks.
the regular business plan is not adaptive and is not good for the fast changing situation we have today.
There was a research about how to have more probability of success methodically in a new business and in old business more efficiently with less wasted energy, that also costs money.
It’s called lean startup and business canvas.
It answers questions like
What customers really want?
What to change?
How can you be more successful ahead of making a product?
How to be competitive?
what’s next to do, in a methodical and adaptive to changes, way.
If you are a familiar with plans and planning you probably know that plans change and become absolute quickly.
sure it takes a time to sit down and learn each thing and then to implement it. but it is what it is all that it takes to have more probability of success in a business.
At the end, I had made an outline for a business plan.
A Modern business plan consists of all kinds of canvases, And they are below
the business model canvas
Helps to see your weaknesses, to see what is missing, for example, that you don’t have any monetization strategy.
http://businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas/vpc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84LymEs67Y – https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jobs+to+be+done
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MBW9TwKYyNCzlTOATNhTWLrR_bUmbd7Kj9Y7ugiUCB0/view
A sub-item of this is “Value proposition canvas”
http://www.peterjthomson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Value-Proposition-Canvas.pdf
http://mightywisemedia.com/media/VP-Canvas-Triggers_B1.pdf – http://www.businessmodelinsider.com/customer-segments-proposition-first/
You write there what product do you have now, and it supposed to change every time you learn something in your business.
It helps to plan the product market fit, helps word complete definitions of product parts. Actually, helps to produce the text for sales and advertising of the products
and from “experiment map canvas”
https://www.udemy.com/the-enterprise-lean-startup-survival-guide/learn/#/lecture/445484
It’s basically what your work plan, the idea is to record what experiments it is possible to do. the experiments are on things you can act on them. like: If experiment’s result is so then I will act so.
There are all sorts of tricks
the idea of ‘lean startup’ is that you do a cheap experiment of what you want to build instead of building it. there are all sorts of tricks of lean startup to test things quickly without a long way to a product that might be in the end an unnecessary waste of resources in case people would not like the product. instead, every time you want to build something you can ask yourself how can I validate interest quickly. with things like dummy and fake features (while counting clicks) and fake product pages and fake buy buttons just to validate if people want it. before building it. you might sacrifice few customers but it is just a few for the greater good anyways you should have a lot of them so that is OK.
(I think I saw some ideas of experiments in the course I wrote above in experiment map but I can’t recall exactly where)
There are also tricks of the business canvas. it is possible to do a business canvas for all your competitors and do creative mixing of the “ingredients of the map” between you and your competitors and identifying the weaknesses of competitors and you can complete missing features for your competitors. you can provide a service or collaborate with them. like you can provide a product that helps you do better customer service or locking that others don’t do or have. And expanding your client base to those clients that who have same pains – also maybe to create the same product to other customers.
To learn more about it. It is possible to search on YouTube every one of the terms below
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=business+model+canvas
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=value+proposition+canvas
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=experiment+map+canvas
Budget Planning
http://www.lynda.com/Business-Accounting-tutorials/budgeting-process/383051/421071-4.html
Strategic division of resources (like percent of the time and money that will be invested in some field) helps achieve results in strategic places and not just one thing. like perfecting one filed and losing on others – The perfect is the enemy of the good. Sometimes on some things you can say “I am will put dummy code that does nothing” or “do not do that at all.” And so you can leave something in the middle as closed and continue to the next thing. And so to complete all the important things to the required minimum.
There is another example of this, for example, if you do not plan the time of the day and don’t divide it by section. it results in much work only on one thing, not on other things. If you plan the time of day, for example in the evening for the next day. then you complete far more things. That’s how you do a lot of things. And you are not drawn into one trying to do something perfectly for no justified reason. It somehow related to planning ahead when will you finish and knowing to finish. It is even more important than knowing to start.
The budget can be only planned ahead, and one that you can stand with easily. Easily I mean to take a lot of time in accordingly to statistics and observation,
for example, if it is a programming. to get a finished result, every programming time invested becomes multiplied by 3.5. I used 3.5 simplistically, I mean it could be a different your’s multiplier, it takes into account bug fixing, corrections, talking time. programming time is usually proportional to the number of lines of code.
Summary
So put a business plan?
I think a business plan should be a plan for you what will you do, what is the status of the business for you and information for your current investor, updating it every time something changes. and information to potential investors.
- To any document, usually, you write an introduction of general background like what led to it and why it is important.
- For example, the partners are friends for a long time and developed several products together, and we have a Unicorn idea. there are bad things. they are like this … for many people, it is important to not have them …
- A summary page. After you done writing everything. reread the document and Write key points from the document.
- Figures from the field. All kinds of information that you know, like profitability, the probability of success, similar companies you know that have failed and why. similar companies that succeeded.
- Review the available resources (business model canvas).
- Write what will you do in your startup?
- (value proposition canvas)
- Usually, you think and invent some product that will suit some customers. then you test each part of your guesses that you have invented one by one (experiment map). if you do lean startup it is probably a good idea to pretend you have a product and go sell it and to validate that people buy your product before you make it.
- distribution plan and how will you test it.
- Then how will you manufacture your product?
- how will you do after sale support in your startup?
- how will you dissolve the business in case? (dissolution takes money and some effort)
- Write your thoughts and in advance decisions. How will you manage in the reality of limited resources – “Budget and Planning”. what will you fail? what are the priorities? who will you communicate to?
- a plan how will you contact customers
- How will you find customers for experiments? for example ads.
- How will you find first customers
- How will you market
- How will you keep in touch with customers
- What are the inputs and what are the outputs of business
- How will you find employees
- What will the business create, maybe to think about byproducts
- Is there a positive arbitrage? (Is there a profit from difference between cost of production and revenue).
- Risk Management
- What are risks that exist
- What are the risks of risks exist in a startup the investor takes on himself? investment is usually paying for an experiment. and experimentation.
- for example, you have developed a software and the market did not want to buy it
- The market was too small.
- How will you minimize risks, (maybe by dividing the project into smaller parts, and bring an expert for every small part)
- How will you know that you have succeeded or you have failed (a trigger to give money back to investors or ask what to do with what is left)
- How will you act to behave responsibly about management of investors money
- How would you be with your finger on the pulse you manage the money properly and not play with it?
- What are the steps that with them you will reach the targets, how the progress will happen to products, that have value for investors (maybe it is preferred to validate with investors what is valuable for them and what is expected from you, or just put a title with talk about it at the meeting comment and talk about it at the meeting).
- How will it happen that you meet the targets and what will you do to report to investors that you are standing in pace with the targets
- (value proposition canvas)
There are also other canvases, (for anyone familiar Canvases) but I think they do not belong to a business plan:
sales canvas
https://www.udemy.com/startup-selling-sell-more-stuff-free-version/
https://www.udemy.com/startup-selling-build-your-sales-process/
MVP canvas
http://shimon.doodkin.com/2015/11/06/mvp-minimal-viable-product/
(maybe related to Experiment map)
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