Venture Initiation and Entrepreneurship

Helpful insight from Paul Graham’s useful talk, “How to Start a Startup“:

Some angels, especially those with technology backgrounds, may be satisfied with a demo and a verbal description of what you plan to do. But many will want a copy of your business plan, if only to remind themselves what they invested in.

Our angels asked for one, and looking back, I’m amazed how much worry it caused me. “Business plan” has that word “business” in it, so I figured it had to be something I’d have to read a book about business plans to write. Well, it doesn’t. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you’re going to make money from it, and the resumes of the founders. If you just sit down and write out what you’ve been saying to one another, that should be fine. It shouldn’t take more than a couple hours, and you’ll probably find that writing it all down gives you more ideas about what to do.

There are a several helpful–and free–online resources to help entrepreneurs prepare their business plans.  One is a free online copy of The Book on Business Planning, written by the guy who wrote the software program Business Plan Pro.   So if you want to read the book, you can either pay $19.95 for the paperback or read it here.