Several years ago a client asked me to read a business plan he had written to raise the funds needed to take his invention to market. The plan described a kind of helper spring to improve the handling of heavily-loaded pick-up trucks. In the marketing section of the plan, he referred to the market opportunity as “within the nearly $100 billion auto […]
Chinese Math
Posted in Business Plan Tips, MarketingBy David Kaplan - March 29th, 2009 Comments Off on Chinese Math
At the peak of Silicon Valley ‘s bubble, back in January of 2000, Guy Kawasaki wrote an irreverent article for Forbes Magazine about the poor quality of business plans that inexperienced entrepreneurs were submitting to venture capitalists back in those days. The article notes a number of common mistakes, most articulated in Guy’s signature tongue-in-cheek style, but […]
Look at Your Venture as an Investor Would
Posted in Business Plan Tips, EntrepreneurshipBy David Kaplan - November 1st, 2008 Comments Off on Look at Your Venture as an Investor Would
When you buy candy, you think of it as something sweet. When you sell candy you think of it as a product. A similar dynamic is at play when entrepreneurs write business plans, except that all too often it works backwards. The seller (entrepreneur) sees the sweet upside and the potential investor views the risk […]