Recently I had the opportunity to review a stack of business plans as part of a screening process for a venture capital conference.
Each business plan represented a company hoping to present at the conference. The plans varied greatly in quality and substance. One plan got particularly little attention because the product description included the following phrase: "potentially award winning." At that point, I stopped reading. This was certainly the weakest boast I’d ever read in a business plan.
My experience tells me that what investors like to see in a business plan is clarity and substance. Clarity is a product of using language that describes your products or services to people who are not experts in your field. Substance comes from data and detail that demonstrate your key points; i.e., specific historical revenue growth data and documented market size data support your projections.
Just for fun, I've launched a web site to facilitate recognition of people, products, publications and corporations that are Potentially Award Winning.
Now, let me invite you to nominate a person, product, blog or company that you think is "potentially award winning" and tell us why.
(Please remember that this is a family friendly venue!)
Reminds me of the dot-com mania days when the rumor was going around that some young guy was able to raise a boatload of money based on his ability to convince people that although he didn't yet have a business or even an idea, he was a bright guy and would be able to come up with one.
Posted by: Joshua Steimle | January 3, 2007 9:59 AM | Permalink to Comment