Exhaustive Checklist for your Startup Business Plan

You woke up one fine morning with an out of the world Startup Idea which could become a booming business. 

What next?

Should you rent out a place, hire a team, tell them what you want and set out to meet investors to fund your dream? Ok, let me complicate it more for you. Which one of these should you do first?

Sure, you know that a Business Plan needs to be in place before you start off on your next big venture. But what is a Business Plan anyway? Is it some gibberish that is to be written in a Word Document so that you can claim that you have it when stakeholders ask you about it? Or should it be this sacrosanct document needs to have not just your dreams, but a clear action plan to achieve those dreams. 

Your Startup Business Plan should be an actionable entity. Whenever I have created Business Plans for Startups whom I have consulted I have named it as “Company X Bible”. I tell them, this is your Go-To document for everything related to your dream. Your thoughts, your guide, your plan. If you write it and forget about it years later, it really makes no sense spending the time and energy to create it. 

Here are the must-have elements without which your Business Plan is incomplete. Well, I would never say a Business Plan is complete anyway. If you don’t feel the need to keep revisiting your Business Plan and updating it with new thoughts all the time, then it’s time you need to re-evaluate your dreams again.

Make sure you check off each item on this exhaustive checklist before you declare it usable. 

COMPLETE STARTUP TEMPLATES TOOLKIT

VISION

This section should articulate your hopes and dreams for the business.

MISSION

The Mission should describe how you intend to achieve your vision. For example:

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

List and describe each product and/or service your business provides. Focus on your customers’ perspective (and needs) by demonstrating the problem you are trying to solve. 

REVENUE MODEL

The pricing strategy section needs to demonstrate how your business will be profitable. Summarize your projected revenue and expenses:

MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Who your target audience is, where you will find customers, how you will reach them and, most importantly, how you will deliver your product or service to them. 

MARKETING PLAN

This section describes how you intend to get the word out to customers about your services.

FINANCIAL PLAN

Ensure you enlist an Accountant to create a Cash Flow Statement, Funding Requirements

TEAM PLAN

This section should list key members of the management team, the founders/owners, board members, advisors and a detailed Team Hierarchy Diagram.

PRODUCT RELEASE PLAN

What will be the phases involved with timelines and milestones.

ACTION PLAN

Briefly describe the action items needed to achieve your objectives, using milestone dates. For example : By “date,” a fully equipped office will be completed.

Hope I could throw some light on what are the core elements expected in a Startup Business Plan. This is at a very high level and there are various aspects to be addressed in each point. In fact each of the elements is a plan in itself which is to be worked out in detail. Templates for each of those plans are mentioned at relevant places above. Then the summary is to be updated in the final Business Plan. The Fill-In-The-Blanks template mentioned below is a comprehensive summary which is generated on the basis of critical questions answered in each step.

If you can add value to this in the comments section, my readers and I would be greatly obliged!

A Fill-In-The-Blanks Template to summarise your entire Startup Business Plan

Check out the Business Plan Template

An Easy-To-Use Template where you can answer specific questions about your Vision, Products and Services, Revenue Model, Market Research, Marketing Plan, Team Plan, Financial Plan, Action Plan and your Business Plan is ready to give deep insight to all your Stakeholders.

Here’s how you can get your entire vision presented in a Business Plan within hours

• Answer all questions for each section like Vision, Marketing Plan, Financial Plan, Product Plan
• Once done, create a copy
• Remove all the questions from the copy and leave only the answers
• Save it as a PDF and present it to Stakeholders to express your Startup Vision in detail

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