Oregonstartups.com Blog

I’ll be giving a seminar later today at OTBC on “How to (Prepare for and) Write a Business Plan”.  One drawback of most of the business plan seminars I’ve seen is that they review what goes into a plan, but don’t really address the big question: what’s the homework that needs to be done before you sit down and start writing?

It takes some research and thought to put together a compelling, believable plan — one that will stand up to investor scrutiny.  Here are the 12 steps I put together for today’s seminar:

1. Start with a compelling, unmet need
2. Define, size and segment the market – and prioritize the segments
3. Validate the market
4. Value price the product or service
5. Analyze the competition
6. Clarify your sustainable competitive advantage
7. Decide on a strategy
8. Decide on a sales and marketing approach
9. Map out a 3 to 5 year action plan (this drives the assumptions for your financial projections)
10. Develop 3-5 year financial projections
11. Test and iterate 9 and 10 until the action plan & the projections are believable
12. Your ready to write!

I’m sure one could add more steps, but these cover some of the most important aspects of a business plan.  Whether you put it together in a complete business plan, or put together a compelling executive summary backed up by detailed financial projections and underlying assumptions. the work listed above is what it takes to be confident you have a business – and to convince an investor of that.  It doesn’t take months to do.  It can be done in weeks. And it’s worth doing!

You can find an extensive calendar of events of interest to entrepreneurs in the Portland area (and elsewhere in Oregon) at Calagator.org. Here are some options we thing would be of interest to entrepreneurs.

Events in the coming week

Mon – OTBC FastTrac TechVentures
Tue – Founder’s Coffee
Wed – OctoberBEST
Wed – Demolicious! – Portland Web Innovators
Thu – TechAmerica: 3 Ways To Triple Your Revenue
Thu – Portland Angel Network – Nov. meeting application deadline
Thu – OHSU: Achieving Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records
Fri – DrupalCamp PDX 2009
Sat – MIPO: From Napkin Idea to Product in Market

For your Calendar – Events that are coming up

10/13 – OEN Workshop – Selling Stock in Your Company
10/14 – OEN PubTalk: – Seed Oregon – Round 1
10/16 – Bend Venture Conference
10/17 – Beaver Barcamp 4
10/20 – SAOpdx: StartUp Exchange Meeting
10/21 – Lunch 2.0 at Elemental Technologies
10/21 – OTBC: How to Write a Business Plan
10/21 – POSSE: Open Source Software in the Cloud
10/22 – OEN SwapMeet – October
10/23 – Corvallis Startup Weekend
10/28 – OTBC: How to Define, Size and Segment a Market
10/29 – OEN’s Venture Northwest 2009
11/05 – Willamette Innovators Night 2009
11/05 – OEN Workshop: Social Media with Ryan Lewis
11/11 – OTBC: How to Validate your Market
11/12 – OEN PubTalk: – Seed Oregon – Round 2
11/18 – CEO Roundtable – Go to Market Strategies: Reaching your customers with limited resources
11/18 – OTBC: How to Value Price your Product or Service
12/10 – OEN SwapMeet – December