So, yay. I think I just finished my first pass at my first business plan. I did a search and came up with the SBA.gov guide on doing it. I’m still trying to decide if it is really worthwhile.

Part of my perception of these things is that it’s a bit of an academic exercise. I get the point that a biz plan is meant to help you crystalize the myriad of ideas in your head into a format that you can scrutinize objectively. It gives you a specific goal to shoot for and has language that makes you consider the true essence of your product, what kind of a team will get you there, who is competition, what financial resources will you require, and so on. I can see the value of this.

On the other hand, things change all of the time. I have been with several startups since 2006 now and my experience says that a biz plan is kinda overkill. I think Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule is probably the better format. It’s also really short, so that when you need to update things you can easily do so w/out having to edit a lot of text.