10 Quick Tips

  1. Ask yourself who this plan is for and what it is for and then write it for that audience and that purpose
  2. Write a summary in less than a page that tells the reader all the critical points of who, what, when, where, how and why
  3. Tell the reader what you want them to do and what is in it for them
  4. Provide evidence for your claims about things like market size, growth, competitors, profitability, exclusivity etc. If you have patent protection for a revolutionary new process then provide details - if you have done this before then tell the reader - they need to be convinced that your assertions are believable.
  5. Nothing matters more than the team. Financiers back a team just as much as a business. They know the plan will not come out exactly as claimed but a good team will ride with the punches and adapt to new problems and take advantage of new opportunities. So give details of who you are and why you fit together so well.
  6. What financial commitment is the team making to this new project?
  7. The language of science is numbers but that is also the language of business. Provide figures. Provide believabale figures that make sense. And don't forecast to five decimal places - accuracy like that is impossible and no reader can take in such detail anyway.
  8. This is an exciting story, don't bore the reader. Don't give too much detail and don't make it too long. If detail matters, perhaps because it provides evidence then put it in an appendix at the back.
  9. ...and competitors? It is amazing how many people forget to mention competitors. referring to them provides the opportunity to explain how you will defeat them - not doing so leaves the reader wondering if this plan is just a fantasy.
  10. ...and risk, like competitors, is forgotten. Every business has risk. However successful it becomes there was a risk that it would all go wrong. The key person could have got ill, a key customer could have run into financial difficulty, a competitor could have come up with a better product, a volcano in Iceland could have erupted at just the wrong time...Address risk and how you would deal with things going wrong.
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