Skip to main content

Why your Business Plan should just be a PowerPoint

By
David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners has some great advice on why Business Plans – at least those presented to VCs – should be in PowerPoint format. He also has some nice tips on what the slides should talk about. There is also a nice discussion happening in the comments section of the post where David critiques a BP submitted by one of the readers.
1. The cover slide should offer complete contact info, and a tagline if you've got it. One of the benefits of a powerpoint plan is that it forces you to perform the critical exercise of describing the business in very few words.

2. A mission statement is a good idea to present, unless it's rather obvious from the tagline (as in BlueNile.com: Education, Guidance, Diamonds and Fine Jewelry). Select a mission statement that is achievable, but not yet achieved....

A clear mission statement also includes a clear idea of what the startup will NOT do. Here are some nice ones...

"Prolexic will create and dominate a new network service category that defends web applications from distributed-denial-of-service attacks."

3. Introduce the team...

4. Without yet getting into your product or service, describe the nature of the problem you address. Emphasize the pain level and the inability of incumbents to satisfy the need.

5. Introduce your product, and the benefits (which should obviously address the market problem you just described).

6. Elaborate on the technology or methodology you have developed to enable your unique approach...

7. Show off early customer or distribution progress: numbers, logos, testimonials.

8. Sales strategy. Show the expected cost of customer acquisition.

9. Competitive landscape...This is also a good slide on which to show market size estimates.

10. Earnings Statement, historical and forecast...



UPDATE: Guy Kawasaki on his new blog points out the "The ten topics that a venture capitalist cares about" in the PowerPoint:

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

Popular posts from this blog

Startup Funding: The Luck Factor – By Sanjay Anandaram

By
We hear all the time about the amount of money that's available to fund startups. For example, that private equity funds invested over $ 3.3 billion in just the first 3 calendar months of the current year. That VCs are always looking out for good deals as most of the plans they see merit little or no attention. That they invest in about 5-10 a year out of the 500-1000 business plans they get. And so on…But the truth is that a majority of deals that get funded are those that come through a referral or because the VC knows (of) the entrepreneurs; its natural because VCs don’t have the time to look at all the plans that they get to pick out the Rediff, Naukri, or Tejas Networks. Deals that come through some trusted source or through a trusted filtering process are therefore valued higher and rise to the top of the pile of business plans. It is therefore easy to see how many plans don’t get funded. And also how competitive the race to secure funding really is. Given this situation, wh
Read more

How I Raised Funding - Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry

By
You have to be confident and shameless while crowdfunding. Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry shares on how to succeed in crowd funding with Venture Intelligence in this  interview. Priyanka also candidly shares how the team built Wishberry, raised funding from top angel investors like Rajan Anandan, on pivoting, and difficulties in raising capital for entrepreneurs operating in niche spaces not chased by VCs. Q: What does Wishberry do? Priyanka Agarwal : In its latest avatar, Wishberry has pivoted into crowd financing of low budget films (INR 1-5 Cr). We are essentially trying to create an internet platform for investment opportunities for HNIs in films including Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, or films targeting the global diaspora. L-R: Co-founders Anshulika Dubey & Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry Given that you are building a marketplace, how did Wishberry solve the Chicken and Egg problem? Beyond the “all or nothing” model what did Wishberry do to pull in more artistes and inves
Read more

Profile of Career Forum founder

By
The Starship Enterprise column in The Economic Times (not available online), featured Sujata Khanna of entrance exam training institute, Career Forum. The company, which started with just seven students in Pune, now covers over 39 cities reaching over 15,000 students. ...The most important milestone I think was in 1995 when we decided to incorporate Career Forum into a Company. This brought in a lot of professionalism and we also went for expansion. ...Strong technical network is our unique selling proposition. We have a strong ERP system running across all centres in all areas of business from distribution to logistics... Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.
Read more