Write it Again

If you've ever been part of a startup of just about anything, you'll know that the end product is rarely what you set out to build. If you've read any of these blog posts, you'll know that Public Chalk is far from our original vision. The good news is that we really like what we've built. We like it a lot better than what we had started out to build. The problem is that now we are starting to shop our idea to potential investors, banks, and even friends who want to know what it is, exactly, that we built.

Just the other day, I sat down to "review" the business plan… that very same plan that hadn't been touched in about 6 months. I started updating the original plan and then realized how far we had evolved from our original plan. So, I scrapped the original plan and started a brand new plan.

Business planning aficionados will tell you that writing a business plan adds value in three major ways:

1. It serves as a document that you can share with anybody who wants to know what it is that your business does. This can be potential investors, family, friends, employees, and it can even get you and your partner(s) on the same page.
2. It serves as a place to lay out your financing requirements, potential revenues, future expenses, and just how you plan to make your business a raging success that will be able to support you and your employees while also paying back the bank and making the investors rich.
3. Finally, it serves as a learning exercise. This particular go-around was especially enlightening for me. While we had discussed most of the ideas I wrote, there were definitely some points of clarity that needed to be hashed out and a few new ideas that came to fruition just because they were obvious while I was writing. The best part about writing this document is that a large percentage of the functionality and features I discussed were based on actual software that has been built that we own that is actually working.

So, the business plan for Public Chalk has been written… again… or maybe for the first time. I hope my partners agree with the direction I think our company will head. If not, they can take a look at my optimistic financial projections - I know they'll agree with those.

Good luck updating/writing/keeping up to date your own business plan.

ETJ