Torturous business plan

Original Author: Brad Feld

Translated by: Ding Ding

Original Link: The Torturous World of Powerpoint

Since the 1990s, I have seen tens of thousands of business plan presentations. The vast majority of them were terrible. Unfortunately, this is not Microsoft PowerPoint's fault (even Freelance couldn't solve this issue).

The responsibility lies with the creators of the presentation. Edward Tufte, an authority on "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," believes that PowerPoint is absolutely evil and harmful. Websites like Beyond Bullets help mitigate these issues, but since I need to cover very detailed content in a short amount of time (usually 30 to 60 minutes), I think it's necessary to elaborate more on what constitutes a "good" plan.

A few years ago, Chris Wand (who worked with me at Mobius Venture Capital) outlined some key questions that must be addressed during discussions with venture capitalists. If all entrepreneurs instinctively considered and answered these questions, things would be much easier.

Here are the questions that need to be answered:

1) What is your vision?

* What is your long-term vision?

* What problem are you solving, and for whom?

* Who do you want to become in the future?

2) What is your market opportunity? How big is the market?

* How large is your target market, and how fast is it growing?

* How mature (or immature) is this market?

* Do you have the capital to become one of the top two or three players in this market?

3) Introduce your products and services

* What are your products or services?

* What problem do they solve for users?

* What makes your product or service unique?

4) Who are your customers?

* [...]