The Pitch-Then-Plan Business Planning Template

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The Pitch-Then-Plan Business Planning Template
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About This Template

• This Pitch-Then-Plan template was originally
  presented in the Book The Art of the Start by
  Guy Kawasakifounder of Garage Ventures and part
  of the original Apple Macintosh development team.
• To use this template, read then delete all of the
  slides that have a black background. Complete
  the slides that have a blue background.

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About Entrepreneurship

• Doing, not learning to do, is the essence of
  entrepreneurship.
• Remember, no one ever achieved success by
  planning for gold.
• The hardest thing about getting started is
  getting started.
• As an (emerging) entrepreneur, you should always
  be sellingnot strategizing about selling.

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Pitch, Then Plan

• Many entrepreneurs try to perfect their business
  plans and then pull PowerPoint slides out of it.
• This is backwards thinking. A good business plan
  is a detailed version of the pitchNOT a pitch as
  a distilled version of the business plan.
• If you get the pitch right, youll get the plan
  right. The opposite is not always true.

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The Proper Process

• Throw together a pitch that contains the ten
  slides presented in this template.
• Try it out on some mentors, colleagues, and
  relatives. Do this about ten times.
• Get the team together in a room and discuss what
  you have learned.
• Fix the pitch.
• Start writing the plan.

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Why This Is The Right Process

• Your pitch is more important than your business
  plan, because it will determine whether youre
  rejected or generate further interest. Few
  sophisticated investors will read a business plan
  as the first step.
• A pitch is easier to fix than a business plan
  because it contains less text.
• You wont get feedback on your business plan.
  Frankly, it may not even be read. You will,
  however, get immediate reactions to your pitch.

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Explain Yourself in The First Minute

• Never has a presentation been given where the
  audience has said to itself, I wish the speaker
  had spent the first fifteen minutes explaining
  his life story.
• While youre busy warming up, your listeners are
  inevitably wondering, What does their
  organization do?
• Do everyone a favor Answer that question in the
  first minute. Once the audience has learned what
  you do, they can listen to everything else with a
  more focused perspective.

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Answer The Little Man

• Nothing in a pitch is more powerful than combing
  an answer to So what? with For instance,

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Observe The 10/20/30 Rule

• Here is a good guideline to follow for the
  content, length, and font of a good pitch. Its
  called the 10/20/30 rule
• Ten slides
• Twenty minutes
• Thirty-point font text

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Dont Use A Top-Down Model

• No bootstrapper in his right mind would do a
  top-down forecast. Heres a typical top-down
  model
• There a 1.3 billion people.
• 1 percent want internet access.
• Well get 10 percent of that potential audience.
• Each account will yield 240 per year.
• 1.3 billion people X 1 of the market X 10
  success rate X 240/customer 312 million.
• (And as an added bonus, look at how conservative
  these percentages are!)

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Instead, Use A Bottom-Up Model

• Heres an example
• Each salesperson can make ten phone sales a day
  that get through to a prospect.
• There are 240 working days per year.
• Five percent of the sales calls will convert
  within six months.
• Each successful sale will bring in 240 worth of
  business.
• We can bring on board five sales people.
• Ten calls/day X 240 days/year X 5 success rate X
  240/sale X 5 salespeople 144,000 in sales in
  the first year.

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Organization Name

• Your Name
• Title
• Contact Information
• Sunday, November 25, 2012

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Problem

• Describe the pain that youre taking away. The
  goal is to get everyone nodding and buying in.
• Try to personalize the problem.
• Example If you go to five travel sites, you
  will be presented with 5 completely different
  offers. Visiting each site and comparing trip
  packages is time-consuming and confusing.

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Solution

• Explain how you take away this pain. Ensure that
  the audience clearly understands what you sell
  and your value proposition.
• Example We are a discount travel website. We
  have written software that searches all the other
  travel sites and collates their price quotes into
  one report.

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Business Model

• Explain how you make money who pays you, your
  channels of distribution, and your gross margins.
• Generally, a unique, untested business model is a
  scary proposition. If you truly have a
  revolutionary business model (unlikely), explain
  it in terms of familiar ones.
• Think of eBay We charge a listing fee plus a
  commission. End of story.

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Underlying Magic

• Describe the technology, secret sauce, or magic
  behind your product.
• Specifically, how does it create value for the
  customer.
• Example The delivery of a wines message,
  its bouquet and taste, depends on the shape of
  the glass. The secret to Reidel glasses is that
  there is a perfect shape for every beverage.
  Through ten generations of glassblowers, we have
  discovered the timeless forms of glass to convey
  the wines message in the best manner to the
  human senses.

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Positioning

• Describe your position in the marketplace.
• Competitive Positioning What stories are the
  prominent competitors selling?
• Creative Positioning What story will you tell
  that customers will find either more important or
  different than the stories already being told in
  the market?
• Example Wal-Mart is telling the story of low
  prices everyday. We telling a story of
  convenience.

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Marketing and Sales

• Explain how you are going to reach your customer
  and your marketing leverage points.
• Convince the audience that you have an effective
  go-to-market strategy that wont break the bank.
• Example We can reach the majority of the
  primary buyers of our educational software
  through two national trade shows and four primary
  regional shows.

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Competition

• Provide a complete view of the competitive
  landscape.
• Never dismiss your competition.
• Everyonecustomers, investors, employeeswants to
  hear why your good, not why the competition is
  bad.

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Management Team

• Describe the key players of your management team,
  board of directors, advisors, as well as any
  major investors.
• Discuss how your team completes the management
  trinity production, marketing, and financial
  expertise.
• Discuss what are the holes in the team and how do
  you plan to fill them.

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Financial Projections

• Provide a three year forecast containing not only
  dollars, but also key metrics such as numbers of
  customers and conversion rate.
• This should be a bottom-up forecast taking into
  account long sales cycles and seasonality.
• Making people understand the underlying
  assumptions of your forecast is as important as
  the numbers youve fabricated.

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Milestones

• Explain
• the current status of your product or service,
• what the near term future looks like,
• any accomplishments to date, and
• how youll use any money that you are trying to
  raise.