business plan or powerpoint?

Here's the transcript from an IM conversation I had with a friend today regarding business plans.

friend: hey, you have any business plan docs laying around?
friend: that you could share
TimothyJ: you want some sort of template?
friend: no, looking for a real one
friend: that people actually used
friend: and that doesn't suck
friend: i can find templates, but I'd like to see what a real one looks like
TimothyJ: ok. let me see if i can dredge an early copy up. i'm not a huge fan of business plans however. I think there's an internal document you create for brainstorming purposes and then you boil that down into slideware
TimothyJ: you can pretty much use Guy Kawasaki's art of the start as a template for that
friend: ah, interesting
friend: well most of the standard stuff that people put in there is BS
friend: projections of revenue, hiring, etc
friend: but seems like investors want it
friend: even though they know the #s are wrong
friend: way way wrong
friend: vision isn't BS of course
TimothyJ: state your problem, why you are uniquely positioned to solve it, IP, market size, how much it will cost to ramp, a good plan for doing that ramp on a milestone basis
friend: ya, sounds reasonable
TimothyJ: yeah, the investors want to see it's a big market to go after so that's the top down market analysis
TimothyJ: then you do a revenue swag based on percent of market with some sort of ramp the investors can swallow
TimothyJ: first year is to nail down early adopter accounts (and build out product)
TimothyJ: not big revenue expectations
TimothyJ: 2nd year (in your model) would be channel sales relationships and proving out the sales/delivery model are repeatable
TimothyJ: 3rd year is revenue growth, showing scalability
friend: that sounds like a reasonable model
TimothyJ: brainstorm all that, condense it into a deck, and then go practice pitch it to a friendly vc

As you can see, pretty straight forward stuff. I think people get too caught up in creating a comprehensive business plan. In a software startup you need a thesis (the problem), you need to figure out why you have a clear chance of building out what's needed (risk mitigation), and why this grand product will cause people to separate themselves from their money (high value). I think the business plan is a great exercise in force thinking through the business. It just changes so many times over the course of the first 18 months or so it's better to think in terms of slide decks or mind maps.

Term Sheet Terms: On Good Terms

We've been actively fund raising again, so I think it's time to revisit some of the terms you will encounter in term sheets. Term sheet terms are largely market driven and reflect the availability of capital during the time you raise funds. If you're raising money in a pullback environment (like I did back in 2001-2002) time frame the terms are going to be fairly conservative and not very friendly to existing share holders. If there are a lot of investments being made, then money supply exceeds demand creating competition for deals and friendly terms to existing share holders. I think we've swung back to somewhere in the middle from the lean times of my last company and so, happily, terms are looking better these days.

The interesting negotiating terms are:

• pre-money valuation
• option pool size
• liquidation preferences
• dividend
• seniority to previous round
• no shop clause
• redemption
• drag along rights
• anti-dillution

I'll post on a few of these in the coming days

Me and VC

We've been meeting with quite a few venture capitalists lately in the endless quest for funding. New York, Boston, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle and back home. You start to dream about the pitch at this point. The feedback comes back. Too early, too late, too far away, market is too small, market is too broad to stay focused enough. All the usual no's that come with the territory. The one I can't stand is geography. Why would you even meet if you knew geography would be an issue? I know the real answer to that question is that it's an easy way to say no but it's also a very lame way to say no.

Please give us REAL feedback. We spend a lot of time traveling and discussing our business with you. We deserve a straight answer!