Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

I’ve started writing a business plan around a week ago for the main project I’ve been working on for quite a while, Project F, I previously took the Business Edge course from CompueBase around 2 weeks ago which lasted around 12 days, so I thought I should practice what I learned, its not the 1st time I write a business plan, I previously wrote one when I participated in the Arab Business Plan Competition around a year ago.
So what are the main parts of a business plan?

1. Executive Summary: The most important part of the business plan, usually 1 to 2 pages max, the executive summary should contain the gist of your business idea, why do you think the idea is successful, the summary of the financial’s and the future plans/exit strategy. Some add some sub points to the executive summary, those usually are (objectives, mission, vision and keys to success)
2. Company Summary: I guess this points explains it self, this section usually contains information about the company ownership, startup summary and the initial funding that you might need, you should also mention any current clients that your company might already have, their numbers and their geographic location.
3. Services: This section includes all of the services your business will be offering, target prices for those services, target clients/audience for each service, this section can also include any service differentiators your company has that separates it from the competition (if there is any).
4. Market Analysis Summary: Now comes the fun part! in this section, you analyze your market! lol, its usually easier said than done, in this part you put your target market in segments according to their age, income level, geographic location or whatever, it mainly depends on your business idea, its usually nice to use percentages and pie charts in this part, other sections that may go in this part are service business analysis, target market segment strategy and competition and buying patterns.
5. Strategy and Implementation Summary: Well how are you planning to implement your strategies? implement your business? how are you going to differentiate yourself? this part usually includes your competitive edge, marketing strategy (important!), Sales strategy, your sales forecast (this part is usually all tables and charts) and the Milestones (important steps in your business, opening the office, launching your marketing campaign)
6. Management Summary: Who’s the CEO? CFO? technical officer? its very important to mention those things in your business plan, especially if you have partners, everything should be clear from the start, what parts of the business each partner will handle and the responsibilities each partner has, personnel plan is also an important section to be included in this part, this section includes your plans to hire people, numbers and time frames and what jobs those employees will be handling.
7. Financial Plan: Fixed costs like rent, server fees and things like that are usually mentioned here, insurance expenses, marketing expenses and any other kind of expenses, this is followed with the startup funding table, which is basically the costs that you need to get your business on it feet, this is followed with the break even analysis which means the time that you expect you will earn back the money you spent in the startup funding costs, that is followed with the projected profit and loss table (most important if your seeking funding which is the most cases with business plans) and lastly the projected cash flow (also very important for funding), all of those parts usually consist of tables and no text. You can also add the projected balance sheet if your feeling up to it.

Thats about it I guess, you will usually end up with 20-30 pages after your done with all of those parts, of course that depends on how much your into writing