Business Plan Essentials

An investor has two goals when reviewing a business plan. An investor is seeking to
maximize their return and minimize their risk. For this a typical investor would look
into three sets of areas.
1. Opportunity: Opportunity is connected to time. It will evolve as time passes, so
there needs to a discussion of how the solution or product could evolve over time.
An investor typically invests in a company in financial increments and there is some
element of risk being addressed at each increment.
2. Management Team: What the investor is really looking for in the management
team is the ability to handle new and unexpected situations. This goes beyond the
ability to implement the current plan or possession of skills in some operational area
of the company. This is known as agility, the ability to adapt simultaneously to many
different business environments.
3. Marketing Plan: Typically, when starting a company, the product is new, the
technology is new and even the market may be new. In the eyes of the customer,
this is a high-risk situation when compared with staying with the status quo. The
marketing plan usually has a focus on how the product will enter the market and
how sales will be generated.