9/20/2011

Business planning is the topic of Chapter 5.  Most of the details are oriented towards those who are seeking investors or venture capitalists and I think even some of those are too far.  Do we really need an example of what a cover page looks like?  At any rate, the process is valuable for anyone.  The text does mention that many business concepts fail because a lack of understanding by the owners of the business model.  While that is valuable, other details such as a tagline seem to be overkill in my opinion.  Another thing that I keep remembering is an interview I saw with Rob Howard, the founder and CTO of Telligent in Plano, TX.  Rob talks about how he spent many hours writing out a business plan to a set of specifications he found and how proud he was of the final revision. However, six months later, reality was nothing like what the business plan has provided for.  He also talked about how difficult it was to jettison that business plan since he had worked so hard on it.  This could be a trap for nascent ventures as well.  If they follow the business plan because they don't want to 'waste' all the time investing in creating the plan, they could be ignoring the reality of running the company.