Business Plan Hyperbole

Business Plan Hyperbole

This will be the greatest blog post ever. Its unique content and message has no equal, and we have not heard of any potential competitors  The idea behind this post is so important, I'm somwhat afraid of your reading it without signing our ironclad NDA. However, I've been told that most Venture Capitalists won't sign such things, so I'll trust you to keep it quiet. In any case any potential competitor will be deterred by our soon to be filed provisional patent application, with its broad claims.

This post should revolutionize the way in which business plan information is delivered. Rather than just overstating the facts and underestimating any problems, we'll completely ignore both.

It's only now, with the advent of Web 4.0 thinking and the new "new bubble VCs" that we can be confident in helping fund the hyperbolic claims being made in this and most plans that we received.

The key message, then is that if you want your plan to be heard above the clutter, by all means use the language of this post.  But if you want me to listen to your message, please tone it down and add a dose of reality.

Comments

[Jeremy Wright]

Hahaha. I laughed the entire way through. Great illustrative post!

[HLMorgan]

This is clearly the best comment ever! Thanks.

[Peter Cranstone]

You guys are no fun... won't sign an NDA, won't reach for the checkbook immediately - guess I'm just going have to bootstrap, get early customers preaching about how good our poduct is and sending me a check for it. What did Bossidy and Charam say? "Exection" and "Confront Reality"... works for me.

All the best...

[Andrew Fife]

I believe that most of us entrepreneurs have no idea how similar all of our pitches sound, but your post illustrates this perfectly. Nobody's product is a sure loser that is difficult to use and only partially solves tangentle pain. I think a better approach is to use milestones and customer validation to establish credibility and then discuss the underlying assumptions that feed the business model and projections.

[BJ Fogg]

As someone who has been through the process of raising money, I must confess your post made me both laugh and wince. Did I ever sound like that? Yeah, probably to some extent. The more you get to know investors -- including your own investors -- the more you realize that they need to hear all the downsides. Everything goes better if you outline your own weaknesses than have smart investors (inevitably) do it for you.

[Daniel Nerezov]

Great post, but it's a double edge thing.

If entrepreneurs were realistic, there'd be no reason to start companies because they all fail (with sparse exceptions).

No, I think I prefer the reality-warp-zone kind of pitches...as long as everyone is clear that a pitch is a pitch is a sales pitch.

[mw]

Hahahahaha....damn it ;) I'm not going to tell you which search terms lead me here (but you can probably guess).

But, OK, let me ask a question. For the sake of argument, suppose one actually finds oneself in the possession of a truly trancendent idea. And further suppose this idea would be relatively straightforward for large established companies in a particular business to execute--but orders of magnitude tougher for a start-up.

So what do you do with the idea? Do VCs ever act as midwives to help clueless geniuses protect and sell such ideas to established companies?

[Business plan]

Haha brilliant post, gets the message regarding how businesses need to be meaningful and realistic with their business plan across perfectly.

The most obvious way to do this is to consistently and pragmatically review and revise business plans so that objectives are practical and realistic.

P.s. the line:
"with the advent of Web 4.0" actually made me laugh at my screen.

[Gary]

What's the consensus on how to disclose IP when one is nearing retirement?

The IP is unrelated to my job/work.

Options:

1) Disclose at company before retirement.

2) Retire and seek private IP protection and marketing afterwards?

Pros: (In the above respective order)

1) Company pays token award "if filed."

No personal investment risk.

Not much work... File and forget.

2) Potential source for improving retirement income, estate, etc.

Cons: (In the above respective order)

1) Company makes decision to file (award) or publish (no award).

Publication also neutralizes IP protection.

They also own right of first refusal to release the IP to the author for personal use.

Total rights to the author are limited to the token filing award.

The company owns all disclosed IP.

2) Uncharted course on high risk path of much ignorance.

More work... stress... etc.

Will require funding to process IP protection... Legal, Investors, Developers, etc.