Breaking Stereotypes Is Where It Starts: Building a BM and Business Plan#
When we talk about business plans or business models (BMs), it's easy to settle for the obvious "right answers" or typical formats.
But the most dangerous stereotype in entrepreneurship is thinking exactly like everyone else.
Don't squeeze yourself into a version of the world that everyone else is used to seeing.
A unique perspective -- the answers you've personally experienced and wrestled with -- is what matters.
Questions That Break Stereotypes#
"Why is that approach taken for granted?" -- this kind of doubt is where new business threads begin.
Startups only gain competitive advantage when they start from questions that nobody else has explored.
The Startup Journey: First Penguin or Lemmings?#
Starting a business is a journey you can't stop once you begin.
If you fall into the "Lemmings' Dilemma" where everyone follows each other, you could be led off a cliff.
Conversely, like the "First Penguin" who dives into unknown waters first, you need to forge your own path.
Competitors will watch your first move closely and can quickly follow without bearing the disadvantage of going first.
What is startup resolve?
"Like a 'beautiful and simple tool (ladder)' that can be discarded once you've climbed up -- resolve shouldn't just be memorized or remain a formality. Your business plan should serve as this ladder too."
Startup Wheel Model: Core Understanding#
The essence of entrepreneurship is that these six wheels must move organically together for a business to "roll."
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Customer | The person who pays |
| Market | Where the paying people gather |
| Needs | What they want solved badly enough to pay for |
| Value | The specific reason they pay |
| Marketing | The process of communicating value to get them to pay |
| Business Model (BM) | How you make money |
All six wheels must turn without interruption for the business to move!
Business Plan & Model Flow#
The actual business planning process is based on the following cycle:
- Find customers and their needs
- Identify 'the person who pays' and the 'problem' they desperately need solved.
- Set the target market and select your item
- Analyze item-market fit.
- Market research (explore existing solutions)
- Investigate what solutions already exist in the market.
- Competitive analysis and differentiated proposal
- You need to be able to explain why yours is better than what exists.
- Demonstrate feasibility and team strengths (Investor Relations)
- Build trust that 'only this team can build this' -- or go back and revise the business plan.
- Present a new Value Proposition
- Propose an entirely new value to the market.
- Execute marketing
- Spread the value and find customers and needs again.
- Customer payment and value circulation
- Ultimately, the BM is complete when customers pay, and the cycle repeats.
This Is How It Should Come Together in a Business Plan#
- An organic, cyclical structure connecting customer / market / problem / value / differentiation / team / execution / revenue model,
- An explanation that pulls out stereotypes hidden behind "things taken for granted" and redefines them from "my perspective,"
- 'Excellent IR' cases are ones where these elements are smoothly woven into a persuasive story.
Don't settle for the typical format. The most compelling business plan starts from 'my own unique question' and is completed by the ability to articulate it in the language of the market.
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone elses.
— Billy Wilder
