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Esther Schindler The Best Business Plan Software of 2018 Business plans are more than just the paperwork you need to fill out for funding. A good business plan helps you identify your mission, your value proposition, and can keep your organization running smoothly. We test 10 business plan creation tools that help you build and track your organization's future. What Is a Business Plan? Many of us have been there: That sudden epiphany in the shower or at a bar chatting with friends. The slew of initial ideas hastily scribbled on napkins or perhaps simply forgotten entirely.

Quantum Leap Program Steve Harrison here. Many great businesses started with these same events, but millions more never got beyond them. That's because the next step can be both difficult and labor-intensive, namely writing a coherent business plan. Going from random napkin-notes to an organized, thorough plan to get your business started, funded, and generating revenue for the foreseeable future can be a mammoth undertaking, especially for beginners and even more so for people trying to go it alone. Fortunately, there's plenty of help if you know where to look, especially if what you really need is a written business plan that simply communicates a clear vision.

This will help you attract the right people and resources to implement your idea. A business plan tells others how you will get customers and clients, who will run the business, and how early-stage venture capital (VC) will be raised.

Business plans help you talk about yourself, explain your strengths, and ask for money to back up your idea. So, people write business plans in order to acquire funding or to document the company's intended direction. That is, you want a bank loan, VC funding, or other help to get your startup off the ground. Madlib Dudley Perkins Expressions Instrumentals Raritan. A business plan can also be the most concrete way to get everyone's agreement on 'This is what we're doing, right?!' Keeping the plan updated as the business matures is an easy way of measuring success. In all of these cases, the business owner has to do something that can be scary: become a expert by creating a structured document (that is, a business plan) with lots of numbers and compelling prose, with the awareness that this pitch is make-or-break for the company's vision. That's a tough job.