Steve Blank is a well-known serial
entrepreneur whom started seven companies, of which 5 went public, two were
bought, and one failed. These statistics
are really good. Steve states that the
typical business plans that are required to be written in school as well as for
the real world suffer. Blank (2013) states
“A business plan is typically a research exercise written in isolation at a
desk before the entrepreneur has even begun to build a product”. Steve has developed the “lean start-up”
strategy that has started to make waves over the past several years. His theory is that is relevant to get out of
the office and ask the customers what they want. With new information in hand, this allows the
entrepreneur to pivot the business model and give the customers exactly what it
is they are asking for. On Steve Blanks
website, he discusses his lean launch pad curriculum
that many graduates and entrepreneurs have used to build their company.
Steve’s
business model canvas allows the entrepreneur to build on his or her
assumptions, and then tests hypotheses with real customers and in real
time. Lastly, Steve also discourages
“business plan competitions” that are held at lucrative schools such as Harvard
and Yale University. MIT is known to have the largest business plan
competition in the world. “Over $350K in prizes are
given to aspiring entrepreneurs each year through participation in a series of
three contests: the Pitch Contest, the Accelerate Contest, and the Launch
Contest.”(MIT, 2014). In a recent article, Blank (2013) states business
plans such as this are “Little of
it is relevant to the chaos and uncertainty in the life of a
startup”. Although Blank has a lot to
say about business plans are the negative aspects of it, he doe not go without
offering a solution. His suggestions are
to allow for “Business Model Competitions”.
These measure how well students pivot by getting outside the building
and moving according to the changes of time.
Another successful and well-known
entrepreneur is Tim Berry. Tim is the “Founder and chairman
of Palo Alto Software; entrepreneur, business planner, baby boomer, blogger as
well as Co-founder of Eugene Social”(Berry, 2014). Lastly, he is the business planning coach on
Entrprenuer.com. When it comes to
business planning, this man is at the top of the list. He “Prefers an interactive job, working with you, to develop
realistic and credible business planning projections including sales, cost of
sales, expenses, profit or loss, balance sheet, and — by far the most important
— cash flow projections”(Berry, 2014).
It appears he places a lot of focus on the financials and developing
real close projections. Even with the
best projections, if one is not in tune to the customers, a company may not
turn out to be a success.
In my opinion, learning as much from
these experts as possible will help guide an entrepreneur through the maze of
the business plan. I seem to lean more
towards Steve Blank theories. He gets to
the root of every successful business, and that is giving the customers what
they want and pivoting as necessary when new knowledge is brought to attention.
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