business plan template for software startup

How to Write a Startup Business Plan (10 Effective Steps)

Learn how to create an effective business plan in 10 easy steps and discover the transformative power of mentorship to elevate your startup's strategy.

Robin Waite

5 minute read

Short answer

What should an effective business plan include?

An effective business plan should include the following elements:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Market analysis
• Your products or services
• Marketing and sales strategies
• Organization and management
• Financial projections
• Funding requirements
• Risk assessment
• Conclusion and Call to Action

You need a strategic business plan to successfully navigate the startup world

Diving into the startup world without a clear plan is like setting sail without a compass ; you might drift aimlessly or even crash.

A solid business plan isn't just a piece of paper—it's your roadmap to success. It attracts the right investors, guides your decisions, and sets you on a clear path to victory.

In this article, I’ll walk you through 10 essential steps to craft that perfect plan. Plus, I’ll touch on the invaluable insights a business mentor can offer.

So, if you want to avoid common pitfalls and boost your chances of success, keep reading. Your startup's future might just depend on it.

Step 1: Executive summary

Think of the executive summary as the elevator pitch for your startup. It's a quick snapshot that captures the heart of your business idea, mission, and goals.

In this brief section, make sure to highlight who your target audience is, what sets you apart in the market, and your unique selling points.

And don't forget to give a glimpse of your financial outlook and any funding needs—it sets the stage for the details that follow.

Here's an example of an executive summary slide:

Step 2: Company description

Here's where you tell your startup's story. It's not just a list of facts or a timeline. It's about painting a picture that connects with your readers.

Clearly outline your vision, mission, and the values that drive you. Share key milestones you've hit and where you currently stand in your business journey. This section gives depth to your startup, showing both where you've been and where you're headed.

Here's an example of a company introduction slide:

Step 3: Market analysis

To thrive, you've got to know the lay of the land. That's where market analysis comes in. Start by zeroing in on your target audience and truly understanding what they're looking for.

Dive deep into industry trends, the overall market size, and where it's headed. And don't just know your competitors—understand what makes you stand out from the crowd.

Here's what a market analysis slide should look like:

Step 4: Products or services

Here's your chance to shine a spotlight on what you're offering. What problems are your products or services solving? What makes them special? Whether it's a unique feature, a patent, or some groundbreaking tech, make it clear why your offerings are game-changers.

Here's an example of a solution slide:

Step 5: Marketing and sales strategies

In today's crowded market, standing out is crucial. This step is all about your game plan to grab attention and win customers. Detail how you'll sell, where you'll promote, and how you'll get your products or services into the hands of those who need them.

Here's what a go-to-market slide should look like:

Step 6: Organization and management

Behind every great startup is a team of passionate people. Here, introduce your squad. Highlight their expertise, define their roles, and show the structure that keeps everything running smoothly.

If you've got advisors or partners in your corner, mention them—it shows you're serious about growing in every direction.

Here’s a full guide on how to create the perfect team slide for your startup . And here's a great example of one:

Step 7: Financial projections

Numbers don't lie, and in this step, they sketch out your startup's potential future. Dive into the financials, projecting where you see your revenue, expenses, and profits heading over the next few years.

By breaking down your initial costs and where you expect to get your funding, you give a clear view of how you're setting up for success.

Here's an example of a financials slide:

Step 8: Funding requirements

Every startup needs fuel to get off the ground, and that fuel is capital. Here, be clear about how much you need to launch and keep things running.

Break down where every dollar will go, whether that's marketing, product development, or daily operations.

If you've already got some backers or have your eye on potential investors, mention them—it adds weight to your pitch.

Here's what a use of funds slide should look like:

Step 9: Risk assessment

Every venture has its bumps in the road. Here, show that you're not just aware of potential challenges but that you've got a plan to tackle them. In assessing risks, it's crucial to choose the right business structure at the beginning. For examples, the formation of an LLC as a strategic measure not only protects your personal assets from business liabilities but also mitigates financial risks for stakeholders. By laying out your strategies for handling risks, you prove you're not just optimistic—you're realistic and ready.

Here's an example of a risk assessment slide:

Step 10: Conclusion and Call to Action

Time to wrap it up and rally your readers. Summarize the key points of your plan, driving home why your startup is a solid bet.

But remember, this isn't just a conclusion—it's a launchpad. Encourage readers to get involved, whether that's investing, partnering, or simply supporting your vision. Let's get this journey started!

And, if you need more information, check out our comprehensive guide on how to write a business plan .

Here's an example of a next step slide:

Seek guidance from a business mentor

While a solid business plan is your startup's compass, adding guidance from a business mentor to your journey is like having a seasoned captain on board.

They bring a treasure trove of insights, lessons from past experiences, and a network of industry contacts. Their tailored advice doesn't just polish your plan—it also boosts your confidence and resilience, two must-haves for the unpredictable startup seas.

By embracing mentorship, you're signaling that you're all in on growth, ready to soak up wisdom and accelerate your path to success.

Why is a business plan crucial for startups?

Think of a business plan as your startup's GPS. It helps you navigate the twists and turns, pointing out both the challenges and the golden opportunities ahead. It's your master blueprint, detailing everything from your big-picture goals to your financial forecasts .

What role does a business mentor play in this process?

A business mentor serves as a seasoned guide in the startup journey. Drawing from their wealth of experience, they offer invaluable insights, helping startups navigate challenges and optimize their strategies. Their guidance is instrumental in making informed, strategic decisions.

How can a mentor enhance my market analysis?

Mentors have their finger on the pulse of the industry. They can help you get a clearer picture of market trends, spot who you're really up against, and gauge where the opportunities lie. With their insights, your market analysis won't just be good—it'll be top-notch.

Can a mentor assist in financial projections?

Absolutely. If your mentor has a financial background, they can be a goldmine. They'll help you craft projections that are both ambitious and grounded in reality. From revenue estimates to potential expenses, they'll ensure your numbers make sense.

How can you incorporate mentorship into the business plan?

Consider adding a dedicated section in your business plan to highlight the mentorship aspect. By detailing the insights and guidance you've received, or intend to seek, you underscore your commitment to informed growth. This proactive approach can resonate well with potential investors and stakeholders.

Business plan templates

Starting your business plan can feel like staring at a blank canvas—it's full of potential, but where do you begin? That's where interactive business plan templates come into play.

These templates serve as a structured guide, ensuring you don't miss any crucial details while allowing for flexibility and customization. They're designed to streamline the process, making it easier to organize your thoughts and present your vision in a coherent manner.

Ready to dive in? Grab a template from the library below and give your business plan a head start.

Robin Waite is a business coach based in the UK, bestselling author, and also regular business speaker. Robin's Fearless Business Accelerator covers pricing, productising services, and sales for coaches, consultants, and freelancers. Robin's passion is content marketing and blogging and he enjoys finding creative ways to make complex business topics simple for his readers.

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How to Write a Winning Software Company Business Plan + Template

Creating a business plan is essential for any business, but it can be especially helpful for software businesses who want to improve their strategy and raise funding.

A well-crafted business plan not only outlines the vision for your company but also documents a step-by-step roadmap of how you will accomplish it. To create an effective business plan, you must first understand the components that are essential to its success.

This article provides an overview of the key elements that every software business owner should include in their business plan.

Download the Ultimate Business Plan Template

What is a Software Business Plan?

A software business plan is a formal written document that describes your company’s business strategy and its feasibility. It documents the reasons you will be successful, your areas of competitive advantage, and it includes information about your team members. Your business plan is a key document that will convince investors and lenders (if needed) that you are positioned to become a successful venture.

Why Write a Software Business Plan?

A software business plan is required for banks and investors. The document is a clear and concise guide of your business idea and the steps you will take to make it profitable.

Entrepreneurs can also use this as a roadmap when starting their new company or venture, especially if they are inexperienced in starting a business.

Writing an Effective Software Business Plan

The following are the key components of a successful software business plan:

Executive Summary

The executive summary of a software business plan is a one- to two-page overview of your entire business plan. It should summarize the main points, which will be presented in full in the rest of your business plan.

• Start with a one-line description of your software company
• Provide a short summary of the key points in each section of your business plan, which includes information about your company’s management team, industry analysis, competitive analysis, and financial forecast among others.

Company Description

This section should include a brief history of your company. Include a short description of how your company started, and provide a timeline of milestones your company has achieved.

If you are just starting your software business, you may not have a long company history. Instead, you can include information about your professional experience in this industry and how and why you conceived your new venture. If you have worked for a similar company before or have been involved in an entrepreneurial venture before starting your software firm, mention this.

You will also include information about your chosen software business model and how, if applicable, it is different from other companies in your industry.

Industry Analysis

The industry or market analysis is an important component of a software business plan. Conduct thorough market research to determine industry trends and document the size of your market. 

Questions to answer include:

• What part of the software industry are you targeting?
• How big is the market?
• What trends are happening in the industry right now (and if applicable, how do these trends support the success of your company)?

You should also include sources for the information you provide, such as published research reports and expert opinions.

Customer Analysis

This section should include a list of your target audience(s) with demographic and psychographic profiles (e.g., age, gender, income level, profession, job titles, interests). You will need to provide a profile of each customer segment separately, including their needs and wants.

For example, a software business’s customers may include small, medium, and enterprise businesses. Each of these customer segments will have different needs and wants.

You can include information about how your customers make the decision to buy from you as well as what keeps them buying from you.

Develop a strategy for targeting those customers who are most likely to buy from you, as well as those that might be influenced to buy your products or software services with the right marketing.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive analysis helps you determine how your product or service will be different from competitors, and what your unique selling proposition (USP) might be that will set you apart in this industry.

For each competitor, list their strengths and weaknesses. Next, determine your areas of competitive differentiation and/or advantage; that is, in what ways are you different from and ideally better than your competitors.

Below are sample competitive advantages your software business may have:

• Superior customer service
• Strong brand recognition
• Proven track record of success
• Robust product feature set
• Well-funded and experienced management team
• Innovative technology
• Scalable business model
• Strategic partnerships or alliances
• Favorable locations
• Access to important resources, like talent or capital

Keep in mind that your competitive advantages will change over time as your business grows and as new competitors enter the market. It is important to regularly review and update.

Marketing Plan

This part of the business plan is where you determine and document your marketing plan. . Your plan should be clearly laid out, including the following 4 Ps.

• Product/Service : Detail your product/service offerings here. Document their features and benefits.
• Price : Document your pricing strategy here. In addition to stating the prices for your products/services, mention how your pricing compares to your competition.
• Place : Where will your customers find you? What channels of distribution (e.g., partnerships) will you use to reach them if applicable?
• Promotion : How will you reach your target customers? For example, you may use social media, write blog posts, create an email marketing campaign, use pay-per-click advertising, or launch a direct mail campaign. Or you may promote your software business via a mix of these channels.

Operations Plan

This part of your software business plan should include the following information:

• How will you deliver your product/service to customers? For example, will you do it in person or over the phone only?
• What infrastructure, equipment, and resources are needed to operate successfully? How can you meet those requirements within budget constraints?

The operations plan is where you also need to include your company’s business policies. You will want to establish policies related to everything from customer service to pricing, to the overall brand image you are trying to present.

Finally, and most importantly, your Operations Plan will outline the milestones your company hopes to achieve within the next five years. Create a chart that shows the key milestone(s) you hope to achieve each quarter for the next four quarters, and then each year for the following four years. Examples of milestones for a software business include reaching $X in sales. Other examples include acquiring X number of customers or launching a new product line.

Management Team

List your team members here including their names and titles, as well as their expertise and experience relevant to your specific software industry. Include brief biography sketches for each team member.

Particularly if you are seeking funding, the goal of this section is to convince investors and lenders that your team has the expertise and experience to execute on your plan. If you are missing key team members, document the roles and responsibilities you plan to hire for in the future.

Financial Plan

Here you will include a summary of your complete and detailed financial plan (your full financial projections go in the Appendix). 

This includes the following three financial statements:

Income Statement

Your income statement should include:

• Revenue : how much revenue you generate.
• Cost of Goods Sold : These are your direct costs associated with generating revenue. This includes labor costs, as well as the cost of any equipment and supplies used to deliver the product/service offering.
• Net Income (or loss) : Once expenses and revenue are totaled and deducted from each other, this is the net income or loss.

Sample Income Statement for a Startup Software Business

Balance sheet.

Include a balance sheet that shows your assets, liabilities, and equity. Your balance sheet should include:

• Assets : All of the things you own (including cash).
• Liabilities : This is what you owe against your company’s assets, such as accounts payable or loans.
• Equity : The worth of your business after all liabilities and assets are totaled and deducted from each other.

Sample Balance Sheet for a Startup Software Business

Cash flow statement.

Include a cash flow statement showing how much cash comes in, how much cash goes out and a net cash flow for each year. The cash flow statement should include cash flow from:

• Investments

Below is a sample of a projected cash flow statement for a startup software company.

Sample Cash Flow Statement for a Startup Software Business

You will also want to include an appendix section which will include:

• Your complete financial projections
• A complete list of your company’s business policies and procedures related to the rest of the business plan (marketing, operations, etc.)
• Any other documentation which supports what you included in the body of your business plan.

Write a Winning Business Plan for Your Software Company

Writing a good business plan gives you the advantage of being fully prepared to launch and/or grow your software company. It not only outlines your business vision but also provides a step-by-step process of how you are going to accomplish it.

A business plan is a critical document for any new software company. If you are seeking funding, your business plan will be a key component of your pitch to investors .   

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Software Company Business Plan

High margins, low startup costs, global reach, and a recurring revenue model make starting a software company a lucrative and rewarding profession.

Need help writing a business plan for your software company? You’re at the right place. Our software company business plan template will help you get started.

Free Business Plan Template

Download our free business plan template now and pave the way to success. Let’s turn your vision into an actionable strategy!

• Fill in the blanks – Outline
• Financial Tables

How to Write A Software Company Business Plan?

Writing a software company business plan is a crucial step toward the success of your business. Here are the key steps to consider when writing a business plan:

1. Executive Summary

An executive summary is the first section planned to offer an overview of the entire business plan. However, it is written after the entire business plan is ready and summarizes each section of your plan.

Here are a few key components to include in your executive summary:

Introduce your Business:

Start your executive summary by briefly introducing your business to your readers.

Market Opportunity:

Products and services:.

Highlight the software company services you offer your clients. The USPs and differentiators you offer are always a plus.

Marketing & Sales Strategies:

Financial highlights:, call to action:.

Ensure your executive summary is clear, concise, easy to understand, and jargon-free.

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2. Business Overview

The business overview section of your business plan offers detailed information about your company. The details you add will depend on how important they are to your business. Yet, business name, location, business history, and future goals are some of the foundational elements you must consider adding to this section:

Business Description:

Describe your business in this section by providing all the basic information:

Describe what kind of software company you run and the name of it. You may specialize in one of the following software company businesses:

• Enterprise software companies
• SaaS companies
• Mobile app development companies
• Web development companies
• Cybersecurity companies
• HealthTech companies
• Describe the legal structure of your software company, whether it is a sole proprietorship, LLC, partnership, or others.
• Explain where your business is located and why you selected the place.

Mission Statement:

Business history:.

If you’re an established software company, briefly describe your business history, like—when it was founded, how it evolved over time, etc.

Future Goals

This section should provide a thorough understanding of your business, its history, and its future plans. Keep this section engaging, precise, and to the point.

3. Market Analysis

The market analysis section of your business plan should offer a thorough understanding of the industry with the target market, competitors, and growth opportunities. You should include the following components in this section.

Target market:

Start this section by describing your target market. Define your ideal customer and explain what types of services they prefer. Creating a buyer persona will help you easily define your target market to your readers.

Market size and growth potential:

Describe your market size and growth potential and whether you will target a niche or a much broader market.

Competitive Analysis:

Market trends:.

Analyze emerging trends in the industry, such as technology disruptions, changes in customer behavior or preferences, etc. Explain how your business will cope with all the trends.

Regulatory Environment:

Here are a few tips for writing the market analysis section of your internet software company business plan:

• Conduct market research, industry reports, and surveys to gather data.
• Provide specific and detailed information whenever possible.
• Illustrate your points with charts and graphs.
• Write your business plan keeping your target audience in mind.

4. Products And Services

The product and services section should describe the specific services and products that will be offered to customers. To write this section should include the following:

Describe your products & services:

Mention the software company products or services your business will offer. This list may include:

• Custom Software Development
• Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) Software
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Software Development Tools
• Software Consulting
• Software Maintenance and Support
• Software Testing and Quality Assurance
• Training and Documentation

Industry focus:

Quality measures, additional services.

In short, this section of your software company plan must be informative, precise, and client-focused. By providing a clear and compelling description of your offerings, you can help potential investors and readers understand the value of your business.

5. Sales And Marketing Strategies

Writing the sales and marketing strategies section means a list of strategies you will use to attract and retain your clients. Here are some key elements to include in your sales & marketing plan:

Unique Selling Proposition (USP):

Define your business’s USPs depending on the market you serve, the equipment you use, and the unique services you provide. Identifying USPs will help you plan your marketing strategies.

Pricing Strategy:

Marketing strategies:, sales strategies:, customer retention:.

Overall, this section of your software company business plan should focus on customer acquisition and retention.

Have a specific, realistic, and data-driven approach while planning sales and marketing strategies for your software company, and be prepared to adapt or make strategic changes in your strategies based on feedback and results.

6. Operations Plan

The operations plan section of your business plan should outline the processes and procedures involved in your business operations, such as staffing requirements and operational processes. Here are a few components to add to your operations plan:

Staffing & Training:

Operational process:, software & tools:.

Include the list of software & tools required for a software company, such as cloud services & infrastructure, project management tools, Version Control Systems, collaboration & communication tools, etc.

Adding these components to your operations plan will help you lay out your business operations, which will eventually help you manage your business effectively.

7. Management Team

The management team section provides an overview of your software company’s management team. This section should provide a detailed description of each manager’s experience and qualifications, as well as their responsibilities and roles.

Founders/CEO:

Key managers:.

Introduce your management and key members of your team, and explain their roles and responsibilities.

Organizational structure:

Compensation plan:, advisors/consultants:.

Mentioning advisors or consultants in your business plans adds credibility to your business idea.

This section should describe the key personnel for your software company services, highlighting how you have the perfect team to succeed.

8. Financial Plan

Your financial plan section should provide a summary of your business’s financial projections for the first few years. Here are some key elements to include in your financial plan:

Profit & loss statement:

Cash flow statement:, balance sheet:, break-even point:.

Determine and mention your business’s break-even point—the point at which your business costs and revenue will be equal.

Financing Needs:

Be realistic with your financial projections, and make sure you offer relevant information and evidence to support your estimates.

9. Appendix

The appendix section of your plan should include any additional information supporting your business plan’s main content, such as market research, legal documentation, financial statements, and other relevant information.

• Add a table of contents for the appendix section to help readers easily find specific information or sections.
• In addition to your financial statements, provide additional financial documents like tax returns, a list of assets within the business, credit history, and more. These statements must be the latest and offer financial projections for at least the first three or five years of business operations.
• Provide data derived from market research, including stats about the industry, user demographics, and industry trends.
• Include any legal documents such as permits, licenses, and contracts.
• Include any additional documentation related to your business plan, such as product brochures, marketing materials, operational procedures, etc.

Use clear headings and labels for each section of the appendix so that readers can easily find the necessary information.

Remember, the appendix section of your software company business plan should only include relevant and important information supporting your plan’s main content.

This sample software company business plan will provide an idea for writing a successful software company plan, including all the essential components of your business.

After this, if you still need clarification about writing an investment-ready business plan to impress your audience, download our software company business plan pdf .

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Frequently asked questions, why do you need a software company business plan.

A business plan is an essential tool for anyone looking to start or run a successful software company business. It helps to get clarity in your business, secures funding, and identifies potential challenges while starting and growing your business.

Overall, a well-written plan can help you make informed decisions, which can contribute to the long-term success of your software company.

How to get funding for your software company?

There are several ways to get funding for your software company, but self-funding is one of the most efficient and speedy funding options. Other options for funding are

• Bank loan – You may apply for a loan in government or private banks.
• Small Business Administration (SBA) loan – SBA loans and schemes are available at affordable interest rates, so check the eligibility criteria before applying for it.
• Crowdfunding – The process of supporting a project or business by getting a lot of people to invest in your business, usually online.
• Angel investors – Getting funds from angel investors is one of the most sought startup options.

Apart from all these options, there are small business grants available, check for the same in your location and you can apply for it.

Where to find business plan writers for your software company?

There are many business plan writers available, but no one knows your business and ideas better than you, so we recommend you write your software company business plan and outline your vision as you have in your mind.

What is the easiest way to write your software company business plan?

A lot of research is necessary for writing a business plan, but you can write your plan most efficiently with the help of any software company business plan example and edit it as per your need. You can also quickly finish your plan in just a few hours or less with the help of our business plan software .

How do I write a good market analysis in a software company business plan?

Market analysis is one of the key components of your business plan that requires deep research and a thorough understanding of your industry. We can categorize the process of writing a good market analysis section into the following steps:

• Stating the objective of your market analysis—e.g., investor funding.
• Industry study—market size, growth potential, market trends, etc.
• Identifying target market—based on user behavior and demographics.
• Analyzing direct and indirect competitors.
• Calculating market share—understanding TAM, SAM, and SOM.
• Knowing regulations and restrictions
• Organizing data and writing the first draft.

Writing a marketing analysis section can be overwhelming, but using ChatGPT for market research can make things easier.

How detailed should the financial projections be in my software company business plan?

The level of detail of the financial projections of your software company may vary considering various business aspects like direct and indirect competition, pricing, and operational efficiency. However, your financial projections must be comprehensive enough to demonstrate a complete view of your financial performance.

Generally, the statements included in a business plan offer financial projections for at least the first three or five years of business operations.

What key components should a software company business plan include?

The following are the key components your software company business plan must include:

• Executive summary
• Business Overview
• Market Analysis
• Products and services
• Sales and marketing strategies
• Operations plan
• Management team
• Financial plan

Can a good software company business plan help me secure funding?

Indeed. A well-crafted software company will help your investors better understand your business domain, market trends, strategies, business financials, and growth potential—helping them make better financial decisions.

So, if you have a profitable and investable business, a comprehensive business plan can certainly help you secure your business funding.

What's the importance of a marketing strategy in a software company business plan?

Marketing strategy is a key component of your software company business plan. Whether it is about achieving certain business goals or helping your investors understand your plan to maximize their return on investment—an impactful marketing strategy is the way to do it!

Here are a few pointers to help you understand the importance of having an impactful marketing strategy:

• It provides your business an edge over your competitors.
• It helps investors better understand your business and growth potential.
• It helps you develop products with the best profit potential.
• It helps you set accurate pricing for your products or services.

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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How to Write a Software Startup Business Plan in 2024 [With Templates]

Updated 28 Aug 2023

16359 Views

Business analyst

Every company is rooted in a unique business concept. However, having ideas isn’t enough for a company's prosperity and success. Many startups fail due to faulty training in their first year. An IT startup business plan is the first thing that can be corrected by organizing your thoughts and even finding the right people to work with, turning your idea into a prosperous project.

We'll cover how to write a startup business plan, thoroughly covering each part, give some advice, section templates, and more.

Why Does Your Startup Need a Business Plan

Before we go into precise statistics and data, let’s have a closer look at the notion of a business plan. It will assist you in better navigating the subject. The tech startup business plan is a document that summarizes strategies and ideas for the new company launch, support, and even an exit.

Now, we’ll look at stats to understand why a business plan is required. Startups fall due to a bunch of reasons: among the most widespread ones, CBInsights mentions running out of funds (for 38% of startups), absence of market need (for 35%), etc. A business plan can raise startup success chances.

Such a document serves companies for different purposes. The most common of them are:

• Attracting investments
• Building a development strategy
• Predicting your upcoming financial expenses and needs

How can the IT startup business plan assist business owners in implementing these purposes into life? It’s possible due to the following benefits such a document brings:

A technology business plan benefits

Remember that to gain these benefits, you must adhere to a specific structure when drafting your startup business plan. It must contain the following parts:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Marketing plan
• Financial projections
• Team structure

“How to write a startup business plan” is a common question, and many entrepreneurs are looking for an answer. We’ll discuss it in detail, looking closely at each section.

Executive Summary of Technology Company Business Plan

This section serves as an introduction to the entire document. A well-written executive summary grabs readers' attention and instantly illustrates what your technology business plan is all about.

It typically includes the following parts:

Business overview

Introduce your startup to readers, tell them about your plans and offers. This section should be short - about 1-3 sentences.

Target market

Define the target market for your startup company. To make the section more useful and demonstrate your future startup value, provide a detailed market overview and client issues you would solve with your product.

Competition

Portray your possible competitors as well as the attributes that will set your company apart. Describe how you will compete in pricing, quality, or service structure in this part of the executive summary in your software startup business plan.

Emphasize your company's goals and particular milestones, illustrating the said with charts (including profit, sales, and ROI) for greater clarity of prospective investors. Think about financial estimates for different periods.

Briefly describe your team composition or tell about the lack of particular specialists and your possible ways to find them. Portray the existing staff members along with their experience, and don’t forget to mention software development partnership .

The final section tells potential investors how much money you'll need to bring your idea to life. Tell this aspect to stakeholders beforehand, including the appropriate data to the executive summary.

Sometimes even the perfect technology company business plan is not enough for the stakeholders to pay attention to your project. They’ve reviewed piles of such documents, so one more, looking like the previous, may not interest them a lot. But you can change the situation by preparing a presentation of your business plan, where you can mark the vital concepts you’d like to share (e.g., company overview, problems you’d like to solve, startup team composition, etc.).

6 Tips to Create an A+ Executive Summary

We've compiled a list of recommendations to help you create an excellent executive summary of the whole technology startup business plan.

Tip #1. Write it last

Executive summaries should be written last as they summarize the entire business plan. That's why you should complete your research for all areas of your startup business plan and then write the executive summary.

Tip #2. Capture readers’ attention

An executive summary's main objective is to emphasize critical information about the tech company business plan. But, it's vital not to overload the summary with unnecessary details regarding the concept. It should grab people's interest and make them want to learn more.

Tip #3. Keep it structured

A well-defined structure of summary will convey your ideas. Consider including an introduction, main body, and conclusion that are short but informative. The important takeaways from your tech business plan would be provided by this structure.

Tip #4. Mention exit strategy

An exit strategy is an essential part for stakeholders. It can be an acquisition by another company after running technical due diligence , share selling, or employee buyout.

Tip #5. Use facts

Your primary goal is to persuade people to invest in your company. If your startup's goals, experience, and market perspectives are based on facts, they will have more impact. For instance, you may give information about market valuation and your expected market share.

Tip #6. Avoid cliches

There are a few hazards to avoid if you want your executive summary to succeed. For example, don’t mention the team’s passion and enthusiasm. Investors already know it. They’ve seen hundreds of passionate startups before. Instead, provide decision-makers with facts and let them say that for you.

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Company Description

The company description section of a technical business plan exposes its history, aims, team structure, etc. However, it is frequently the shortest part of the business plan.

Company history

This part is based on your company's current stage. If you're an established organization looking for money for a new project, it's a good idea to provide investors with some company background. In case you are a startup business without a rich history, you may tell who is behind the company and how the founders came up with the idea.

Give a brief description of your company's location, including a physical address, or inform investors about your prospective location coordinates. Whether you'll buy or rent an office, as well as how long you'll be using it as a company location. If you have a home office, also indicate this aspect.

Type of business

This section provides information about your industry. It should be brief but not excessively so. Don't write something like, "We're going to sell things." Indicate your domain: travel, healthcare industry, etc. Finish this section off with a domain description.

Management and employees

This is a chance for investors to get acquainted with your team. Mention all staff members and management personnel, defining their duties, abilities, experience, and accomplishments. Also, don't forget to include information about yourself as an opening. Describe any gaps in the team (if you have ones) and explain how you plan to fill them.

Legal structure and ownership

This data is critical for investors because taxation varies based on the legal structure. Specify if you're an LLC, a C-Corp, an S-Corp, a Sole proprietor, or in a partnership. Specify who runs the enterprise and what technical co-founder equity they have.

Company’s mission and principles

Write this part in a creative manner. Come up with one or two lines that precisely define the aims and ideals of your business.

Critical parts of Company description

You can also include the following parts in this section of a tech business plan:

Business scaling strategies

Scaling a business equates to laying the groundwork for your company's future development. So, writing this section of the business plan for technology company, think about appropriate systems, personnel, procedures, technology, or funding — everything you need to scale.

Business opportunities

Prospective investors want to understand why your company’s considered to be profitable. Tell them about your business opportunities, offering information about factors of your future success, specialists you’ve consulted about your business, and their thoughts about it, reasons for selling the certain articles/services, and profit they may bring, etc.

Marketing Plan

It outlines the company's competitive advantage as well as its marketing objectives. This part of the business plan for startup also aids in the particular domain identification and the development of a viable business strategy.

Moreover, you can define and put down such important data as a qualitative concept description and strategies for attracting clients to show stakeholders how to differentiate your startup activity from your competitors’ and ways you may engage the users to cooperate.

This part of the business plan for a tech startup is typically divided into three sections:

Marketing plan components in a nutshell

Target Audience Analysis

Customers are vital to every company. So, you must determine to whom you will offer your services. Begin with easy tasks and work your way up to more complicated ones.

Let's say your firm is an online car parts store that you want to open on the West Coast of the USA. Your potential core audience may look like this after brainstorming:

• Gender (Males)
• Age (16 - 60)
• Location (Los Angeles, CA)
• Education (Secondary)
• Income ($60,000 - $75,000)
• Ethnicity (drivers, service stations workers)

After determining general characteristics, it is time to dive deeper into the analysis. It can be done in a variety of ways in every sample business plan for tech startup.

Conduct surveys

According to your audience assumptions, you may collect focus groups and conduct surveys. It is possible to complete them both online and personally for technology business plans. Surveys can help you learn more about your consumers to provide better service.

Analyze competitor’s audience

Competitors already meet consumers’ needs, and your task is to identify their audience and understand what makes them use their product or service.

Examine your rivals' marketing channels to see how they do it. Visit their websites, follow them on social media, and sign up for their newsletter. These procedures will assist you in identifying the pain areas of your clients.

Create a buyer persona

The final stage in the target audience study is to create a buyer persona based on the research findings from prior steps of every tech business plan example. Let's take a closer look at it.

A buyer persona is an ideal consumer description, including how they use their leisure time, the obstacles they face, and their decisions. Such a description may be created using various methods. For example, HubSpot's Make My Persona product works perfectly for it.

Learn more about how to define target audience in our article!

Competitor Analysis

Competitor research is critical to the company's success. It allows you to have a deeper understanding of your target market, as well as identify competitors, their tactics, and offerings, among other things.

You should follow three phases while conducting a competitive analysis for a business plan for tech startup.

Step #1. Find competitors

Start by searching for basic requests in Google. Make a list of your rivals in the same business as you and have similar ideas. After that, do some in-depth research, analyzing their social media posts, news reports, or consumer reviews.

Step #2. Examine them

It’s time to dig deeper. But keep in mind that you may need special tools like Ahrefs or SimilarWeb. Carefully examine the following criteria essential for every tech business plan sample:

Pricing. Analyze the charges for their services. It will assist you in determining the pricing boundaries for your goods. However, bear in mind that you are not obligated to value your product lower than your competitors in order to win the competition.

Organic traffic. Determine how many visits they receive due to a Google search. These metrics will display the popularity of your competitors. To handle them, you can use tools like Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, and Alexa.

Social media mentions. It's another way to look into your opponents' activities and see what consumers say about them. With tools like Followerwonk, Social Searcher, and Sprout Social, you can monitor engagement rates, keywords chosen, or social shares and mark them in your business plan.

Time on the market. You must determine the time on the market to see if you will compete with a major company or a start-up. The WHOis.net service may be used to examine the domain name registration date, server stats, and contact information.

Step #3. Categorize them

Even having learnt everything about your competition, you still need to watch your rivals and follow their movements. The next step would be to split competitors into three categories based on their “danger level”:

Primary competitors

These are the main ones oriented to the same core audience as you.

Secondary competitors

They can provide high or low-level versions of your services to a different target audience than yours.

Tertiary competitors

They are indirectly related to your company.

SWOT Analysis

It’s the final step of the section in every tech startup business plan example.

SWOT is an abbreviation of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats:

• Strengths contain your strengths, killing features, and those able to help stand out from the competition.
• Weaknesses mean your weak sides and flaws that may slow you down in a competitive race.
• Opportunities are the levers that’ll help you in business development.
• Threats are external threats that may impact your startup yet don’t depend on your decisions.

The SWOT matrix is a tool used by businesses to compile all their data into one page. To simplify this process, we recommend using the below technology business plan template (namely, one for SWOT analysis).

SWOT analysis template

Financial Plan

A financial plan is a projection of future income and costs for your business. It's an important aspect of strategic planning that can turn vague objectives into concrete milestones.

Complete the following parts in your business plan tech startup example or create them yourself:

Balance sheet

This part illustrates your present financial situation. A balance sheet is a wonderful method to forecast your future financial condition and design your growth objectives if you're searching for finances.

Expense projections

You must plan your future expenses classified into fixed and recurring costs to make your concept clearer to stakeholders. In general, estimate how much money will be spent on your idea implementation and how frequent these expenses would be.

Income projections

This part of the business plan tech startup needs summarizes the project's future earnings and sales. To begin with, you must predict your product's sales. After that, forecast the possible revenue for your startup using the sales projection.

Cash flow projections

The cash flow estimates are the last element of the financial plan. In a nutshell, it's a summary of all the money going in and out of the company. It shows your company's financial health at all stages of development, including the company's income and expenses. Depending on it, the remaining cash balance is calculated for a given time.

Monetization strategies

A company establishment and a beginning of the product development flow are only half of the way to market launch, impossible without a proper monetization strategy — a method of future profit gaining. For example, if your upcoming product is a fitness mobile application, you can implement advertisements, in-app purchases, freemium strategy, and others.

For successfully hitting your aims, you should know your destination, as well as the tools and methods you need to achieve established objectives. All this information can be included in your sales plan.

Though it’s considered to be a separate document looking like the business plan, the essential difference is that the business plan contains your objectives, and the sales plan mentions how to achieve them.

You can also include a sales plan as a section in a startup business plan, containing your situation assessment, financial forecasting, resources, revenue targets, etc. Document templates (for example, one from 150 Startups below) will help you understand which direction to choose.

Financial plan section

Tips to Make a Financial Plan

Preparing a financial strategy for a starting firm might be difficult, but it is essential for any business plan. To make the process easier, we've compiled four helpful hints answering how to write a business plan for a tech startup, namely this section.

Keep your financial plan in line with the business plan

The statistics in your financial predictions should back up all of your verbal goals outlined in earlier parts. For example, if you want to launch your product in the third quarter of 2022, you'll need to budget for marketing, shipping, and other expenses during that time.

Your financial assumptions must be clear

Even if the precision in figures of a financial plan is critical, most investors care about your projections comprehension. Demonstrate your understanding to them, providing enough material to back up your financial assumptions: annual financial statements, market/competitor analysis data, etc.

Be optimistic yet realistic

Even a significant financial plan requires a healthy dose of optimism. But don't go too far with it, or you'll come out as a dreamer to the investors. It's critical to balance the accuracy of the facts and the need to show a financially viable project to stakeholders.

Use templates

Many business owners have no clue where to start when creating a financial strategy or how to present it. If so, use pre-made templates with all of the essential sheets and columns.

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Team Structure

This is the final section of the business plan, informing investors about your startup's organizational structure. It may contain the following parts:

Management Team

Team composition is essential for a proper startup functioning, as well as for its future growth. If you’re going to launch a software development company, at the beginning of the startup’s existence, your project team formed may include:

• Chief Executive Officer (CEO) — an expert responsible for company management, supervising, human resources running, communication with CTO, etc.
• Chief Technology Officer (CTO) — a team member competent in development and technology areas, UI/UX design, back-end, or QA team supervising
• Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) — a specialist responsible for the clients’ perception of your service or product offered
• Chief Sales Officer (CSO) — an expert running all activities connected with business development

The software development team composition should contain the following specialists as UI/UX designers, front-end and back-end developers, QA engineers, and others essential for the product’s appropriate development.

How to build a software development team — revealed! Check our recent guide to know more!

So, list and briefly characterize each key management person in your business. Try to tie their expertise to your company's current responsibilities, using the business plan template tech startup requires, or write this part on your own.

For instance, if your VP of Sales has previously worked for an organization that increased sales from $5 million to $10 million, it would be a wonderful addition to demonstrate their knowledge and value on the team. You'll also demonstrate to investors that you've assembled a strong team they can trust with their funds.

Management Team Gaps

This is common when a company lacks some management team members while developing a business plan. If it's your case, you should make a list of any absent personnel and the particular skills for future candidates, such as experience in the needed sector, duties, etc.

For example, if you want to find a CTO for a startup , you can say that the perfect candidate must have 10+ years of experience, top-class knowledge of modern technologies, and extensive skills to effectively manage the team and develop the product.

Board Members

The Board of Directors is a hired group of individuals that assist you in running your business properly. Even if a Board of Directors is uncommon for startups, you may spot one in the team structure and care about these gaps to be filled.

Supplementary Sections For Your Business Plan

If you need to provide stakeholders and other readers of your business plan with additional information about your startup company, you may give it in a supplementary appendix section to your business plan example tech startup needs (or one created by yourself). It isn’t essential; however, your possible investors may need some more data about you and your business (a credit history, for instance).

So, the appendix should be prepared beforehand to save time in the future. You can include in it:

• Charts, tables, and other illustrations absent in the central parts
• Trademark/patent documentation
• Market researches in details
• Credit history
• Supportive papers (contracts, agreements, etc.)

You may also add here:

A production plan: it is your helper during production activity setting tasks that should be completed for aims achievement, every employee function in such a completion, and so on.

An operations plan: it may identify your startup’s primary business needs, such as equipment, requirements to inventory, office building, or location.

Preparing an appendix, care about its simplicity in reading and comfort in use. If it’s too long or contains too many documents to read, make a supplementary table of contents for more straightforward navigation of your plan readers. Disclosing confidential data, please monitor users having access to it and remind them about the necessity of maintaining confidentiality.

On top of that, the readers can skip the supplementary section as it’s the last part of your business plan; your prepared plan should be understandable and self-reliant. Otherwise, it will need reworking.

The Famous Startups Succeeded Due to Planning

A way to success and prosperity isn’t a bed of roses. World-famous companies began their way from startups one day, thoroughly planning every step on the road to fame. For you to inspire, we’ve prepared a shortlist of such startups’ success stories.

Samples of startups successful due to accurate planning

In the beginning, Pinterest was an invitation-only service. To go further on their development path, the company planned every business step, thinking about a proper UX for their product: Ben Silbermann even gave users his personal phone number to contact him about the site at any time of day or night. This perseverance paid off. Now Pinterest is a unique platform with $633 million revenue.

Canva is one of the leading graphic design platforms designers love to use for everything. This successful Australian business has raised over $US 1 billion of revenue. Due to proper scheduling policy and belief in workforce empowering, Canva CEO Melanie Perkins could make her company successful, having an audience of more than 10 million customers.

The well-known messenger allowing people to communicate worldwide was invented in a gym. When Jan Koum and his co-founder Brian Acton were annoyed with missing calls while at the gym, they created WhatsApp, which allows users to update their "status" to indicate when they are ready to accept calls. They only wanted to make a good product for customers, which approximately turned into more than $5.5 billion of revenue.

Netflix, which started its way as a rent-by-mail DVD service that required users to pay for each rental, is now worth more than $30 billion. It's a brilliant illustration of how pivoting a business model can significantly affect a company's direction. Netflix was able to further establish itself as the go-to media company by pivoting from DVD by mail to developing award-winning programming and gaining revenue of more than $US 7.5 billion .

Creating Your Own Business Plan

Strict planning of business steps was one of the essential things all the above companies had in common to grow and become more successful. We can personally propose a tech startup business plan template from Shopify that most nearly meets the points discussed above.

Shopify tech company business plan template

But remember that such a document will properly work if its critical blocks are created with the help of qualified experts. Cleveroad, a skilled IT consulting company and software solution provider from Ukraine, Eastern Europe, is ready to help you with initial project development phases and further ones. Since 2011, we've been assisting startups and organizations of all kinds in acquiring cutting-edge technologies.

During the collaboration with us, you’ll obtain a wide range of services, containing (but not limited to):

• Proven in-depth software development experience in a variety of sectors
• Working with high-qualified, certified, and agile-oriented Business Analysts, Solution Architects, and other tech specialists able to help you solve business issues
• Consultations from our Business Analysts and tech experts about your project
• Initial project estimates from our Sales Managers for free, with no hidden costs
• Honesty with our clients and partners as a critical component of developing outstanding products

You can also apply to us if you have problems with business plan creation. We’ll help you solve them quickly and efficiently build a software product for your business.

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Wrapping Up

Developing an information technology startup business plan is a complicated and time-consuming process that practically every company should undertake. You can adapt pre-made templates, but no one-size-fits-all template will work for every company. That’s why you may make your job easier, applying to specialists competent in software development.

A business plan can help you organize your thoughts, ideas, and even find the right people to work with. Even though making a business plan (or completing a technology startup business plan example) is a long and complex process, almost every startup should go through it.

Your startup business must have these sections:

• Executive summary. This section sums up the entire business plan and works as an introduction.
• Company description. This part reveals history, goals, team structure, and other details about your company.
• Marketing plan. A marketing plan is a representation of the startup’s competitive advantage and marketing goals.
• Financial projections. In plain language, it’s a forecast of the future revenue and expenses of your startup.
• Team structure. This section serves to familiarize investors with the hierarchy of your startup team.
• Step 1. First of all find a flexible template to jot down your business plan.
• Step 2. Write company description.
• Step 3. Define your goals, make a market research and jot down it's results in marketing plan.
• Step 4. Write financial plan.
• Step 5. Write your management team structure.
• Step 6. Sum previous section in executive summary.

Evgeniy Altynpara is a CTO and member of the Forbes Councils’ community of tech professionals. He is an expert in software development and technological entrepreneurship and has 10+years of experience in digital transformation consulting in Healthcare, FinTech, Supply Chain and Logistics

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Thanks for the article! I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been stuck in this business plan stage. It's hard for newcomers to gather all their thoughts in one plan. But you've explained it perfectly!

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Nice piece of information. You've nailed its explanation. Besides, these templates that you've attached are really great. I think that they will suit perfectly for new startups.

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How to Write an IT Tech Startup Business Plan [Sample Template]

Are you about starting an IT tech startup? If YES, here is a detailed sample IT tech startup business plan template & feasibility report you can use for FREE . If you are a software developer or you have a background in the ICT industry and you are looking for An IT business to start, then you need to look far because there are loads of businesses in the industry and one of them is software as a service (or SaaS) company.

Software as a service (or SaaS) is an emerging paradigm business that enables software to be delivered as a service. This is an arrangement that enables companies to expand their network capacity, and run applications directly on a vendor’s network, offer a host of advantages with the most primary being radically lowering IT costs.

The lower budgetary requirements and commitments allow even smaller companies to piece together an IT project without spending on purchasing legacy server, and storage systems. However, due to the technical nature of this business, it would be wise to consult with a business consultant before starting off.

If your business concept is a great one, the business consultant would offer you tips and suggestions on the way forward. Below is a sample IT tech startup company business plan template that can help you successfully write your own with little or no stress.

A Sample IT Tech Startup Business Plan Template

1. industry overview.

An IT technology company (often tech company) is a type of business entity that focuses on the development and manufacturing of technology products, or providing technology as a service. “Technology”, in this context, has come to mean electronics-based technology. This can include businesses relating to digital electronics, software, and internet-related services, such as e-commerce.

For the purpose of this business plan, we will be looking at software development as a service. Software as a service (or SaaS) is part of the Business Analytics and Enterprise Software Publishing industry and players in this industry consist of companies that are into ERP software, bi software, crm software, scm software and other software development and they may decide to strictly adopt the Software as a services (SaaS) Business model.

A recent report published by IBISWorld shows that the Business Analytics and Enterprise Software Publishing industry has grown steadily due to favorable demand conditions caused by high corporate profit and investment. Over the five years to 2018, industry revenue rose at an annualized rate of 7.1 percent, driven by businesses’ increased technological complexity and the eagerness to adopt efficiency-enhancing software.

The report also shows that many industry products, such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning software systems, have become basic tools in the management of large companies. In 2018, industry revenue is expected to rise 2.6 percent to $55.4 billion. The world’s largest software companies have spent the past five years acquiring high-performing enterprise software vendors, cloud companies and data.

The report further states that over the past five years, the Business Analytics & Enterprise Software Publishing in the US industry has grown by 7.1 percent to reach revenue of $55bn in 2018. In the same timeframe, the number of businesses has grown by 10.0 percent and the number of employees has grown by 10.2 percent.

The Business Analytics and Enterprise Software Publishing industry is indeed a growing industry and is gaining ground in most countries of the world. Statistics has it that in the united states of America alone, there are about 2,869 registered and licensed business analytics and enterprise software publishing companies (Software as a services (SaaS) business model inclusive) responsible for employing about 139,347 people and the industry rakes $55 billion annually.

The industry is projected to grow at 7.1 percent annual growth within 2013 and 2018. The companies holding the largest market share in the Business Analytics & Enterprise Software Publishing in the US industry include SAP SE, International Business Machines Corporation, Salesforce.com Inc. and Oracle Corporation.

Some of the factors that encourage entrepreneurs to start their own Software as a service (SaaS) business could be the growing recognition of economic and operational benefits and the efficiency of this business model. As companies ease out gradually from the economic uncertainties and financial shackles, widespread adoption of Software as a service is in the offing.

The successful adoption of this technology concept will pave the way for mass enterprise adoption of Software as a service in the upcoming years. The transition of enterprises from virtual machines to the cloud will additionally extend the impetus required for strong growth of Software as a service (SaaS).

Poised to score the maximum gains will be end-to end cloud-computing solutions that offer complete functionalities ranging from integration of internal and external clouds, automation of business-critical tasks, and streamlining of business processes and workflow, among others.

Over and above, starting a software as a services (SaaS) company requires professionalism and good grasp of how the ICT industry works. Besides, you would need to get the required certifications and license and also meet the standard security expected for players in the industry in the United States.

2. Executive Summary

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is an IT tech startup that will specialize in offering software as a service (SaaS). The business will be based in Overland Park – Kansas and we were able to secure a well – positioned and standard office facility.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is a client – focused and result driven IT tech startup company that is into ERP software, bi software, crm software, scm software and other software development. We will provide broad – based software development services at an affordable fee that won’t in any way put a hole in the pocket of our clients. We will offer standard and professional services to all to our clients.

At Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc., our client’s best interest would always come first, and everything we do is guided by our values and professional ethics. We will ensure that we hire professionals who are experienced in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry in general.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will at all times demonstrate her commitment to sustainability, both individually and as a firm, by actively participating in our communities and integrating sustainable business practices wherever possible. We will ensure that we hold ourselves accountable to the highest standards by meeting our client’s needs precisely and completely.

Our plan is to position the business to become the leading brand in software as a service (SaaS) business in the whole of Overland Park – Kansas, and also to be amongst the top 10 IT tech startup companies in the United States of America within the first 10 years of operation. This might look too tall a dream but we are optimistic that this will surely be realized.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will be owned and managed by Joel Rogers. He has a Bachelor of Technology. He is a certified SOC 2 – Trust (SOC 2 is designed specifically for SaaS operations) and has over 10 years’ experience working in related industry as a senior software engineer prior to starting Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc.

3. Our Products and Services

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is going to offer varieties of services within the scope of the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry in the United States of America. We are well prepared to make profits from the industry and we will do all that is permitted by the law in the United States to achieve our business goals, aim and ambition.

Our business offerings are listed below;

• ERP software development
• BI software development
• CRM software development
• SCM software development
• Other software development

4. Our Mission and Vision Statement

• Our vision is to build an IT tech startup company that will be among the forerunners when it comes to offering software as a service (SaaS) in the world.
• Our mission is as an IT tech startup with bias in software as a services (SaaS) is to help a wide range of clients develop customized software that will help them simplify their businesses and operations.

Our Business Structure

Ordinarily we would have settled for two or three staff members, but as part of our plan to build a standard IT tech startup company in Overland Park – Kansas, we have perfected plans to get it right from the beginning which is why we are going to ensure that we have competent, honest and hardworking employees to occupy all the available positions in our firm.

The kind of IT tech startup company we intend building and the business goals we want to achieve is what informed the amount we are ready to pay for the best hands available in and around Overland Park – Kansas as long as they are willing and ready to work with us.

Below is the business structure that we will build Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. on;

• Chief Executive Officer
• Programmers and Software Developers

Admin and HR Manager

• Digital Marketers (Marketing and Sales Executive)
• Customer Care Executive / Front Desk Officer

5. Job Roles and Responsibilities

Chief Executive Office:

• Increases management’s effectiveness by recruiting, selecting, orienting, training, coaching, counseling, and disciplining managers; communicating values, strategies, and objectives; assigning accountabilities; planning, monitoring, and appraising job results
• Creating, communicating, and implementing the organization’s vision, mission, and overall direction – i.e. leading the development and implementation of the overall organization’s strategy.
• Responsible for fixing prices and signing business deals
• Responsible for providing direction for the business
• Responsible for signing checks and documents on behalf of the company
• Evaluates the success of the organization

Programmers and Software Developer

• Responsible for designing, installing, testing and maintenance of software systems for the organization
• Identifying areas for modification in existing programs and subsequently developing these modifications
• Writing and implementing efficient code
• Determining operational practicality
• Developing quality assurance procedures
• Training users
• Working closely with other developers, UX designers, business and systems analysts
• Presenting ideas for system improvements, including cost proposals
• Working closely with analysts, designers and staff
• Producing detailed specifications and writing the programme codes
• Maintaining and upgrading existing systems once they are up and running
• Responsible for overseeing the smooth running of HR and administrative tasks for the organization
• Regularly hold meetings with key stakeholders to review the effectiveness of HR Policies, Procedures and Processes
• Maintains office supplies by checking stocks; placing and expediting orders; evaluating new products.
• Ensures operation of equipment by completing preventive maintenance requirements; calling for repairs.
• Defining job positions for recruitment and managing interviewing process
• Carrying out induction for new team members
• Responsible for training, evaluation and assessment of employees
• Responsible for arranging travel, meetings and appointments
• Oversee the smooth running of the daily office activities.

Marketing and Sales Executive

• Identify, prioritize, and reach out to new partners, and business opportunities et al
• Identifies development opportunities; follows up on development leads and contacts
• Writing winning proposal documents, negotiate fees and rates in line with company policy
• Responsible for handling business research, marker surveys and feasibility studies for clients
• Responsible for supervising implementation, advocate for the customer’s needs, and communicate with clients
• Document all customer contact and information
• Represent the company in strategic meetings
• Help increase sales and growth for the company
• Responsible for preparing financial reports, budgets, and financial statements for the organization
• create reports from the information concerning the financial transactions as recorded
• Prepare the income statement and balance sheet using the trial balance and ledgers
• Provides managements with financial analyses, development budgets, and accounting reports
• Responsible for financial forecasting and risks analysis.
• Performs cash management, general ledger accounting, and financial reporting for one or more properties.
• Responsible for developing and managing financial systems and policies
• Responsible for administering payrolls
• Ensuring compliance with taxation legislation
• Handles all financial transactions for the company
• Serves as internal auditor for the company

Technical Help Desk Officer

• Provide technical assistance and support for incoming queries and issues related to our software
• Identifies problems and issues by performing relevant research using the appropriate tools and by following established procedures.
• Through interaction with clients on the phone, uses every opportunity to build client’s interest in the company’s services
• Consistently stays abreast of any new information on the company’s promotional campaigns etc. to ensure accurate and helpful information is supplied to clients

6. SWOT Analysis

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. engaged the services of a professional in the area of business consulting and structuring to assist the firm in building a well – structured IT tech startup company that can favorably compete in the highly competitive business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry.

Part of what the business consultant did was to work with the management of our organization in conducting a SWOT analysis for Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. Here is a summary from the result of the SWOT analysis that was conducted on behalf of Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc.;

We can boast of a competent technical team that has analytical and critical thinking skills that can help them find creative solutions for our clients. Aside from the synergy that exists in our carefully selected workforce, we have a very strong online presence and we are well positioned to attract loads of clients from the first day we open our doors for business.

One of the weaknesses that is obvious to us is the lack of capacity and inability to compete with big players in the industry especially as it relates to economy of scales.

• Opportunities:

The opportunities in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry is massive considering the fact that the world is going the way of technology, and software as a service (SaaS) is indispensable in the value chain of the info tech industry.

Some of the threats that we are likely going to face as an IT tech startup business operating in the United States are hosting issues, installation or upkeep troubles, piracy, unfavorable government policies , and global economic downturn which usually affects purchasing/spending power.

7. MARKET ANALYSIS

• Market Trends

The advancement we are enjoying in our world today can be attributed to the advancement of technology. Technology has indeed given leverage to all aspects of human endeavor. To start with, it is the advancement of technology that landed man in the moon.

It is the advancement of technology that made communication either via the telephone or computer easier and faster. It is the advancement of technology that made transportation faster and perhaps cheaper. It is the advancement of technology that made the manufacturing of goods faster and cheaper, etc.

The technology industry is so wide and vibrant and there is still room large enough for those who are interested in the industry to come in and create their own impact. One thing is certain, the world will always celebrate any inventor who is able to invent machines or devices that can ease the process of doing things.

8. Our Target Market

We are aware that the nature of our business is geared to words serving B2B clients, hence Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will initially serve small to medium sized business, from new ventures to well established businesses and individual clients, but that does not in any way stop us from growing to compete with the leading IT tech startup companies that offer software as a services (SaaS) in the United States.

As a standard and licensed IT tech startup company that offers software as a service (SaaS), Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will develop software apps for the following clients;

• Financial services providers
• Insurance companies
• Businesses in the health sector
• Supply chain businesses
• Other related businesses that may need software as a services (SaaS) technology

Our competitive advantage

The level of competition in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry does not in any way depend on the location of the business since most companies that offer software as a service (SaaS), can operate from any part of the world and still effectively compete in the industry.

We are quite aware that to be highly competitive in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry means that we should be able to develop software apps that will help simplify business and operation process for clients.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. might be a new entrant into the industry in the United States of America, but the management staff are considered gurus. They are highly qualified software programmers and developers in the United States. These are part of what will count as a competitive advantage for us.

Lastly, our employees will be well taken care of, and their welfare package will be among the best within our category in the industry meaning that they will be more than willing to build the business with us and help deliver our set goals and achieve all our aims and objectives.

9. SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY

We are mindful of the fact that there is fast – growing competition amongst IT tech startup companies and other players in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry in the United States of America and around the globe; hence we have been able to hire some of the best business developer cum digital marketers to handle our sales and marketing.

Our sales and marketing team will be recruited base on their vast experience in the industry and they will be trained on a regular basis so as to be well equipped to meet their targets and the overall goal of the organization. We will also ensure that our excellent job deliveries speak for us in the market place; we want to build a standard IT tech startup company that offer software as a services (SaaS), that will leverage on word of mouth advertisement from satisfied clients.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is set to make use of the following marketing and sales strategies to attract clients;

• Introduce our business by sending introductory letters alongside our brochure to all the companies, institutions and organizations within and outside the United States
• Promptness in bidding for software as a service (SaaS) contracts from companies, and organizations within and outside the United States
• Advertise our business in relevant programming magazines, radio and TV stations
• List our business on local directories/yellow pages
• Attend international software as a services (SaaS) developers related, seminars, and business fairs et al
• Create different packages for different category of clients in order to work with their budgets
• Leverage on the internet to promote our business
• Join related associations around us with the main aim of networking and marketing our services; we are likely going to get referrals from such networks.

Sources of Income

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is established with the aim of maximizing profits in the business analytics and enterprise software publishing industry and we are going to ensure that we do all it takes to attract clients on a regular basis.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will generate income by offering the following services and products

10. Sales Forecast

We are well positioned to take on the available market in Overland Park – Kansas and in the cyberspace and we are quite optimistic that we will meet our set target of generating enough income / profits from the first six months of operation and grow the business and our clientele base beyond Overland Park to other cities in the United States of America and in the cyberspace.

We have been able to examine the business analytics and enterprise software publishing market, we have analyzed our chances in the industry and we have been able to come up with the following sales forecast. Below are the sales projections for Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc., it is based on the location of our business and the services we will be offering;

• First Fiscal Year (FY1):  $300,000
• Second Fiscal Year (FY2):  $550,000
• Third Fiscal Year (FY3):  $1.5 million

N.B : This projection was done based on what is obtainable in the industry and with the assumption that there won’t be any major economic meltdown and internet shutdown within the period stated above. Please note that the above projection might be lower and at the same time it might be higher.

11. Publicity and Advertising Strategy

We have been able to work with our brand and publicity consultants to help us map out publicity and advertising strategies that will help us walk our way into the heart of our target market. We are set to take the software as a services (SaaS) industry by storm which is why we have made provisions for effective publicity and advertisement of our IT tech startup company.

Below are the platforms we intend to leverage on to promote and advertise Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc.;

• Place adverts on both print (community – based newspapers and magazines) and electronic media platforms
• Sponsor relevant community – based events/programs
• Leverage on the internet and social media platforms like; Instagram, Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Google + et al to promote our brand
• Install our billboards in strategic locations all around Overland Park
• Ensure that all our workers wear our branded shirts and all our vehicles are well branded with our company’s logo et al.

12. Our Pricing Strategy

At Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. we will keep our product and service fees a little bit below the average market rate by keeping our overhead low and by collecting payment in advance. In addition, we will also offer special discounted rates to startups, nonprofits, cooperatives, and small social enterprises who want to develop software apps for their business.

• Payment Options

The payment policy adopted by Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is all inclusive because we are quite aware that different customers prefer different payment options as it suits them but at the same time, we will ensure that we abide by the financial rules and regulation of the United States of America.

Here are the payment options that Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will make available to her clients;

• Payment via bank transfer
• Payment with cash
• Payment via online bank transfer
• Payment via mobile money
• Payment via Point of Sales Machines (POS Machines)
• Payment via check

In view of the above, we have chosen banking platforms that will enable our client make payment without any stress on their part.

13. Startup Expenditure (Budget)

These are the areas we are looking towards spending our startup capital on;

• The total fee for incorporating the Business in the United States of America – $750.
• Legal expenses for obtaining licenses and permits as well as the accounting services P.O.S machines – $3,300.
• The total cost for payment of insurance policy covers (general liability, workers’ compensation and property casualty) coverage at a total premium – $9,400.
• The amount needed to acquire a suitable Office facility in a business district for 6 months (Re – Construction of the facility inclusive) – $40,000.
• Marketing expenses for the grand opening of Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. in the amount of $3,500 and as well as flyer printing (2,000 flyers at $0.04 per copy) for the total amount of $3,580.
• The total cost for hiring Business Consultant – $2,500
• The cost for equipping the office (computers, software apps and hardware such as Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) machines, internet server, printers, fax machines, furniture, telephones, filing cabins, safety gadgets and electronics et al) – $25,000
• The cost of launching our official website – $800
• Budget for paying at least two employees for 3 months and utility bills – $75,000
• Additional expenditure (Business cards, Signage, Adverts and Promotions et al) – $2,500
• Miscellaneous – $10,000

Going by the report from the research and feasibility studies, we will need about Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand US Dollars ($250,000) to set up a small scale but standard IT tech startup company in the United States of America.

Generating Funds/Startup Capital for Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is owned and managed by Joel Rogers. He may likely welcome partners later which is why he has decided to restrict the sourcing of the startup capital for the business to just three major sources.

• Generate part of the startup capital from personal savings
• Source for soft loans from family members and friends
• Apply for loan from the bank

N.B: We have been able to generate about $50,000 (Personal savings $40,000 and soft loan from family members $10,000) and we are at the final stages of obtaining a loan facility of $200,000 from our bank. All the papers and documents have been duly signed and submitted, the loan has been approved and any moment from now our account will be credited.

14. Sustainability and Expansion Strategy

The future of a business lies in the number of loyal customers that they have, the capacity and competence of their employees, their investment strategy and the business structure. If all of these factors are missing from a business (company), then it won’t be too long before the business closes shop.

One of our major goals of starting Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. is to build a business that will survive off its own cash flow without injecting finance from external sources once the business is officially running. We know that one of the ways of gaining approval and winning customers over is to offer our software as a services (SaaS) a little bit cheaper than what is obtainable in the market and we are prepared to survive on lower profit margin for a while.

Joel Rogers® Technologies, Inc. will make sure that the right foundation, structures and processes are put in place to ensure that our staff welfare are well taken of. Our company’s corporate culture is designed to drive our business to greater heights and training and retraining of our workforce is at the top burner of our business strategy.

As a matter of fact, profit-sharing arrangement will be made available to all our management staff and it will be based on their performance for a period of three years or more as determined by the board of the organization. We know that if that is put in place, we will be able to successfully hire and retain the best hands we can get in the industry; they will be more committed to help us build the business of our dreams.

Check List/Milestone

• Business Name Availability Check : Completed
• Business Incorporation: Completed
• Opening of Corporate Bank Accounts: Completed
• Opening Online Payment Platforms: Completed
• Application and Obtaining Tax Payer’s ID: In Progress
• Application for business license and permit: Completed
• Purchase of Insurance for the Business: Completed
• Conducting Feasibility Studies: Completed
• Leasing a standard and well positioned office facility in the heart of Overland Park – Kansas: Completed
• Generating part of the start up capital from the founder: Completed
• Applications for Loan from our Bankers: In Progress
• Writing of Business Plan: Completed
• Drafting of Employee’s Handbook: Completed
• Drafting of Contract Documents: In Progress
• Design of The Company’s Logo: Completed
• Printing of Promotional Materials: Completed
• Recruitment of employees: In Progress
• Purchase of the needed software applications, internet server, furniture, office equipment, electronic appliances and facility facelift: In progress
• Creating Official Website for the Company: In Progress
• Creating Awareness for the business (Business PR): In Progress
• Health and Safety and Fire Safety Arrangement: In Progress
• Establishing business relationship with vendors and key players in the industry: In Progress.

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Startup Business Plan Template for Word, PDF

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Template Highlights

• There are ten sections, including the executive summary, introduction to your company, a market analysis, the problem you want to solve, your innovative/disruptive/other -ive word solution, who's on your team, the sales & marketing strategy, your financial plan, your implementation plan, a conclusion, and any additional resources
• The instructions are specific and easy to follow, so all you have to do is fill in the blanks. Bonus: thinking about these things will prepare you for meetings with potential investors, customers, and employees as well
• Some of the sections don't apply to your startup? Delete 'em. Want to add a section that's not there? Add it. You can even customize the branding and color scheme
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Startup Business Plan Template

The term “startup” has become a familiar part of the business lexicon and is often used to describe fast-growing, entrepreneur-led companies in the technology sector. Actually, a startup is any business enterprise that has recently been established. If you are in the early stages of starting a business, one of the first steps you will need to take is to create a business plan.

This simple template was designed to help someone new to the business world to easily put together a professional plan describing a new venture. Keep your startup plan short. As your business matures, you can adapt the plan to include additional detail.

You can create different iterations of it for different audiences. The bank will want more financial information, but a new employee might be more interested in your company’s mission statement and your plan for selling the product or service.

Executive Summary

An executive summary is a crucial part of any business plan. It should come first in your document. The executive summary gives the reader, who may be a very busy bank executive, a chance to understand your business in a quick, one-page read.

In no more than a short paragraph for each point, summarize the sections of your business plan:

• Give your elevator pitch and briefly describe your company

• Summarize the market research you have done

• Present the problem you are aiming to solve

• Describe how your product or service solves the problem

• Introduce key management

• Provide a synopsis of your sales and marketing plan

• Explain your financial plan

Close your executive summary with a clear explanation of your project, why it is needed, and how it will benefit future customers and investors.

HubSpot Tip: Write this section last, after you have written all of the other sections. It should summarize your entire business plan in about a page.

About the Company

Describe what makes your company different. This section should convince readers that your business idea is important and that the product or service that you will offer is needed.

Present your company’s name, location, type of business, ownership, and significant assets.

Describe your company’s mission: What is your reason for existence? Describe the values on which you are founding the company.

List the company’s goals and objectives and explain how you fit into the industry.

HubSpot Tip: Keep this section brief. The remainder of the document allows space for you to go into more detail about your business.

Market Analysis

Before writing your business plan, you need to conduct research on the market and industry you are planning to enter. Based on that research, you should describe your industry, the opportunities it offers, and the growth it is experiencing.

Describe the key environmental trends in your industry. What are the barriers to entry (e.g., high production or marketing costs, tariff barriers, regulatory challenges, extensive training)? How is the industry progressing? What is changing?

You should also define your target customers. Who will buy your product or service?

Who are your major competitors? Identify and describe them.

Identify what defines your product or service in the marketplace. What distinctive competencies or offerings do you provide that other companies do not?

HubSpot Tip: Note the key factors for success in this industry, and focus on proving that your company has them.

The Problem

Describe the need in the market that your business idea will fill. How did this need arise and why has it not been filled yet? Explain how you identified the need and how your product or service will meet it.

HubSpot Tip: Keep this section short, as the focus should be on your solution, which you will describe in the next part of the business plan.

Our Solution

Describe the products or services your business will provide. Include your value proposition - describe how your service/product is attractive to customers.

You should also include a description of the features and benefits of your product or service to your customer. Consider capturing this in a simple table like the one below.

Product/Service Feature

Benefit to the Customer

HubSpot Tip: You can include photos or brochures of your products, but consider putting them in an appendix so that they do not interrupt the message in your narrative.

Organizational Structure

Since your company is just starting, it is likely that you do not have many people on your staff. Describe the key operations and management roles in your company, and provide brief biographical sketches of your leadership. The aim is to show to readers that your team has the skills and qualifications to implement what you have outlined in the business plan.

If you receive advice from a board of directors or any high-level external advisors, mention them in this section.

HubSpot Tip: The biographical sketches should include the educational credentials, relevant experience, and related accomplishments of your leaders. Consider personalizing your plan by including headshots of your staff.

Sales and Marketing Strategy

In this section, you should describe how you will promote your new product or service. Begin by identifying challenges with entering the market and explain how you will overcome them. You can use a table like the one below to outline the barriers and your solutions.

Market Barrier/Challenge

Justify the following choices you have made:

• Location – Does it bring cost savings? Is it close to your customer base?

• Pricing Strategy – How will it entice customers to buy your products or services? How will it lead to profits for your business and investors?

• Promotion Plan - Will you use print, radio, television, or social media? Will you hire a marketing manager?

Note the budget for your marketing strategy and tell the reader how you will obtain the funding for this important aspect of your business. If you plan to use consultants or an advertising agency, include these costs in your budget.

HubSpot Tip: Consider including a few mockups of your company’s logos, branding, or marketing materials in an appendix.

Financial Plan

Describe the cost structure and financial aspects of the business. Explain the kind and amount of investment that you need, what you will use the money for, and how you envision your business becoming profitable.

To give readers a peek into your company’s projected financial future, you should include as much of the following financial information as possible. Remember, your business plan is a living document, so even if you do not have all of this information at the startup stage, you can add it as your business matures.

• Cash flow projection – An estimate of how much money you expect to flow in and out of your business.

• Capitalization plan – Lists the sources and uses of capital that your business plans to amass.

• Break-even analysis – A determination of what you need to sell in order to cover the costs of doing business.

• Income statement – Also known as a profit and loss statement (P&L), it shows the company’s revenues and expenses over a period of time.

• Balance sheet – A statement of the assets, liabilities, and capital of a business at a point in time.

Financial documentation is often long, so you should reference them here and include copies in an appendix.

HubSpot Tip: Not everyone is an expert in finance, but it plays an important role in starting a business. Unless you have an accounting background, consider seeking assistance on this section of your plan.

Implementation Plan

Tell the reader how you will implement your business plan. Consider including a timeline like the one below to illustrate the steps in the process to getting your business up and running. Customize it with your dates and the specific steps you will take.

HubSpot Tip: Set reasonable deadlines that you are able to meet, but that show your initiative and eagerness to realize your new venture.

In a few sentences, summarize the main point that you would like the reader to understand about your business. This can vary based on the target audience. For example, if you are presenting your plan to a bank to ask for a loan, this section should focus on your financial viability and why the bank should choose to finance your business.

Describe the next steps, and provide detailed contact information so that the reader can get in touch with you easily.

HubSpot Tip: Your conclusion should incite the reader to act. Make it easy for them by including all of the information they need to move forward.

Want to provide additional detail but need to avoid making your business plan too long? You can insert documents in the Appendices and reference them in the text. In this way, you can provide more information without breaking up the flow of your business plan text.

HubSpot Tip: Consider including examples of your marketing materials, a map of the business location, background research, images of your products, resumes of company leaders, or financial documents in the appendices of your business plan.

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Business Plan for Software Company

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Software Company Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their software companies.

If you’re unfamiliar with creating a software company business plan, you may think creating one will be a time-consuming and frustrating process. For most entrepreneurs it is, but for you, it won’t be since we’re here to help. We have the experience, resources, and knowledge to help you create a great business plan.

In this article, you will learn some background information on why business planning is important. Then, you will learn how to write a software company business plan step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What is a Software Company Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your software company as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategies for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Software Company

If you’re looking to start a software company or grow your existing software company, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your software company to improve your chances of success. Your software company business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Software Companies

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a software company are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, and angel investors. When it comes to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to ensure that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for software companies.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

How to write a business plan for a software company.

If you want to start a software company or expand your current one, you need a business plan. The guide below details the necessary information for how to write each essential component of your software company business plan.

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your executive summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the kind of software company you are running and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a software company that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of software companies?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan.

• Give a brief overview of the software company industry.
• Discuss the type of software company you are operating.
• Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers.
• Provide a snapshot of your marketing strategy. Identify the key members of your team.
• Offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Overview

In your company overview, you will detail the type of software company you are operating.

For example, you might specialize in one of the following types of software companies:

• Open source: An open source software company is one that produces a code base that is free for any entity that desires to use it. The value of this structure is found in the auxiliary services and customizations that are provided to clients. Examples of highly-profitable open source software companies include Linux and Red Hat.
• Client-specific: As cloud computing continues to grow in popularity, more companies look to specific software programs to drive their businesses further into high-growth positions. Examples of client-specific software companies include Oracle and SAP.
• Programming services: Software companies that provide programming are essential to the tech industry. Examples include Microsoft and ADP, well-known giant software companies.
• System services: Software companies have become highly successful, as they’ve perfected the art of creating systems for personal computers and the growing field of tablets and other personal devices. Examples of software companies that focus on systems include Intuit and Adobe.

In addition to explaining the type of software company business you will operate, the company overview needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to questions such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of software programs created, the number of specialized SaaS services created, or reaching X number of clients served, etc.
• Your legal business Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry or market analysis, you need to provide an overview of the software company industry. While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the software company industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your marketing strategy, particularly if your analysis identifies market trends.

The third reason is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your software company business plan:

• How big is the software company industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential target market for your software company business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your software company business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: start-up tech companies, companies in need of CRM software, research and development companies, and cloud-computing corporations.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of software company business you operate. Clearly, start-up tech companies would respond to different marketing promotions than major cloud-computing corporations, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and industry profiles. With regard to demographics, include a discussion of the locations, type of services or programming needed and revenue potential of the client companies you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target clients within the companies you will target. The more you can recognize and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other software company businesses.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t directly competing with your product or service. This includes generic software outlets, private individual providers, and computer servicing companies.You need to mention direct competition, as well.

For each direct competitor, provide an overview of their business and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as

• What types of customers do they serve?
• What type of software company are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regard to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide options for the customized software?
• Will you offer products or services that your competition doesn’t?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer bundled pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a software company business plan, your marketing strategy should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of software company that you documented in your company overview. Then, detail the specific products or services you will be offering. For example, will you provide open source programming, SaaS products, or software to support Microsoft systems?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your plan, you are presenting the products and/or services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the site of your software company. Document where your company is situated and mention how the site will impact your success. For example, is your software company located in a professional technology park, a standalone building or is it purely online? , Discuss how your site might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your software company marketing plan is where you will document how you will drive potential customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Quarterly press releases to industry-wide interest groups
• Engage in social media mining and marketing
• Offer informative blogs; become a speaker in seminars
• Create a strong presence at tech trade shows and conferences
• Give expert opinions on tech social media platforms
• Improve the SEO (search engine optimization) on your website for targeted keywords

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your software company, including meeting with clients, planning new software development, training personnel, and running administrative services.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to sign your Xth contract, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your software company business to a new city.

Management Team

To demonstrate your software company’s potential to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally, you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing a software company. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act as mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a software company or successfully running a small technology development firm.

    Finish Your Business Plan Today!

Financial plan.

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements.

Income Statement

An income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenue and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you introduce a new software program on a yearly basis, or will you customize software for return clients? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets

Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your software company, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a lender writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement

Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and ensure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit, but run out of money and go bankrupt.

When creating your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a software company:

• Cost of computer and software equipment
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Other start-up expenses (if you’re a new business) like legal expenses, permits, furnishings and office supplies

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include the patents you own on software programs or a list of clients on monthly retainers.

Writing a business plan for your software company is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will understand the software company industry, your competition, and your customers. You will develop a marketing strategy and will understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful software company.

Software Company Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my software company business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily write your software company business plan.

How Do You Start a Software Company Business?

Starting a Software Company business is easy with these 14 steps:

• Choose the Name for Your Software Company Business
• Create Your Software Company Business Plan
• Choose the Legal Structure for Your Software Company Business
• Secure Startup Funding for Your Software Company Business (If Needed)
• Secure a Location for Your Business
• Register Your Software Company Business with the IRS
• Open a Business Bank Account
• Get a Business Credit Card
• Get the Required Business Licenses and Permits
• Get Business Insurance for Your Software Company Business
• Buy or Lease the Right Software Company Business Equipment
• Develop Your Software Company Business Marketing Materials
• Purchase and Setup the Software Needed to Run Your Software Company Business
• Open for Business

Where Can I Download a Free Business Plan Template PDF?

Click here to download the pdf version of our basic business plan template.

Our free business plan template pdf allows you to see the key sections to complete in your plan and the key questions that each must answer. The business plan pdf will definitely get you started in the right direction.

We do offer a premium version of our business plan template. Click here to learn more about it. The premium version includes numerous features allowing you to quickly and easily create a professional business plan. Its most touted feature is its financial projections template which allows you to simply enter your estimated sales and growth rates, and it automatically calculates your complete five-year financial projections including income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Here’s the link to our Ultimate Business Plan Template.

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your Software Company business plan?

OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You

Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how Growthink’s business plan writers can create your business plan for you.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Tech Startup Business Plan Template

What is a Tech Startup Business Plan?

A tech startup business plan outlines a company's strategy and objectives. It serves as a roadmap for how to start and grow a business, and covers all the important aspects of a business including marketing, operations, and finances. The plan also gives details on how to organize the company's resources to achieve the desired results. It also provides information on the goals and strategies for the company, and how to measure the success of the business.

What's included in this Tech Startup Business Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Tech Startup Business Plan template for?

This Tech Startup Business Plan template is designed for tech startup founders, investors, and teams who are looking to launch a new tech venture. The template helps you to plan and organize all the important aspects of your business and provides a comprehensive overview of your strategy, goals, and objectives. With this template, you can easily set measurable targets and create actionable projects to reach those targets.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

A focus area refers to the key areas of your business that you want to focus on in order to achieve your goals and objectives. Examples of focus areas could include developing a business model, designing and developing software, or marketing and selling. Each focus area requires its own set of objectives, actions, and measurable targets (KPIs).

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are specific goals that you want to achieve within each focus area. For example, if your focus area is developing a business model, your objectives could be to establish a sustainable business model, or to implement and refine the model. Objectives should be specific and achievable.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

Measurable targets (KPIs) provide a way to measure whether or not an objective has been achieved. For example, if your objective is to increase customer base, a KPI could be to increase customer feedback. KPIs should be quantifiable and measurable in order to track progress and measure success.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects (actions) are the steps you need to take in order to achieve a KPI. For example, if your KPI is to increase customer base, an action could be to execute the business model. Projects should be concrete and achievable, and should be designed to help you reach your KPIs.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

The Cascade Strategy Execution Platform is a powerful tool to help you quickly and easily track your progress and measure your success. With Cascade, you can easily set measurable targets, create actionable projects, and track your progress. With Cascade, you can ensure that you reach your goals faster and with greater efficiency.

How to Write a Tech Startup Business Plan to Win Investors

You have a great business idea. Now you’re doing the hard part: raising capital.

With a failure rate of 63% in the tech startup industry, you need to have a highly compelling business idea and go-to-market strategy to win over investors.

We’re going to make writing a startup business plan really simple by providing you with a step-by-step guide along with a business plan template you can use to build startup business plan that wins investors.

What is a tech startup business plan?

Why do you need a technology startup business plan.

• 1. Executive summary
• 2. Market opportunity
• 3. Product or service overview
• 4. Marketing and sales strategy
• 5. Team and management structure
• 6. Key milestones
• 7. Financial plan

Sample tech startup business plan [template]

A technology startup business plan is a document that is used to outline the goals, strategies, and objectives of a new tech startup business. This document is often used to secure funding from investors and to help the business leaders form a unified sense of identity and purpose.

The business plan should include information on the products or services offered by the startup, the market opportunity, the business model, the team, the financial projections, and the risks and challenges associated with the business. A tech startup’s business plan should generally address three major areas of the business:

As a startup moves through various stages of growth, the business plan should be updated with new information and forward-looking goals. In this way it can serve as a “source of truth” for all of the startup’s stakeholders.

A business plan is an essential tool for any tech startup. It provides a road map for your business, helping you to define and communicate the company’s vision, goals, and strategies. Having a singular document that acts as a single source of truth for the business will help to keep the startup’s core leadership team unified and provides guidance on how to navigate the often-complex world of starting and growing a business.

You can utilize your startup business plan to secure funding and partnerships. A well-crafted business plan can also help you attract and retain top talent.

In summary, you need a technology startup business plan to:

• Unify the startup’s leadership team
• Secure funding and partnerships
• Attract top talent
• Act as a guide for navigating starting a business

This article will act as a guide for writing a business plan for tech startup founders.

7 key components of tech startup business plan

You know you need a business plan for your tech startup. You know generally what should be included. But, now you need to actually get to writing. We’re going to try to make this as easy as possible by outlining the 7 key components your technology startup business plan should have.

If you’re looking for a real shortcut, make sure you download our easy tech startup business plan template. Included in it you’ll find a sample business plan and an outline of what we’ll cover below.

Stick with me if you’re looking for a more detailed explanation of each of the 7 components.

• Executive summary

First up is an executive summary. This brief section should provide some context to readers as they begin to read your business plan. It’s your opportunity to share, at a high level, your business idea.

At a minimum, this section should outline what your business is, the general market you target or industry you are in, and what your products or services are. Optionally, you can include some information about your business’s history, bios of key members of your leadership team, competitive advantages, key customer benefits, and your company’s goals. How detailed you get with this section is up to you. Use this as an opportunity to provide an overview before you get into more detail in the other sections of your business plan.

• Market opportunity

This is where you will start to go into more detail about your business. Starting with the market opportunity allows you to paint the picture of the why _behind your tech startup before you go into the _what . Ultimately, you can only sell the feasibility of your business by backing it up data on who your potential customers will be. This section will help to inform the marketing strategy and sales plan later in the startup business plan document.

Take the time in this section to walk through the research you have done on your audience. To start, you should have data points on the following:

• Demographic data for your target market (age, gender, income, occupation, location)
• Main pain points of your target market
• Values and interests of your target market
• Needs and wants of your target market

It can also be compelling to provide some information on how your products or services will stand out from the competition. Consider answering the following questions in this section:

• Who are your main competitors?
• How will your products or services meet the market’s needs better than the competitors?
• Will your products or services be able to reach a currently unreached audience?
• How will you differentiate yourself from the competition within your target market?

All of this data should back up what the real market opportunity is for your business. Make sure this market opportunity is realistic and achievable. This should lead well into our next section which will cover in more detail the products or services your tech startup will offer to the market.

• Product or service overview

After you have outlined the market opportunity your business will take advantage of, it’s time to provide more details on the exact products or services that you will offer to your market.

Each product or service you include in this section should have a corresponding functional and technical description. The functional description should aim to outline to a layperson what the product or service is, what it does, and how it will be used. The technical description should outline the technologies each product or service utilizes or what technology has been developed specifically for the new business. It’s appropriate to go into detail here to give potential investors more confidence in your product or service.

It’s also important to include information on how the products or services will ultimately benefit customers and what problem they will solve for customers. If you have more than one product or service, make sure to outline this information for each one.

• Marketing and sales strategy

The marketing and sales strategy section of a technology startup business plan should include a description of the target market, the company's marketing and sales objectives, the strategies and tactics that will be used to reach these objectives, the key marketing and sales metrics that will be used to measure progress, and the budget for marketing and sales activities. In short, it should outline your business’s marketing and sales plan.

Starting with the objectives, you should outline specifically what you are trying to achieve with your marketing and sales efforts both in the short term (likely for launch) and long term. Each of your objectives should align with your overarching business goals and make sense for the market you outlined earlier in your business plan. Be realistic here. It’s better to estimate low and over deliver than to overestimate your success.

As you outline the strategies and tactics you will use to achieve your objectives, consider both the what _and the who_:

• (What) What tactics will you employ to achieve your goals?
• (What) What marketing tools do you need to achieve your goals?
• (What) What marketing channels will you use?
• (Who) Will the marketing work be done internally?
• (Who) Will you hire freelancers or a CMO to help implement the work at hand?
• (Who) Will you need a sales team right away?
• (Who) How will marketing and sales work together to achieve your goals?

Your marketing and sales strategy should be backed up by the market opportunity information you provided earlier. The strategies and tactics should be aiming to reach your target market.

Next, outline the metrics that will be used to measure marketing and sales progress. You should include specifically when these metrics will be measured and who will be held accountable for them.

Finally, include a marketing and sales budget in this section. The budget should be broken down by channel and tactic, so that dollars can be accurately tracked and attributed to results.

• Team and management structure

Up next is the team and management structure part of the business plan. To start, provide an overview of the startup’s organizational and management structure. Providing a graphical representation of the reporting structure can be helpful.

This can then lead into an overview of who owns or manages each of the key sectors of the business (CEO, CTO, CMO, etc.). It’s a good practice to provide a bio of each of the members of the leadership team, including their education, work history, and relevant expertise. Along with their bio, provide a description of their role and responsibilities within the organization.

After you have covered the leadership team, outline the other team members along with their roles and responsibilities. Following this, include some commentary on the team’s strengths and weaknesses as well as what gaps remain within the organization. If additional staffing is required, provide a hiring plan that includes a description of the role, salary, and strategy for recruitment.

End this section with an overview of the organization’s values. Paint a picture of what it’s really like to work for your company and how you build a sense of ownership and responsibility within the team. Highlight how you intend for the team to work together to accomplish the company’s goals.

• Key milestones

At this point in the business plan you have outlined the target market, products and services you will offer as well as the members of your team that will bring the company’s vision to life. In this section you’ll provide a timeline of the past and future milestones for your business. This will help to illustrate your startup’s growth path and how you intend to move forward.

Some key milestones to consider when writing this section:

• When business was founded.
• When the business was/will be launched publicly.
• When the business was/will be profitable.
• When the business reached/will reach funding milestones.
• When development project milestones were/will be reached.
• When marketing milestones were/will be reached.
• When key staff were/will be hired.
• Future product release dates.

You might consider showcasing this information in the form of a graphic like this:

In addition to a company timeline, we recommend you include additional data in this section such as:

• Current number of employees and the number of employees projected in the future.
• The amount of revenue generated in the past and projected for the future
• Key clients or contracts that have been signed or that are in the works.

This section should clearly demonstrate your startup’s ability to grow from an idea into a business. Providing concrete dates and real data in this section will provide some validity to your startup and showcase what you’re able to accomplish.

• Financial plan

The final section of your technology startup business plan should be a financial plan. This is the section of the business plan that outlines how the business has been funded to date and how it will be financed moving forward.

There is no one way to write the financial plan section of a business plan, as the amount and type of information that needs to be included will vary depending on the business and the specific financial goals of the plan.

However, there are some basic elements that should be included in most financial plans. These include a pro forma income statement, balance sheet, sales forecast, and cash flow statement. The pro forma financial statements should be based on historical financial data, if available, and should include assumptions about future revenue and expenses. The financial plan should also include a discussion of the company's capital structure, including its debt and equity financing.

If you’re at a very early stage with your startup and seeking a modest amount of funding, it’s probably sufficient to air on the side of brevity. If you’re seeking series A, B, or C funding, you’ll likely need a very comprehensive financial summary along with a detailed plan on how the funding will be utilized to grow the business. Seek counsel from a business accountant if you’re unsure of how to provide adequate financial documentation.

We have walked through the 7 key elements of any tech startup business plan. Now we’re going to share a sample business plan template to help you get started with writing your own!

Innovation is critical to success in the software industry. The executive team of this startup believes they have the next big thing. They have developed a new software application that helps businesses manage their social media accounts more effectively. The software provides insights on when to post, what to post, and how to engage with customers. The software also allows businesses to track their social media analytics and see the return on investment for their social media campaigns.

The executive team has extensive experience in the software industry and believes this new product has the potential to be a game-changer for businesses. The team is seeking $1 million in seed funding to help with product development, marketing, and sales. The company plans to generate revenue through monthly subscription fees and by selling data analytics services to businesses.

The social media management software market is expected to grow from $9.3 billion in 2020 to $17.4 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2%. This growth is being driven by the increasing use of social media by businesses of all sizes and the need to effectively manage social media accounts to drive brand awareness and customer engagement.

The software application developed by the startup helps businesses manage their social media accounts more effectively. The software provides insights on when to post, what to post, and how to engage with customers. The software also allows businesses to track their social media analytics and see the return on investment for their social media campaigns.

The software is available on a monthly subscription basis and businesses can also purchase data analytics services to help them further understand their social media campaigns.

The company plans to generate awareness for the software through online and offline marketing campaigns. The team will target small businesses and medium businesses that are active on social media but do not have the resources to effectively manage their accounts.

The company will use a mix of paid and organic marketing to reach its target audience. For paid marketing, the company will use Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. For organic marketing, the company will use content marketing and social media outreach.

The company plans to sell the software on a monthly subscription basis. The team will offer a free trial to businesses to get them started with the software. Once the free trial expires, businesses will be charged a monthly subscription fee.

The executive team of the startup consists of experienced software professionals. The team has a proven track record of developing and marketing successful software products.

The company plans to hire a sales and marketing team to help generate awareness and drive sales of the software. The team will be based in the United States and will consist of sales and marketing professionals with experience in the software industry.

The company plans to achieve the following milestones over the next 12 months:

• Launch the software application
• Generate 500 paying customers
• Achieve $1 million in annual revenue

The company is seeking $1 million in seed funding to help with product development, marketing, and sales. The company plans to generate revenue through monthly subscription fees and by selling data analytics services to businesses.

The company projects the following financials for the next 12 months:

• Revenue: $1 million
• Expenses: $500,000
• Profit: $500,000

As a startup founder you know that having a software startup business plan on hand is critical to win over investors and get your business funded. However, no one wants to spend days writing a complicated it startup business plan. It’s much more important to focus on the day-to-day operation associated with building your tech startup.

To help save you time (but still create a winning startup business plan), we’ve outlined the 7 key components of any tech startup business plan:

As you tackle writing your own, make sure you refer back to this guide along with our template to ensure you’re writing a compelling business plan that is sure to win over investors!

Software Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Software Company Business Plan

You’ve come to the right place to create your Software Company business plan.

We have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create software business plans and many have used them to start or grow their software companies.

Below is a software business plan template to help you create each section of your own Software Company business plan.

Executive Summary

Business overview.

SimpleBooks Inc. is a new accounting software company located in Seattle, Washington. We produce an accounting product that helps small and medium-sized businesses with all of their accounting tasks. Some of these features we provide in our software include bookkeeping, tracking cash flow, reconciling bank accounts, and creating/managing financial reports.

SimpleBooks Inc. is founded by Edward Jameson, who has been a developer for 20 years. He created this software based on the complaints that his wife had of the accounting software she was using. He initially created the software to help his wife’s business but decided to expand the product and sell it to other local small and medium-sized businesses with similar accounting needs.

Product Offering

SimpleBooks Inc. produces accounting software that helps small and medium-sized businesses with all their accounting needs. We offer an extensive list of features, including the following:

• Bookkeeping
• Reconciling bank accounts
• Cash flow tracking and management
• Accounts receivable
• Income and expenses tracking
• Invoice and payment processing
• Mileage tracking
• Receipt capture
• Bill management
• Tax deductions
• Inventory management
• Employee expenses tracking
• Business analytics
• Project profitability
• Time tracking
• Financial report generation

Customer Focus

SimpleBooks Inc. will primarily target businesses in the Seattle, Washington area. The software is designed for smaller businesses, so most of our clientele will include businesses with less than 500 employees.

Management Team

SimpleBooks Inc. is founded by Edward Jameson, who has been a developer for 20 years. He has substantial experience creating software for large companies and has been very successful in his career. He initially built the company’s accounting software to help his wife’s business, but decided to expand the product and sell it to other small businesses in the area.

Success Factors

SimpleBooks Inc. will be able to achieve success by offering the following competitive advantages:

• Edward Jameson has been extremely successful working in the software industry and will be able to use experience to create the best products for our target market.
• Edward knows many of the local leaders, business managers, and other influencers within Seattle, Washington and will use those connections to establish an initial clientbase.
• SimpleBooks Inc.’s products are designed with small businesses in mind and will be curated to help the particular accounting needs of this target demographic.

Financial Highlights

SimpleBooks Inc. is seeking a total funding of $500,000 of debt capital to launch. The breakout of the funding is below:

• Office design/build: $100,000
• Software development: $150,000
• Three months of overhead expenses (payroll, rent, utilities): $150,000
• Marketing costs: $50,000
• Working capital: $50,000

The following graph below outlines the pro forma financial projections for SimpleBooks Inc.:

Company Overview

Who is simplebooks inc..

SimpleBooks Inc. is a new accounting software company located in Seattle, Washington. We produce an accounting software product that helps small and medium-sized businesses with all of their accounting tasks. We offer three tiers of features. Our basic tier only offers basic accounting functions while our advanced tier offers an extensive list of features for larger and more complex businesses. Some of these features include bookkeeping, tracking cash flow, reconciling bank accounts, and creating/managing financial reports.

  SimpleBooks Inc. is founded by Edward Jameson, who has been a developer for 20 years. His wife is an accountant who was very unhappy with other accounting software products. Other accounting software can be overwhelming to use, unintuitive, and are geared toward large organizations and enterprises. Edward knew of her complaints and developed an accounting software geared towards her small business. Edward’s wife has been successfully using the software for nearly a year, so Edward is confident that this product can help other small and medium-sized businesses with similar accounting needs.

SimpleBooks Inc.’s History

After developing the software for his wife’s company, Edward Jameson did a thorough market analysis to see how well his software would do if he sold it to other local small businesses. Once his market analysis was complete, Edward incorporated SimpleBooks Inc. as an S corporation.

Since incorporation, the company has achieved the following milestones:

• Located a potential office space and signed a Letter of Intent to lease it
• Developed the company’s name, logo, and website
• Determined equipment and necessary supplies
• Began recruiting key employees

SimpleBooks Inc.’s Services

SimpleBooks Inc. produces accounting software that helps small and medium-sized businesses with all their accounting needs. Clients interested in our software can purchase one of three plans: basic, intermediate, or advanced. Our most basic plan will offer just the essential bookkeeping and accounting functions that most businesses need and only allow up to three users per account. Our intermediate plan will offer more features and allow up to seven users per account. Our most advanced plan will offer an extensive suite of accounting features and allow up to twenty users per account. All plans are charged on a monthly basis, with our basic plan being the cheapest option and advanced option being the most expensive.

Some of the functions and features included in our software products include:

Industry Analysis

According to market research, the global software industry is expected to grow substantially over the next five years. Nearly every business uses some form of software to automate its processes and increase efficiency and accuracy. Therefore, demand remains high and the industry continues to grow and expand.

Business software includes project management software, communication software, customer relationship management software, and accounting software. Accounting software is particularly popular as it significantly improves accuracy and efficiency when handling all things related to accounting. Good accounting software can help a business keep detailed tracking of all its finances, and prevent a business from bleeding money or losing track of funds.

Business software companies can succeed by providing competitive features, multiple plans and products, and keeping their products affordable. They will also succeed if they can make products that work for both small businesses and large enterprises. A company that can provide this type of software will remain competitive in the global market and see rising demand from its clientele.

Customer Analysis

Demographic profile of target market.

SimpleBooks Inc. will primarily target businesses in the Seattle, Washington area. The software is designed for smaller businesses, so most of our clientele will include solopreneurs, small businesses, and medium businesses with less than 500 employees. We hope to eventually branch out and serve clients located beyond the Seattle area.

Customer Segmentation

SimpleBooks Inc. will primarily target the following customer profiles:

• Solopreneurs
• Small businesses
• Medium-sized businesses

Competitive Analysis

Direct and indirect competitors.

SimpleBooks Inc. will face competition from other companies with similar business profiles. A description of each competitor company is below.

QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting programs out there. It provides businesses with everything a business needs for its accounting department, including tracking income and expenses, managing cash flow, and helping with taxes. Clients can choose one of four monthly plans depending on the features they need and how large their accounting department is. Plans are charged on a monthly basis and include quick and helpful support and app integration.

Xero is a powerful accounting software for companies of all sizes. Clients who have Xero can pay bills, manage payroll, claim expenses, send invoices, and track inventory. They offer three tiers to choose from, including a very affordable basic plan and other plans that offer extensive features. They also provide specialized features for small businesses and for businesses in particular industries.

Freshbooks is a popular accounting software with businesses of all sizes in mind. They offer numerous features that vary depending on if you are a freelancer, a business with contractors, or a business with employees. Some of these features include managing expenses and receipts, tracking mileage and time, invoicing, and generating financial reports. They offer three tiers of plans but also create custom plans for businesses with complex and unique accounting needs.

Competitive Advantage

SimpleBooks Inc. will be able to offer the following advantages over the competition:

• Management: Edward Jameson has been extremely successful working in the software industry and will be able to use his previous experience to create the best products and experience for his clients. His unique qualifications will serve customers in a much more sophisticated manner than SimpleBooks Inc.’s competitors.
• Relationships: Edward knows many of the local leaders, business managers, and other influencers within Seattle, Washington. With his 10 years of experience and good relationships with business leaders in the area, he will be able to develop an initial client base.
• Small business focus: While our competitors do offer features for small and medium sized businesses, their products are designed with large enterprises in mind. This can make their products feel overwhelming and unintuitive. SimpleBooks Inc.’s products are designed specifically for small and medium businesses with fewer than 500 employees.

Marketing Plan

Brand & value proposition.

SimpleBooks Inc. will offer a unique value proposition to its clientele:

• Service built on long-term relationships
• A focus on helping small businesses succeed
• Affordable pricing
• Excellent customer service

Promotions Strategy

The marketing strategy for SimpleBooks Inc. is as follows:

Referral Marketing

SimpleBooks Inc. will invest heavily in a social media advertising campaign. Edward will create the company’s social media accounts and invest in ads on all social media platforms. He will use targeted marketing to appeal to the target demographics.

Social Media SimpleBooks Inc. will invest heavily in a social media advertising campaign. Edward will create the company’s social media accounts and invest in ads on all social media platforms. He will use targeted marketing to appeal to the target demographics.

Website/SEO

SimpleBooks Inc. will invest in developing a professional website that displays all of the features of our accounting software. It will also invest heavily in SEO so that the brand’s website will appear at the top of search engine results.

Direct Mail

SimpleBooks Inc. will blanket businesses with direct mail pieces. These pieces will provide general information on SimpleBooks Inc., offer discounts, and/or provide other incentives for companies to try out our accounting software.

SimpleBooks Inc.’s pricing will be on par with competitors so clients feel they receive great value when purchasing our software.

Operations Plan

The following will be the operations plan for SimpleBooks Inc.: Operation Functions:

• Edward Jameson will be the Owner and CEO of the company. He will oversee all the operations and executive functions of the company. In the beginning, he will also provide customer support and development support until he hires several other developers and customer support professionals.
• Edward will employ an experienced assistant to help with various administrative duties around the office.
• Edward will also hire several developers to develop, improve, and maintain the company’s software products.
• Edward will also hire a solid sales team to sell our products to potential clients. As the company grows, he will also hire a team that is solely dedicated to customer service.

Milestones:

SimpleBooks Inc. will have the following milestones completed in the next six months.

• 5/2023 – Finalize lease agreement
• 6/2023 – Design and build out SimpleBooks Inc.
• 7/2023 – Hire and train initial staff
• 8/2023 – Kickoff of promotional campaign
• 9/2023 – Launch SimpleBooks Inc.
• 10/2023 – Reach break-even

SimpleBooks Inc. is founded by Edward Jameson, who has been a developer for 20 years. His wife is an accountant who was very unhappy with other accounting software products. Other accounting software can be overwhelming to use, unintuitive, and are geared toward large organizations and enterprises. Edward knew of her complaints and developed an accounting software geared towards her small business. Edward’s wife has been successfully using the software for nearly a year, so Edward is confident that this product can help other small and medium-sized businesses with similar accounting needs.

Financial Plan

Key revenue & costs.

The key revenues for SimpleBooks Inc. will come from the monthly fees that are charged to clients for using the software. There are three tiers that clients can choose from. The option that each client chooses will determine how much revenue the company makes.

The major cost drivers for the company include the lease, salaries, overhead, development costs, and marketing expenses.

Funding Requirements and Use of Funds

SimpleBooks Inc. is seeking a total funding of $500,000 of debt capital to launch. The funding will be dedicated to office design, software development, marketing, and working capital. Specifically, these funds will be used as follows:

Key Assumptions

The following outlines the key assumptions required in order to achieve the revenue and cost numbers in the financials and pay off the startup business loan.

• Number of clients:
• Annual rent: $30,000

Financial Projections

Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, software company business plan faqs, what is a software company business plan.

A software company business plan is a plan to start and/or grow your software company business. Among other things, it outlines your business concept, identifies your target customers, presents your marketing plan and details your financial projections.

You can easily complete your Software Company business plan using our Software Company Business Plan Template here .

What are the Main Types of Software Company Businesses?

There are a number of different kinds of software company businesses , some examples include: Open source, Client-specific, Programming services, and System services.

How Do You Get Funding for Your Software Company Business Plan?

Software Company businesses are often funded through small business loans. Personal savings, credit card financing and angel investors are also popular forms of funding.

What are the Steps To Start a Software Company Business?

Starting a software company business can be an exciting endeavor. Having a clear roadmap of the steps to start a business will help you stay focused on your goals and get started faster.

1. Develop A Software Company Business Plan - The first step in starting a business is to create a detailed software company business plan that outlines all aspects of the venture. This should include potential market size and target customers, the services or products you will offer, pricing strategies and a detailed financial forecast.

2. Choose Your Legal Structure - It's important to select an appropriate legal entity for your software company business. This could be a limited liability company (LLC), corporation, partnership, or sole proprietorship. Each type has its own benefits and drawbacks so it’s important to do research and choose wisely so that your software company business is in compliance with local laws.

3. Register Your Software Company Business - Once you have chosen a legal structure, the next step is to register your software company business with the government or state where you’re operating from. This includes obtaining licenses and permits as required by federal, state, and local laws.

4. Identify Financing Options - It’s likely that you’ll need some capital to start your software company business, so take some time to identify what financing options are available such as bank loans, investor funding, grants, or crowdfunding platforms.

5. Choose a Location - Whether you plan on operating out of a physical location or not, you should always have an idea of where you’ll be based should it become necessary in the future as well as what kind of space would be suitable for your operations.

6. Hire Employees - There are several ways to find qualified employees including job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed as well as hiring agencies if needed – depending on what type of employees you need it might also be more effective to reach out directly through networking events.

7. Acquire Necessary Software Company Equipment & Supplies - In order to start your software company business, you'll need to purchase all of the necessary equipment and supplies to run a successful operation.

8. Market & Promote Your Business - Once you have all the necessary pieces in place, it’s time to start promoting and marketing your software company business. This includes creating a website, utilizing social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, and having an effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. You should also consider traditional marketing techniques such as radio or print advertising. 

Learn more about how to start a successful software company business:

• How to Start a Software Company Business

Free Startup Plan, Budget & Cost Templates

By Kate Eby | September 12, 2017

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A business plan describes how a new business will meet its primary objectives over a given period of time. It is both a strategic document that can act as a roadmap and a tool for securing funding and communicating with stakeholders. For a startup business, planning is key to developing a thorough understanding of the target market, competition, market conditions, and financing opportunities.

Included on this page, you'll find a variety of helpful, free startup business planning templates , like a SWOT analysis template , a competitive analysis template , a business startup checklist template , and more.

Startup Business Planning Templates

Competitive analysis template - excel.

Download Competitive Analysis Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Analyze multiple competitors based on the categories you want to compare, and use the results to identify your top rivals. This template contains several sheets to provide a comprehensive look at how your startup stacks up to the competition, the strengths of each company, and potential partnerships or opportunities.

SWOT Analysis Template - Excel

Download SWOT Analysis Template

While researching your business plan, both risks and opportunities are likely to arise. This critical information gives you the chance to plan for how you will take advantage of or address them as needed. A SWOT analysis helps you identify and gain a clear understanding of internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. The results of the analysis will inform your business goals and strategies for reaching them. Once completed, you can add this SWOT template to a startup business plan or use it as a planning tool. If this template doesn’t have the details you require, you can find more of our  free SWOT Analysis Templates .

Marketing Plan Template - Excel

Download Marketing Plan Template

Easily create a detailed marketing plan for different campaigns, including projected and actual costs. It also doubles as a marketing calendar template, showing a weekly, monthly, and quarterly breakdown of your timeline and initiatives. A marketing plan is typically part of a business plan, but you can use this dedicated template for developing a thorough plan and schedule.

Business Startup Checklist Template - Excel

Download Business Startup Checklist Template

This template offers a simple checklist to help you organize all of the tasks that need to be accomplished, from initial research and planning to establishing professional partnerships and acquiring necessary permits. Edit the list to include relevant actions for a particular business. This is an easy way to ensure that important items are not overlooked and prioritize steps.

Business Planning Schedule - Excel

Download Business Planning Schedule

This template allows you to create a schedule for tasks with a visual calendar for planning. This layout can help you organize your planning process and provide a timeline for reaching certain milestones. The template is structured around planning stages, allowing you to separate tasks hierarchically. To use this template for another planning process, simply edit the tasks included and add your dates to the schedule.

Target Market Comparison Template - Excel

‌ Download Target Market Comparison Template - Excel

Utilize this worksheet to compare target markets in order to understand which are ideal for your product or service. Understanding your customers is vital not only for developing effective strategies, but also for showing investors that you’ve done the necessary research and understand how to reach potential customers.

Startup Business Plan Template - Word

Download Startup Business Plan Template

Word  | Smartsheet

This template offers a traditional outline for creating a business plan document. You’ll find sections for an executive summary, company description, marketing plan, product and operational information, financial data, and room for appendices. You can refine the plan to suit different industries and business types. For example, if you want to create a technology startup business plan template, you will want to show how the startup will deal with rapidly changing markets, and provide product and market research that shows how your business will be on the cutting edge. You may also need to provide longer-term financial projections since high-tech startups often operate for an extended time without profits. 

For additional resources, visit " Free Startup Business Plan Templates and Examples ."

One-page Business Plan Template - Word

Download One-page Business Plan Template

Excel  |  Word  |  PDF  | Smartsheet

Create a streamlined business plan document on a single page with this Word template. A simplified plan can be helpful for summarizing information into a brief report. This format gives readers a quick overview of your startup business plan while emphasizing key points. 

For additional resources, visit " One-Page Business Plan Templates with a Quick How-To Guide ."

Startup Financial Templates

Small-business budget template - excel.

Download Small-Business Budget Template

This basic budget is ideal for small businesses that want an easy, blank template to customize. To create a business budget, include both fixed and variable expenses along with revenue and funding sources. Use this template to track expenditures and revenue, maintain a balanced budget, and to help grow your business.

Sales Forecast Template - Excel

Download Sales Forecast Template

With this template, you get a 12-month sales forecast as well as sales data from prior years. You can organize the spreadsheet based on product names, target customers, or other categories, and then enter forecasted monthly sales, including adjustments for seasonal changes or other factors that might impact sales. The template also calculates monthly and yearly totals.

Business Startup Costs Template - Excel

Download Business Startup Costs Template

Startup costs begin to accrue before operations begin, so it’s important to determine expenses early on to avoid being underfunded or overspending. This startup costs template shows a summary of both funding and expenses at the top, with itemized details below. You can use this worksheet to outline expenses, create a tentative budget, and compare actual costs as they accrue. Similar to a start up budget template, this version helps you focus on expenditures.

Startup Budget Template - Excel

Download Startup Budget Template

A startup budget is an important tool for identifying what financial resources are available, determining how much revenue is needed to meet business goals, and pinpointing areas where you can save money. A budget works as a planning tool as well as a method for tracking actual expenditures. As part of a business plan, it supports the process of pitching to investors and completing loan applications. This budget template is geared toward startup companies and includes a section for projected monthly costs.

Startup Financial Projections Template - Excel

Download Startup Financial Projections Template

Similar to a pro forma template for startups, this version includes a 12-month profit and loss projection, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement. Use the template to analyze the current financial standing and run a future forecast for a business. The spreadsheet includes pre-populated fields with expenses and income sources, which you can easily edit to accommodate your business.

Personal Financial Statement - Excel

Download Personal Financial Statement

Some lenders may require a personal financial statement in addition to relevant business data. This template lists assets and liabilities in order to calculate net worth. You’ll also find space for adding a signature so you can certify that the information is correct.

Balance Sheet Template - Excel

Download Balance Sheet Template

This template can be modified to either show an opening day balance for a startup or to create a projected balance sheet. Choose a given time period, enter your numbers for assets, liabilities, and equity, and the template will provide automatic calculations.

First-Year Budget Calculator - Excel

Download First-Year Budget Calculator

Combining business and personal budget information into a single template can be useful for small business owners who are just getting started. This template focuses on first-year budget calculations including startup costs, operating expenses, estimated income, personal expenses, and more. You can identify fixed and recurring costs for a full view of expenses for the first year.

12-Month Cash Flow Forecast - Excel

Download 12-Month Cash Flow Forecast

This template shows all 12 months of the year for a monthly and annual cash flow forecast. In addition to creating a forecast, you can compare actual cash flow totals for each month. The template is divided into categories for cash on-hand, cash receipts, and cash paid-out, with an alternating color scheme for easy viewing.

Annual Business Budget Template - Excel

Download Annual Business Budget Template

As a startup becomes established, this template can be used to create a budget showing totals on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. You can create a projected 12-month budget as well as compare financial data to the previous year’s performance. The template provides detailed income and expense categories for thorough planning and tracking.

Financial Dashboard Template - Excel

Download Financial Dashboard Template - Excel

Create a visual financial report with this dashboard template, which tracks statistics over time using graphs and charts. Compare sales rep performance, product revenue, regional data, or other financial KPIs. A graphical report provides a quick overview of financial information in a format that is easy to understand and share with stakeholders.

Marketing Budget Plan - Excel

Download Marketing Budget Plan

Create a dedicated marketing budget with results displayed in both a spreadsheet format and pie chart. Calculate costs for various marketing campaigns in order to view fund allocation. The template includes space for comments and notes to aid in strategic business planning.

Website Budget Template - Excel

Download Website Budget Template

This startup website template provides sections for calculating initial development costs as well as creating a projected budget over three years. View a list of costs and benefits to see how the website will impact the business over time. This template can help you determine the value of your website investment and track actual annual performance.

Loan Amortization Schedule - Excel

Download Loan Amortization Schedule

Keep track of a loan balance, payments made, upcoming amounts due, and interest paid with this loan amortization template. Enter lender information and loan terms at the top of the template, and then use the schedule to track payment details. Startups owners will appreciate how easy it is to manage business loans and create repayment plans.

Why Write a Startup Business Plan?

The benefits of writing a startup business plan range from clarifying initial ideas to attracting potential investors. The process of business planning can help uncover weaknesses as well as opportunities you may have overlooked. Planning encourages entrepreneurs to examine each step required to start a business in order to avoid mistakes in the long run. Collecting data through market analysis can allow you to confidently make informed decisions and provide a dose of reality to your business idea by affirming or challenging initial assumptions about your product, business model, or strategies for achieving success. Once you clarify your startup vision, analyze financial and market data, and define goals, you can create a strategic action plan to use as a guide for reaching objectives and addressing potential challenges. 

After establishing a startup, continue business planning to identify ways to grow and improve the business as well as to plan for resource use and development. If you treat your business plan as a living document that you regularly review and update, you can also use it to measure progress over time. An effective plan communicates a company’s vision to team members and all stakeholders, and provides both a foundation and an adaptable model that can grow and change along with the business.

One key reason for startups to develop sound business plans is to convince investors and lenders to finance the endeavor. Most banks and investors will want to see detailed financial projections and a statement of your current personal and business financial standing. Investors may want to see market data and other proof that your plan has a high chance for success. Without adequate financing, no startup can succeed, so it’s essential to create an ironclad pitch for funders.

What to Include in a Business Plan

Business plans are tailored to fit a specific type of business and to serve a particular purpose, whether it’s to seek funding, influence a particular audience, or develop strategy for internal use. While you’ll need to continually revise plans need to fulfill a certain function, there are similar elements in all business plans. Here are some of the common sections included in a startup business plan:

• Summary and Objectives: This first section can provide background information, a detailed company description, general industry information, goals that you want to achieve, and long-term objectives. Depending on the size and type of business, this information may be divided into multiple sections or summarized in one pitch. 
• Marketing Plan: Providing market data and an outline for how you will market and sell products and services allows you to show a deep understanding of your target audience and your plans for branding and distribution. Be sure to conduct thorough research that you can use to back up your plans with supporting numbers and statistics. You may also include separate, detailed sections on competition, customer characteristics, product features, sales forecasts, and marketing strategy.
• Operational Plan: This section is concerned with the equipment, processes, and people involved in daily operations. You may want to include details on location requirements, production methods, legal issues (such as licenses or insurance requirements), staffing information, vendor needs, and other operational elements. 
• Management and Organization: A description of management positions and professional advisors provides an organized look at key roles, the experience individuals bring to the business, and important consultants or mentors. You can also include resumes for key employees and startup owners if the business plan is supporting a loan application or investor pitch.
• Startup Expenses and Financial Plan: Estimate expenses as accurately as possible and include contingencies for unforeseen costs. Creating estimates requires thorough research, and expenses should include even small items - while they are easy to overlook, they may add up to significant costs. A comprehensive financial plan can include profit and loss projections and other budget forecasts in order to provide a clear picture of a startup’s financial standing and future outlook. 

A business plan will, of course, look different for a restaurant, web-based business, technology service provider, or product manufacturer. Before getting started, consider what you want to accomplish with your business plan, and customize it accordingly.

Business Plan Tips

Taking the time for thorough research and planning can help you make informed decisions, avoid potential pitfalls, and craft an effective plan. Here are a few tips to consider as you create a business plan:

• Get Creative: Business plans can follow a simple outline, but turning your plan into a creative presentation can make a statement and grab investors’ attention. 
• Use Data Wisely: No matter what format or approach you take, a startup business plan should be concise and include compelling evidence and hard data to back up your claims. 
• Refine Your Plan: Consider your audience and review your plan to ensure the information presented is appropriate, sufficient, and clear. 
• Focus on Objectives: Connect every strategy to core objectives so that there is a clear path for attaining success. 

Manage All Aspects of Your Startup in Real Time with Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

• Startup Business Plan Template

Last Updated: June 30, 2023 By TRUiC Team

A startup business plan template can help entrepreneurs set their goals, objectives, and strategies. These templates are usually adapted to suit specific businesses or industries.

What Is a Startup Business Plan?

A startup business plan is, as the name suggests, a business plan for companies that are still in the startup phase. A startup company has to be prepared for future problems. A business plan helps it be prepared for the unexpected by giving insights into the market and competition.

If the product it produces is not successful, a startup should have an idea of what to do next. It also needs to know how much money will be required for things like marketing campaigns or expansion. It is important that a startup business plan offers a clear idea for growth strategy to best allocate resources.

If you'd like to learn more about startup business plans, check out our What Is a Business Plan guide.

How Long Should a Startup Business Plan Be?

A startup business plan should be between one to three pages long with key points listed in bullet points. It should also be easy to read and understand.

Benefits of Using a Startup Business Plan Template

A startup business plan template can be a useful tool for entrepreneurs, no matter what type of company they are trying to launch.

Some of the benefits of using a startup business plan template include:

• It will help you save time and make it easy for you to create your business plan.
• It can also help you avoid mistakes and ensure that your business plan is on file.
• Having a consistent format and look will make it easier for investors and other stakeholders to understand what you’re proposing.

Different Types of Startup Business Plan Templates

Creating or purchasing a blank startup business template will ensure you create a proper business plan for your business. Templates can be modified to include only those sections you need for your specific business type. Sections including financial projections, product launch plans, and more.

A template lets you fill out all the information you need to create a polished and professional business plan — from an executive summary to forecasting annual profits based on market insights. 

A good startup template includes these sections:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Products and services
• Market analysis
• Management team
• Financial plan
• Operational plan

Free Startup Business Plan Generator

Use our free business plan generator to write your startup business plan. Start filling out the sections while keeping the following in mind.

Startup business plan template best practices:

• Think about your product or service and what market it will be in.
• Understand your competition.
• Do some in depth market research to ensure you have the competitive advantage.
• Work through each section of the business plan template.
• Consult with noncompetitive experts to see how you might improve your plan.
• Create a final draft.
• Stick to your plan as you build out your business, modifying it as needed.

Final Thoughts

Writing can be frustrating. Researching can be daunting. To make writing a business plan easier, use a business plan template. A business plan template saves you time and the hassle of starting from scratch. 

The better your business plan, the more likely your business will succeed.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What types of businesses need business plans.

Business plans are one of the most important documents for today’s startups. They help potential investors decide whether they should invest in your business or not.

For startups looking for funding, a business plan is the best way to present to potential investors. It also offers a great opportunity for startups to get feedback from peers and other professionals in the field.

Business plans are necessary when businesses need to apply for certain types of loans or grants. A business plan can be used as proof that you have an idea, have taken steps to bring it into fruition, and know how to run a successful enterprise.

What is the difference between a startup business plan and an existing company's business plan?

In a startup business plan, the founders need to give a detailed description of what their company does and why it is better than its competitors. In an existing company's business plan, the focus is more on discussing past accomplishments and future plans.

How long should a startup business plan be?

A business plan is a written document that provides an overview of the business, its objectives, and the market. Generally these plans are one to three pages long with key points listed in bullet-point format. 

Keep the plan on hand for when you need it most - like when you hit hard times or when you're faced with a problem that cannot be solved by any other means.

8 Business Plan Templates You Can Get for Free

8 min. read

Updated April 10, 2024

A business plan template can be an excellent tool to simplify the creation of your business plan. 

The pre-set structure helps you organize ideas, covers all critical business information, and saves you time and effort on formatting.

The only issue? There are SO many free business plan templates out there. 

So, which ones are actually worth using? 

To help remove the guesswork, I’ve rounded up some of the best business plan templates you can access right now. 

These are listed in no particular order, and each has its benefits and drawbacks.

What to look for in a business plan template

Not all business plan templates are created equal. As you weigh your options and decide which template(s) you’ll use, be sure to review them with the following criteria in mind:

• Easy to edit: A template should save you time. That won’t be the case if you have to fuss around figuring out how to edit the document, or even worse, it doesn’t allow you to edit at all.
• Contains the right sections: A good template should cover all essential sections of a business plan , including the executive summary, product/service description, market/competitive analysis, marketing and sales plan, operations, milestones, and financial projections. 
• Provides guidance: You should be able to trust that the information in a template is accurate. That means the organization or person who created the template is highly credible, known for producing useful resources, and ideally has some entrepreneurial experience.
• Software compatibility: Lastly, you want any template to be compatible with the software platforms you use. More than likely, this means it’s available in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or PDF format at a minimum. 

1. Bplans — A plan with expert guidance

Since you’re already on Bplans, I have to first mention the templates that we have available. 

Our traditional and one-page templates were created by entrepreneurs and business owners with over 80 years of collective planning experience. We revisit and update them annually to ensure they are approachable, thorough, and aligned with our team’s evolving best practices.  

The templates, available in Word, PDF, or Google Doc formats, include in-depth guidance on what to include in each section, expert tips, and links to additional resources. 

Plus, we have over 550 real-world sample business plans you can use for guidance when filling out your template.

Download: Traditional lender-ready business plan template or a simple one-page plan template .

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

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2. SBA — Introduction to business plans

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) offers two different business plan templates along with a short planning guide. 

While not incredibly in-depth, it’s enough to help you understand how traditional and lean plans are structured and what information needs to be covered. The templates themselves are more like examples, providing you with a finished product to reference as you write your plan.

The key benefit of using these templates is that they were created by the SBA. While they may provide less guidance, you can be assured that the information and structure meet their expectations.

Explore: The SBA’s planning guide and free templates

3. SCORE — Planning workbook

SCORE’s template is more like a workbook. It includes exercises after each section to help you get your ideas down and turn them into a structured plan.

The market research worksheets are especially useful. They provide a clear framework for identifying your target market and analyzing competitors from multiple angles. Plus, they give you an easy way to document all the information you’re collecting.

You will likely have to remove the exercises in this template to make it investor-ready. But it can be worth it if you’re struggling to get past a blank page and want a more interactive planning method.

Download: SCORE’s business plan template

4. PandaDoc — A template with fillable forms

PandaDoc’s library offers a variety of industry-specific business plan templates that feature a modern design flair and concise instructions. 

These templates are designed for sharing. They include fillable fields and sections for non-disclosure agreements, which may be necessary when sending a plan to investors.  

But the real benefit is their compatibility with PandaDoc’s platform. Yes, they are free, but if you’re a PandaDoc subscriber, you’ll have far more customization options. 

Out of all their templates, the standard business plan template is the most in-depth. The rest, while still useful, go a bit lighter on guidance in favor of tailoring the plan to a specific industry.

Explore: PandaDoc’s business plan template library  

5. Canva — Pitch with your plan

Canva is a great option for building a visually stunning business plan that can be used as a pitch tool. It offers a diverse array of templates built by their in-house team and the larger creative community, meaning the number of options constantly grows.

You will need to verify that the information in the template you choose matches the standard structure of a traditional business plan. 

You should do this with any template, but it’s especially important with any tool that accepts community submissions. While they are likely reviewed and approved, there may still be errors.

Remember, you can only edit these templates within Canva. Luckily, you only need a free subscription, and you may just miss out on some of the visual assets being used. 

To get the most value, it may be best to create a more traditional planning document and transfer that information into Canva. 

Explore: Canva’s business plan gallery

6. ClickUp — The collaborative template

Out of all the project management tools that offer free business plan templates, ClickUp’s is the most approachable.

Rather than throwing you into all the features and expecting you to figure it out—ClickUp provides a thorough startup guide with resource links, images, and videos explaining how to write a plan using the tool. 

There’s also a completed sample plan (structured like an expanded one-page plan) for you to reference and see how the more traditional document can connect to the product management features. You can set goals, target dates, leave comments, and even assign tasks to someone else on your team. 

These features are limited to the ClickUp platform and will not be useful for everyone. They will likely get in the way of writing a plan you can easily share with lenders or investors. 

But this is a great option if you’re looking for a template that makes internal collaboration more fluid and keeps all your information in one place.

Sign Up: Get a free trial of ClickUp and explore their template library

7. Smartsheet — A wide variety of templates

I’m including Smartsheet’s library of templates on this list because of the sheer number of options they provide. 

They have a simple business plan template, a one-page plan, a fill-in-the-blank template, a plan outline, a plan grading rubric, and even an Excel-built project plan. All are perfectly usable and vary in visual style, depth of instructions, and the available format.

Honestly, the only drawback (which is also the core benefit) is that the amount of templates can be overwhelming. If you’re already uncertain which plan option is right for you, the lengthy list they provide may not provide much clarity.

At the same time, it can be a great resource if you want a one-stop shop to view multiple plan types.

Explore: Smartsheet’s business plan template library  

8. ReferralRock affiliate marketing business plan

I’m adding ReferralRock’s template to this list due to its specificity. 

It’s not your standard business plan template. The plan is tailored with specific sections and guidance around launching an affiliate marketing business. 

Most of the template is dedicated to defining how to choose affiliates, set commissions, create legal agreements, and track performance.

So, if you plan on starting an affiliate marketing business or program, this template will provide more specific guidance. Just know that you will likely need to reference additional resources when writing the non-industry sections of your plan.

Download: ReferralRock affiliate marketing business plan template

Does it matter what business plan template you use?

The short answer is no. As long as the structure is correct, it saves you time, and it helps you write your business plan , then any template will work. 

What it ultimately comes down to, is what sort of value you hope to get from the template. 

• Do you need more guidance? 
• A simple way to structure your plan? 
• An option that works with a specific tool?
• A way to make your plan more visually interesting?

Hopefully, this list has helped you hone in on an option that meets one (or several) of these needs. Still, it may be worth downloading a few of these templates to determine the right fit. 

And really, what matters most is that you spend time writing a business plan . It will help you avoid early mistakes, determine if you have a viable business, and fully consider what it will take to get up and running. 

If you need additional guidance, check out our library of planning resources . We cover everything from plan formats , to how to write a business plan, and even how to use it as a management tool . 

If you don’t want to waste time researching other templates, you can download our one-page or traditional business plan template and jump right into the planning process.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Kody Wirth is a content writer and SEO specialist for Palo Alto Software—the creator's of Bplans and LivePlan. He has 3+ years experience covering small business topics and runs a part-time content writing service in his spare time.

Table of Contents

• Qualities of a good template
• ReferralRock
• Does the template matter?

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• 5 Best Business Plan Software and Tools in 2023 for Your Small Business

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change.

We are committed to sharing unbiased reviews. Some of the links on our site are from our partners who compensate us. Read our editorial guidelines and advertising disclosure .

A business plan can do a lot for your business. It can help you secure investors or other funding. It can give your company direction. It can keep your finances healthy. But, if we’re being honest, it can also be a pain to write.

Luckily, you don’t have to start from scratch or go it alone. Business plan software and services can help you craft a professional business plan, like our top choice LivePlan , which provides templates, guidance, and more.

You’ve got quite a few choices for business plan help, so we’re here to help you narrow things down. Let’s talk about the best business plan tools out there.

• LivePlan : Best overall
• BizPlanBuilder : Most user-friendly
• Wise Business Plans : Best professional service
• Business Sorter : Best for internal plans
• GoSmallBiz.com : Most extra features
• Honorable mentions

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LivePlan: Best overall business plan software

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. *With annual billing

LivePlan has been our favorite business plan software for a while now, despite the stiff competition.

There’s a lot to like about LivePlan. It has pretty much all the features you could want from your business plan software. LivePlan gives you step-by-step instructions for writing your plan, helps you create financial reports, lets you compare your business’s actual financials to your plan’s goals, and much more. And if you ever need inspiration, it includes hundreds of sample business plans that can guide your writing.

LivePlan software pricing

But the best part? You get all that (and more) at a very competitive price. (You can choose from annual, six-month, or monthly billing.) While LivePlan isn’t quite the cheapest business plan builder out there, it’s not too far off either. And if comes with a 60-day money back guarantee. So there’s no risk in trying LivePlan out for yourself.

With a great balance of features and cost, LivePlan offers the best business plan solution for most businesses.

BizPlanBuilder: Most user-friendly

Need something easy to use? BizPlanBuilder fits the bill.

BizPlanBuilder doesn’t have a flashy, modern user interface―but it does have a very clear, intuitive one. You’ll be able to see your plan’s overall structure at a glance, so you can quickly navigate from your title page to your market trend section to that paragraph on your core values. And as you write, you’ll use a text editor that looks a whole lot like the word processing programs you’re already familiar with.

BizPlanBuilder software pricing

Data effective 3/13/23. At publishing time, amounts, rates, and requirements are current but are subject to change. Offers may not be available in all areas.

BizPlanBuilder also offers lots of helpful guidance for actually writing your plan. It gives you pre-written text, in which you just have to fill in relevant details. It offers explanations for what information you need to include in each section of your plan and way. It even gives you helpful tips from experts, so you’ll have all the information you need to plan like a pro.

So if you want planning software with almost no learning curve, you’ll like BizPlanBuilder.

Wise Business Plans: Best professional service

• Custom quote

Unlike all the other companies on this list, Wise Business Plans doesn’t offer software. Instead, it offers professional business plan writing services―meaning someone does all the hard work for you.

Now, you might think that sounds expensive―and you’re probably right (you have to request a custom quote for your plan). But there’s a lot to be said for expertise, and Wise Business Plans has plenty of that. Your business plan will get written by an experienced writer (with an MBA, no less). They’ll get information from you, do their own research, and then write your plan. You get one free revision, and you can always pay for more.  

Wise Business Plans service pricing

Your end result will be a polished, entirely original business plan. (You can even get printed copies.) And best of all, you won’t have to spend your precious time working on the plan yourself. Wise Business Plans takes care of all the hard parts, and makes your business look good while doing it. Sounds like a service worth paying for, right?

Put simply, if you want the most professional business plan possible, we recommend using Wise Business Plans’s writing service.

Business Sorter: Best for internal plans

Many businesses need plans to show to people outside the company (to get financing, for example). But what if you just need a plan for internal use? In that case, we suggest Business Sorter.

Business Sorter uses a unique card-based method to help you craft the perfect business plan. (You can watch a demo video to see how it works.) You’ll plan some of the usual things, like finances and marketing. But Business Sorter also lets you make plans for specific teams and team members. It also emphasizes more internal matters, like operations, that might get overlooked in a business plan for outsiders.

Business Sorter software pricing

After you’ve made your business plan, Business Sorter also helps you stay accountable to it. You can create tasks, give them deadlines, and assign them to team members―giving you basic project management tools to make sure your business plans become business actions. (Oh, and did we mention that Business Sorter has the lowest starting prices of any software on this list?)

It all adds up to a business plan software that works great for internal planning.

GoSmallBiz: Most extra features

Want to get way more than just business planning software? Then you probably want GoSmallBiz.

See, GoSmallBiz offers business plan software as part of its service―but it’s just one part of a much bigger whole. You also get everything from discounts on legal services to a website builder to a CRM (customer relationship manager) to business document templates. And more. In other words, you get just about everything you need to get your startup off the ground.

GoSmallBiz software pricing

Don’t worry though―you still get all the business planning help you need. GoSmallBiz gives you business plan templates, step-by-step instructions, and the ability to create financial projections. And if you get stuck, GoSmallBiz will put you in touch with experts who can offer advice.

If you want business planning and much, much more, give GoSmallBiz a try.

• PlanGuru : Best financial forecasting
• EnLoop : Cheapest tool for startups

We recommend the software above for most business planning needs. Some businesses, though, might be interested in these more specialized planning software.

Honorable mention software pricing

Planguru: best financial forecasting features.

PlanGuru is pretty pricey compared to our other picks, but you might find its forecasting features worth paying for. It has more forecasting methods than other software (over 20) plus it lets you forecast up to 10 years.

EnLoop: Cheapest tool for startups

EnLoop doesn’t have our favorite features or interface, but it does have really, really low pricing plus a seven-day free trial. It's the most affordable software for startup business planning and still provides all the essential features like financial analysis, team collaboration, charting, and more.

Data as of 3 /13/23 . Offers and availability may vary by location and are subject to change. * With annual billing

Several of our previous favorite planning software, including BusinessPlanPro and StratPad, seem to have gone out of business.

A business plan is a written, living document that tells the story of your business and what you plan to do with it. It serves as the source of truth for you—the business owner—as well as potential partners, employees, and investors, but it also serves as a roadmap of what you want your business to be.

Why you need a business plan

While some small-business owners don’t see the point of creating a formal business plan, it can have some concrete benefits for your business. For example, one 2016 study found that business owners with written plans are more successful than those that don’t. 1

Still too vague? Then let’s get specific.

If you ever seek business funding (from, say, banks, angel investors , or venture capitalists ), you’ll have to prove that your business deserves the money you want. A formal business plan―complete with financial data and projections―gives you a professional document you can use to make your case. (In fact, most potential investors will expect you to have a business plan ready.)

Even if you’re not seeking funding right now, a business plan can help your business. A formal plan can guide your business’s direction and decision making. It can keep your business accountable (by, for example, seeing if your business meets the financial projections you included). And a formal plan offers a great way to make sure your team stays on the same page.

What to include in your business plan

Not all business plans are created equal. To make a really useful business plan, you’ll want to include a number of elements:

• Basic information about your business
• Your products/services
• Market and industry analysis
• What makes your business competitive
• Strategies and upcoming plans
• Your team (and your team’s background)
• Current financial status
• Financial and market projections
• Executive summary

Of course, you can include more or fewer elements―whatever makes sense for your business. Just make sure your business plan is comprehensive (but not overwhelming).

How business plan software can help

With so many elements to include, business plan creation can take a while. Business plan software tries to speed things up.

Most business plan software will include prompts for each section. In some cases, you can just fill in your business’s specific information, and the software will write the text for you. In other cases, the software will give you specific guidance and examples, helping you write the text yourself.

Plus, business plan software can help you stay organized. You’ll usually get intuitive menus that let you quickly flip through sections. So rather than endlessly scrolling through a long document in a word processor, you can quickly find your way around your plan. Some software even lets you drag and drop sections to reorganize your plan.

Sounds way easier than just staring at a blank page and trying to start from scratch, right?

Choosing business plan software

To find the right business plan builder for your business, you’ll want to compare features. For example, would you rather write your own text, getting prompts and advice from your software? Or would you rather go with a fill-in-the-blank method?

Likewise, think about the elements you need. If your plan will have a heavy focus on finances, you’ll want to choose business plan software with robust financial projection features. If you care more about market and competitor analysis, look for software that can help with that research.

You may also want to find business plan software that integrates with your business accounting software . Some plan builders will import data from Xero, QuickBooks, etc. to quickly generate your financial data and projections.

And of course, you’ll want to compare prices. After all, you always want to end up with software that fits your business budget.

The right business plan software can make your life easier. With LivePlan ’s wide breadth of features and online learning tools, you can’t go wrong. Plus, BizPlanBuilder 's one-time pricing makes it easy to invest while Business Sorter has a low starting cost. And if you're business is looking to grow, GoSmallBiz and Wise Business Plans will scale with you.

But of course, different companies have different needs. So shop around until you find the software that’s best for you and your business.

Now that you've got a business plan, take a look at our checklist for starting a small business.  It can help you make sure you have everything else you need to get your startup off to a good start!

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Creating a business plan can take anywhere from a couple hours to several weeks. Your timeline will depend on things like the elements you choose to include, whether you use software or hire a writing service, and how much research goes into your plan.

That said, much of the business plan software out there brags that it can help you create a fairly detailed plan in a few hours. So if you’re going the software route, that can help you set your expectations.

If you want to get the most out of your business plan, you should update it on a regular basis―at least annually. That way, you can continually refer to it to inform your company’s strategies and direction.  

At the very least, you should update your business plan before you start looking for a new round of funding (whether that’s with investors or lenders).

Thanks to business plan software, you can easily write your own business plan rather than pay someone to do it for you. And in most cases, software will cost you less than a professional business plan service.

There are some times you might want to go with a service though. If time is tight, you might find that it’s worth the cost of a service. Or if you’ve got big investor meetings on the horizon, you might want the expertise and polish that a professional service can offer.

Ultimately, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether business plan software or a business plan service will work better for your company.

Methodology

We ranked business plan software and tools based on features, pricing and plans, and connections to project management and other services. The value of each plan and service, along with what it offers, was a big consideration in our rankings, and we looked to see if what was offered was useful to small businesses or just extra. The final thing we looked at was the ease of use of the software to see if it's too complex for small businesses.

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

Sources 1. Harvard Business Review, “ Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed .” Accessed March 13, 2023.

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Our mission is to help consumers make informed purchase decisions. While we strive to keep our reviews as unbiased as possible, we do receive affiliate compensation through some of our links. This can affect which services appear on our site and where we rank them. Our affiliate compensation allows us to maintain an ad-free website and provide a free service to our readers. For more information, please see our  Privacy Policy Page . |

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Business Plan Template for Startup

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Subcategory
• Get started in seconds

Starting a new business can be an exciting and challenging journey. But where do you begin? With ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Startup, you can kickstart your entrepreneurial dreams with ease!

Our business plan template is designed to provide you with a comprehensive framework to:

• Outline your business concept and define your unique selling proposition
• Develop a strategic roadmap to guide your business growth
• Identify and analyze your target market and competitors
• Create accurate financial projections to attract investors or secure funding

With ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Startup, you'll have all the tools you need to turn your vision into a successful reality. Get started now and set yourself up for entrepreneurial success!

Business Plan Template for Startup Benefits

Starting a new business can be overwhelming, but a business plan template for startups can provide you with the structure and guidance you need to succeed. Here are some of the benefits of using a business plan template:

• Saves time and effort by providing a pre-designed format and sections to fill in
• Helps you clarify your business concept and define your target market
• Guides you in conducting thorough market research and analyzing your competitors
• Assists in developing a strategic roadmap and setting realistic goals
• Provides a framework for creating accurate financial projections and budgeting
• Increases your chances of securing funding from investors or lenders by showcasing your business's potential and profitability

Main Elements of Startup Business Plan Template

When starting a new business, having a solid business plan is essential. ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Startup includes:

• Custom Statuses: Track the progress of each section of your business plan with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do.
• Custom Fields: Use custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add additional information and categorize different parts of your business plan.
• Custom Views: Get a comprehensive overview of your business plan with different views such as Topics, Status, Timeline, Business Plan, and a Getting Started Guide.
• Collaboration Tools: Collaborate with your team in real-time using features like commenting, task assignment, and notifications.
• Integrations: Connect ClickUp with other essential tools for startups, such as project management software, financial software, and communication tools, to streamline your workflow and boost productivity.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Startup

If you're a startup looking to create a solid business plan, follow these six steps using ClickUp's Business Plan Template:

1. Define your vision and mission

Start by clearly defining your startup's vision and mission. Your vision is the long-term goal you want to achieve, while your mission outlines the purpose and values of your business. This will help guide your decision-making process and keep your team aligned.

Use a Doc in ClickUp to brainstorm and define your vision and mission statements.

2. Conduct market research

Thorough market research is essential for understanding your target audience, competition, and industry trends. Analyze market size, customer demographics, and competitors' strengths and weaknesses. This information will help you identify opportunities and develop a competitive advantage.

Create tasks in ClickUp to track your market research activities and gather insights.

3. Outline your products or services

Describe in detail the products or services your startup will offer. Explain how they meet customer needs and differentiate you from competitors. Include pricing strategies, distribution channels, and any intellectual property associated with your offerings.

Use the Board view in ClickUp to visually outline your products or services and track progress.

4. Develop a marketing strategy

Create a comprehensive marketing strategy that outlines how you will attract and retain customers. Identify your target audience, choose effective marketing channels, and develop a branding strategy. Consider using both online and offline tactics to reach your customers.

Use Automations in ClickUp to automate marketing tasks and track campaign performance.

5. Create a financial plan

Develop a detailed financial plan that includes revenue projections, expenses, and funding requirements. Analyze your startup costs, cash flow, and profit margins. This will help you understand the financial feasibility of your business and attract potential investors.

Use the Table view in ClickUp to create a financial spreadsheet and track your financial projections.

6. Set milestones and timelines

Establish key milestones and timelines to track your progress and hold yourself accountable. Break down your business plan into actionable goals and set deadlines for each milestone. This will help you stay focused and motivated as you work towards achieving your objectives.

Use Milestones in ClickUp to set and track your business plan milestones and deadlines.

By following these steps and utilizing ClickUp's Business Plan Template, you'll be well on your way to creating a comprehensive and effective business plan for your startup.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Startup

Entrepreneurs who are starting a new business can use the Business Plan Template for Startup in ClickUp to create a comprehensive and organized business plan that will help them secure funding and guide their strategic decisions.

To get started, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a solid business plan:

• Use the Topics View to outline the different sections of your business plan, such as Executive Summary, Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, Financial Projections, etc.
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section, with statuses like Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do
• The Timeline View will allow you to set deadlines and visualize the overall timeline of your business plan
• The Business Plan View will provide a comprehensive overview of your entire plan, allowing you to easily navigate between sections and make updates
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide step-by-step instructions and tips to help you fill out each section of the business plan
• Utilize custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section to add additional information and track important details
• Collaborate with team members to gather input, brainstorm ideas, and refine your business plan
• Monitor and analyze your progress to ensure your business plan is comprehensive and investor-ready.
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Original text

Do you want to increase the odds that your business startup will be a success? Download this step-by-step business plan template to lay the groundwork for your new business.

Writing a business plan allows you to carefully think through every step of starting your company so you can better prepare and handle any challenges. While a thorough business plan is essential in the financing process, it's helpful even if you don’t need outside financing.

Creating a business plan can:

• Help you discover any weaknesses in your business idea so you can address them before you open for business
• Identify business opportunities you may not have considered and plan how to take advantage of them
• Analyze the market and competition to strengthen your idea
• Give you a chance to plan strategies for dealing with potential challenges so they don’t derail your startup
• Convince potential partners, customers, and key employees that you’re serious about your idea and persuade them to work with you
• Force you to calculate when your business will make a profit and how much money you need to reach that point so that you can be prepared with adequate startup capital
• Determine your target market and how to reach them

A detailed, step-by-step plan gives you a blueprint you can refer to during the startup process and helps you maintain momentum.

What this business plan template includes

Writing a business plan for a startup can sometimes seem overwhelming. To make the process easier and more manageable, this template will guide you step-by-step. The template includes easy-to-follow instructions for completing each business plan section, questions to help you think through each aspect, and corresponding fillable worksheet/s for critical sections.

After you complete the 11 worksheets, you will have a working business plan for your startup to show your SCORE mentor .

Business plan sections covered in this template:

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Products and Services
• Marketing Plan
• Operational Plan
• Management and Organization
• Startup Expenses and Capitalization
• Financial Plan

The Appendices include documents that supplement information in the body of the plan.  These might be contracts, leases, purchase orders, intellectual property, key managers’ resumes, market research data or anything that supports assumptions or statements made in the plan.

The last section of the template, “Refining Your Plan,” explains ways to modify your plan for specific purposes, such as getting a bank loan, or for specific industries, such as retail or manufacturing.

Complete the Business Plan Template for a Startup Business to create a working business plan for your startup.

Then, contact a  SCORE mentor  to review and refine your plan online or in person.

Quick Start Business Plan The aim of this module is to give you the tools, direction and ideas you need to build a business plan. If you're starting a business then a business plan is essential, because it forces you to think through your ideas and options.

10 Business Planning Tips for Starting a Business In this webinar, you'll learn 10 business planning tips to help you start your entrepreneurial journey on the right path.

Business Plan 101: Sales & Marketing The sales and marketing section of your business plan describes how you intend to sell your product. Learn what you should include in this section.

Copyright © 2024 SCORE Association, SCORE.org

Funded, in part, through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. All opinions, and/or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SBA.

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RECOMMENDED READS

• 5 Steps to Getting Started with Llama 2
• The Llama Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future
• Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding
• Meta and Microsoft Introduce the Next Generation of Llama
• Today, we’re introducing Meta Llama 3, the next generation of our state-of-the-art open source large language model.
• Llama 3 models will soon be available on AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, Hugging Face, Kaggle, IBM WatsonX, Microsoft Azure, NVIDIA NIM, and Snowflake, and with support from hardware platforms offered by AMD, AWS, Dell, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.
• We’re dedicated to developing Llama 3 in a responsible way, and we’re offering various resources to help others use it responsibly as well. This includes introducing new trust and safety tools with Llama Guard 2, Code Shield, and CyberSec Eval 2.
• In the coming months, we expect to introduce new capabilities, longer context windows, additional model sizes, and enhanced performance, and we’ll share the Llama 3 research paper.
• Meta AI, built with Llama 3 technology, is now one of the world’s leading AI assistants that can boost your intelligence and lighten your load—helping you learn, get things done, create content, and connect to make the most out of every moment. You can try Meta AI here .

Today, we’re excited to share the first two models of the next generation of Llama, Meta Llama 3, available for broad use. This release features pretrained and instruction-fine-tuned language models with 8B and 70B parameters that can support a broad range of use cases. This next generation of Llama demonstrates state-of-the-art performance on a wide range of industry benchmarks and offers new capabilities, including improved reasoning. We believe these are the best open source models of their class, period. In support of our longstanding open approach, we’re putting Llama 3 in the hands of the community. We want to kickstart the next wave of innovation in AI across the stack—from applications to developer tools to evals to inference optimizations and more. We can’t wait to see what you build and look forward to your feedback.

Our goals for Llama 3

With Llama 3, we set out to build the best open models that are on par with the best proprietary models available today. We wanted to address developer feedback to increase the overall helpfulness of Llama 3 and are doing so while continuing to play a leading role on responsible use and deployment of LLMs. We are embracing the open source ethos of releasing early and often to enable the community to get access to these models while they are still in development. The text-based models we are releasing today are the first in the Llama 3 collection of models. Our goal in the near future is to make Llama 3 multilingual and multimodal, have longer context, and continue to improve overall performance across core LLM capabilities such as reasoning and coding.

State-of-the-art performance

Our new 8B and 70B parameter Llama 3 models are a major leap over Llama 2 and establish a new state-of-the-art for LLM models at those scales. Thanks to improvements in pretraining and post-training, our pretrained and instruction-fine-tuned models are the best models existing today at the 8B and 70B parameter scale. Improvements in our post-training procedures substantially reduced false refusal rates, improved alignment, and increased diversity in model responses. We also saw greatly improved capabilities like reasoning, code generation, and instruction following making Llama 3 more steerable.

*Please see evaluation details for setting and parameters with which these evaluations are calculated.

In the development of Llama 3, we looked at model performance on standard benchmarks and also sought to optimize for performance for real-world scenarios. To this end, we developed a new high-quality human evaluation set. This evaluation set contains 1,800 prompts that cover 12 key use cases: asking for advice, brainstorming, classification, closed question answering, coding, creative writing, extraction, inhabiting a character/persona, open question answering, reasoning, rewriting, and summarization. To prevent accidental overfitting of our models on this evaluation set, even our own modeling teams do not have access to it. The chart below shows aggregated results of our human evaluations across of these categories and prompts against Claude Sonnet, Mistral Medium, and GPT-3.5.

Preference rankings by human annotators based on this evaluation set highlight the strong performance of our 70B instruction-following model compared to competing models of comparable size in real-world scenarios.

Our pretrained model also establishes a new state-of-the-art for LLM models at those scales.

To develop a great language model, we believe it’s important to innovate, scale, and optimize for simplicity. We adopted this design philosophy throughout the Llama 3 project with a focus on four key ingredients: the model architecture, the pretraining data, scaling up pretraining, and instruction fine-tuning.

Model architecture

In line with our design philosophy, we opted for a relatively standard decoder-only transformer architecture in Llama 3. Compared to Llama 2, we made several key improvements. Llama 3 uses a tokenizer with a vocabulary of 128K tokens that encodes language much more efficiently, which leads to substantially improved model performance. To improve the inference efficiency of Llama 3 models, we’ve adopted grouped query attention (GQA) across both the 8B and 70B sizes. We trained the models on sequences of 8,192 tokens, using a mask to ensure self-attention does not cross document boundaries.

Training data

To train the best language model, the curation of a large, high-quality training dataset is paramount. In line with our design principles, we invested heavily in pretraining data. Llama 3 is pretrained on over 15T tokens that were all collected from publicly available sources. Our training dataset is seven times larger than that used for Llama 2, and it includes four times more code. To prepare for upcoming multilingual use cases, over 5% of the Llama 3 pretraining dataset consists of high-quality non-English data that covers over 30 languages. However, we do not expect the same level of performance in these languages as in English.

To ensure Llama 3 is trained on data of the highest quality, we developed a series of data-filtering pipelines. These pipelines include using heuristic filters, NSFW filters, semantic deduplication approaches, and text classifiers to predict data quality. We found that previous generations of Llama are surprisingly good at identifying high-quality data, hence we used Llama 2 to generate the training data for the text-quality classifiers that are powering Llama 3.

We also performed extensive experiments to evaluate the best ways of mixing data from different sources in our final pretraining dataset. These experiments enabled us to select a data mix that ensures that Llama 3 performs well across use cases including trivia questions, STEM, coding, historical knowledge, etc.

Scaling up pretraining

To effectively leverage our pretraining data in Llama 3 models, we put substantial effort into scaling up pretraining. Specifically, we have developed a series of detailed scaling laws for downstream benchmark evaluations. These scaling laws enable us to select an optimal data mix and to make informed decisions on how to best use our training compute. Importantly, scaling laws allow us to predict the performance of our largest models on key tasks (for example, code generation as evaluated on the HumanEval benchmark—see above) before we actually train the models. This helps us ensure strong performance of our final models across a variety of use cases and capabilities.

We made several new observations on scaling behavior during the development of Llama 3. For example, while the Chinchilla-optimal amount of training compute for an 8B parameter model corresponds to ~200B tokens, we found that model performance continues to improve even after the model is trained on two orders of magnitude more data. Both our 8B and 70B parameter models continued to improve log-linearly after we trained them on up to 15T tokens. Larger models can match the performance of these smaller models with less training compute, but smaller models are generally preferred because they are much more efficient during inference.

To train our largest Llama 3 models, we combined three types of parallelization: data parallelization, model parallelization, and pipeline parallelization. Our most efficient implementation achieves a compute utilization of over 400 TFLOPS per GPU when trained on 16K GPUs simultaneously. We performed training runs on two custom-built 24K GPU clusters . To maximize GPU uptime, we developed an advanced new training stack that automates error detection, handling, and maintenance. We also greatly improved our hardware reliability and detection mechanisms for silent data corruption, and we developed new scalable storage systems that reduce overheads of checkpointing and rollback. Those improvements resulted in an overall effective training time of more than 95%. Combined, these improvements increased the efficiency of Llama 3 training by ~three times compared to Llama 2.

Instruction fine-tuning

To fully unlock the potential of our pretrained models in chat use cases, we innovated on our approach to instruction-tuning as well. Our approach to post-training is a combination of supervised fine-tuning (SFT), rejection sampling, proximal policy optimization (PPO), and direct preference optimization (DPO). The quality of the prompts that are used in SFT and the preference rankings that are used in PPO and DPO has an outsized influence on the performance of aligned models. Some of our biggest improvements in model quality came from carefully curating this data and performing multiple rounds of quality assurance on annotations provided by human annotators.

Learning from preference rankings via PPO and DPO also greatly improved the performance of Llama 3 on reasoning and coding tasks. We found that if you ask a model a reasoning question that it struggles to answer, the model will sometimes produce the right reasoning trace: The model knows how to produce the right answer, but it does not know how to select it. Training on preference rankings enables the model to learn how to select it.

Building with Llama 3

Our vision is to enable developers to customize Llama 3 to support relevant use cases and to make it easier to adopt best practices and improve the open ecosystem. With this release, we’re providing new trust and safety tools including updated components with both Llama Guard 2 and Cybersec Eval 2, and the introduction of Code Shield—an inference time guardrail for filtering insecure code produced by LLMs.

We’ve also co-developed Llama 3 with torchtune , the new PyTorch-native library for easily authoring, fine-tuning, and experimenting with LLMs. torchtune provides memory efficient and hackable training recipes written entirely in PyTorch. The library is integrated with popular platforms such as Hugging Face, Weights & Biases, and EleutherAI and even supports Executorch for enabling efficient inference to be run on a wide variety of mobile and edge devices. For everything from prompt engineering to using Llama 3 with LangChain we have a comprehensive getting started guide and takes you from downloading Llama 3 all the way to deployment at scale within your generative AI application.

A system-level approach to responsibility

We have designed Llama 3 models to be maximally helpful while ensuring an industry leading approach to responsibly deploying them. To achieve this, we have adopted a new, system-level approach to the responsible development and deployment of Llama. We envision Llama models as part of a broader system that puts the developer in the driver’s seat. Llama models will serve as a foundational piece of a system that developers design with their unique end goals in mind.

Instruction fine-tuning also plays a major role in ensuring the safety of our models. Our instruction-fine-tuned models have been red-teamed (tested) for safety through internal and external efforts. ​​Our red teaming approach leverages human experts and automation methods to generate adversarial prompts that try to elicit problematic responses. For instance, we apply comprehensive testing to assess risks of misuse related to Chemical, Biological, Cyber Security, and other risk areas. All of these efforts are iterative and used to inform safety fine-tuning of the models being released. You can read more about our efforts in the model card .

Llama Guard models are meant to be a foundation for prompt and response safety and can easily be fine-tuned to create a new taxonomy depending on application needs. As a starting point, the new Llama Guard 2 uses the recently announced MLCommons taxonomy, in an effort to support the emergence of industry standards in this important area. Additionally, CyberSecEval 2 expands on its predecessor by adding measures of an LLM’s propensity to allow for abuse of its code interpreter, offensive cybersecurity capabilities, and susceptibility to prompt injection attacks (learn more in our technical paper ). Finally, we’re introducing Code Shield which adds support for inference-time filtering of insecure code produced by LLMs. This offers mitigation of risks around insecure code suggestions, code interpreter abuse prevention, and secure command execution.

With the speed at which the generative AI space is moving, we believe an open approach is an important way to bring the ecosystem together and mitigate these potential harms. As part of that, we’re updating our Responsible Use Guide (RUG) that provides a comprehensive guide to responsible development with LLMs. As we outlined in the RUG, we recommend that all inputs and outputs be checked and filtered in accordance with content guidelines appropriate to the application. Additionally, many cloud service providers offer content moderation APIs and other tools for responsible deployment, and we encourage developers to also consider using these options.

Deploying Llama 3 at scale

Llama 3 will soon be available on all major platforms including cloud providers, model API providers, and much more. Llama 3 will be everywhere .

Our benchmarks show the tokenizer offers improved token efficiency, yielding up to 15% fewer tokens compared to Llama 2. Also, Group Query Attention (GQA) now has been added to Llama 3 8B as well. As a result, we observed that despite the model having 1B more parameters compared to Llama 2 7B, the improved tokenizer efficiency and GQA contribute to maintaining the inference efficiency on par with Llama 2 7B.

For examples of how to leverage all of these capabilities, check out Llama Recipes which contains all of our open source code that can be leveraged for everything from fine-tuning to deployment to model evaluation.

What’s next for Llama 3?

The Llama 3 8B and 70B models mark the beginning of what we plan to release for Llama 3. And there’s a lot more to come.

Our largest models are over 400B parameters and, while these models are still training, our team is excited about how they’re trending. Over the coming months, we’ll release multiple models with new capabilities including multimodality, the ability to converse in multiple languages, a much longer context window, and stronger overall capabilities. We will also publish a detailed research paper once we are done training Llama 3.

To give you a sneak preview for where these models are today as they continue training, we thought we could share some snapshots of how our largest LLM model is trending. Please note that this data is based on an early checkpoint of Llama 3 that is still training and these capabilities are not supported as part of the models released today.

We’re committed to the continued growth and development of an open AI ecosystem for releasing our models responsibly. We have long believed that openness leads to better, safer products, faster innovation, and a healthier overall market. This is good for Meta, and it is good for society. We’re taking a community-first approach with Llama 3, and starting today, these models are available on the leading cloud, hosting, and hardware platforms with many more to come.

Try Meta Llama 3 today

We’ve integrated our latest models into Meta AI, which we believe is the world’s leading AI assistant. It’s now built with Llama 3 technology and it’s available in more countries across our apps.

You can use Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the web to get things done, learn, create, and connect with the things that matter to you. You can read more about the Meta AI experience here .

Visit the Llama 3 website to download the models and reference the Getting Started Guide for the latest list of all available platforms.

You’ll also soon be able to test multimodal Meta AI on our Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

As always, we look forward to seeing all the amazing products and experiences you will build with Meta Llama 3.

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