9/27/2004

What not to say in Business Plan

In this article from Angel Investor News.com Barry J. Moltz offers this advice on how to write a business plan:

“Write the plan in plain and proper English. Please understand that the reader comes to the plan with no knowledge of your business. No fancy words, clichés or graphs will make them want to invest. Understand every part of your plan and be able to defend it. Use your own passion to describe your plan. Make your plan your own.”

Moltz also urges avoidance of the following mistakes:

Excessive jargon and terminology such as disintermediation, sweet spot, best of breed, and win-win; introductory sentences stretching for an entire paragraph; using business plan template software or working from an existing plan; and including any of the following phrases:

"Our numbers are conservative."

“We’ll give you a 100 percent internal rate of return on your money."

"We project a 10 percent margin."

"We only need a 5 percent market share to make our conservative projections."

"Customers really need our product."

"We have no competition."

Via entreprenuerslife.com