Business Plan Outline

Full Business Plan Sections and Format

The following is the recommended format for the submission of the full business plan.
Acknowledging that different business ideas may require different areas of emphasis,
teams are free to add, delete, or modify sections as they deem appropriate for their
particular business concept. Please use your discretion.
Business Plan Sections
Note: The guide questions that appear below are not meant to be exhaustive. Feel free
to expand your discussion as you feel is necessary for your particular business concept.
Executive Summary
Guide questions:
What is the product/opportunity?
What is the market size?
What is its competitive advantage?
What are the startup costs?
What is the payoff?
Management team
1. THE COMPANY & THE PRODUCT
1.1 OVERVIEW
1.2 BUSINESS MODEL
Guide questions:
How will your business make money?
1.3 THE PRODUCT
Guide questions:
What is your product?
How does it work?
1.4 PRODUCT VALUE
Guide questions:
What is your value proposition?
What problem does it solve, what unmet need does it fill, or what opportunity
does it take advantage of?
1.5 MARKET ENTRY AND GROWTH STRATEGY
Guide questions:
How do you plan to sell your product?
How do you intend to grow your sales?
-Social media, app recommendation, word of mouth, ads, stay true to value prop
2. MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
2.1 MARKET DEFINITION
Guide questions:
Who are your potential customers?
2.2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Guide questions:
What are your sources of data?
How did you analyze your data?

2.3 MARKET SIZE

Guide questions:
What is the size of your target market? Be sure to translate it in terms of $/year in
sales.
How quickly would you be able to penetrate the market?
How much of your market will your product capture over time?
2.4 MARKETING STRATEGY
Guide questions:
How are you going to penetrate the market and drive adoption of your product?
2.5 COMPETITOR PROFILE
Guide questions:
Who are your competitors?
How do their products compare with yours?
2.6 COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES
Guide questions:
What is your competitive advantage? (i.e. Why would customers choose you
over your competitors?)
How will you sustain your competitive advantage?
How will you defend against new entrants?
2.7 MARKETING PLAN
Guide questions:
How will you reach your customers and make them aware of your product?
How will you promote your product?
How will you price your product?
How will you deliver your product to your customers?
3. FINANCE SECTION
Guide questions:
What is your projection of your financial performance? (5 years projection of
income/loss and cash flow will suffice; to help you plan your start-up activities in
detail, show the monthly projections for the first 12 months, quarterly for the 2nd
year, and annual thereafter).
How much money will you need up to product commercial launch?
What are the assumptions behind your projection?
Provide a summary of your financial statements in this section and the complete
ones in your Appendices (see below)
4. DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PLANS
4.1 DEVELOPMENT STATUS AND TASKS
Guide questions:
What is the current status of your product development?
What are the next steps in development?
What are the activities and resources needed to complete the functional, and
manufacturing prototypes, and to finally attain the commercial model?
4.2 CURRENT DESIGN GOALS
Guide questions:
What are your current design goals?
4.3 DIFFICULTIES AND RISKS
Guide questions:

What are your design issues and challenges? Feel free to use additional
sections below to expand this discussion on each critical component of your
design.
4.4 [Optional discussion of specific component of design]
4.5 [Optional discussion of specific component of design]
4.6 [Optional discussion of specific component of design]
4.7 [Optional discussion of specific component of design]
4.8 PRODUCT IMPROVEMENT AND NEW PRODUCTS
Guide questions:
How do you plan to enhance your product going forward?
4.9 PROPRIETARY ISSUES
Guide questions:
What standards will you use?
If any, what are the IP issues?
5. MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS PLAN
5.1 DEVELOPMENT STATUS: ALPHA PROTOTYPE
Guide questions:
What is the development status of your prototype?
Describe your prototype product in terms of components, materials,
manufacturing processes, and costs
5.2 STRATEGY AND PLANS: PRODUCTION MODEL
Guide questions:
Describe your production model (a true representative of the actual product that
gets in the customer's hands) in terms of components, materials, manufacturing
processes, and costs
Who would your suppliers be?
What are the production lead times?
6. MANAGEMENT TEAM
Team summary
Team members, credentials and roles they will play in your startup company
APPENDICES
Provide your complete financial statements here, including:
o Assumptions and Summary
o Pro-Forma Income Statements and Cash Flow
o Balance Sheet
o Sales & Projected Revenue Model
o Operating Expenses
Submission Format

MS Word 2008 (.DOC)

File size < 800 kb
Page size: "US Letter"
Margins: 1" all around
Font: Arial 12 pts
Maximum 20 pages (excluding Appendices containing financial statements, all
other tables and charts must be embedded in the body of the plan)

First page of business plan must contain:

TITLE OF COMPANY/TEAM NAME (all caps, bold)
Name of Product/Service (bold)
Names of Team Members (normal) (mandatory member designations are
identified: student; tech member; management/business member)
Name of mentor.