Writing a buisness plan

[JeremyL]

I have always funded my own ventures. With such ventures a very minimal type of buisness plan has been needed. But I now need to find individual investors for my next project. So it's time to write or have written my first proffesional buisness plan.

I have found a few programs that claim to help you with writing buisness plans and see on some sites people advertising to write the plans for you. Anyone who has done this in an effort to raise capital have any recommendations or resources I should check out?

[sun818]

Small Business Adminitration Business Plan:
[sba.gov...]

[balinor]

I found a real nice one to start with at the Canada Business Service Centres web site. It walks you through everything, and then lets you save the file as a text document so you can drop it into Word and edit it yourself.

[Web Footed Newbie]

Without question, business plan pro is what you need. The program is easy to use, and the layout is what is typically accepted by most banks and investors. Also has many samples that come with the program or can be downloaded from their site.

I used this program to write a plan that helped raise over $2M in venture capital.

Now, it is not necessarily the plan that raises the capital, it is your skill in communicating the vision and the rewards the investors will realize. Think "what's in it for me", or put yourself in their shoes...

Hope that helps, WFN :)

[aspdaddy]

Theres a decent guide here
[businesslink.gov.uk...]

[bunltd]

Another vote for business plan pro, it guides you through the process in a simple way by asking you questions - but is also flexible to let you customize where needed.

LisaB