This Update – Early Stage Business Plan White Paper information is for the White Paper Startup Presentations To Angel/Seed Stage Investors and Partners Recommendations for Best Practices by John Gale. This White Paper can be downloaded from our page Business Plans

This Post provides updates to this White Paper.

Several of my Editorial Review Board Members and I agreed that the following Update – Early Stage Business Plan White Paper information might be useful to readers of this White Paper:

This White Paper is a Guide
This is noted at the bottom of page 14. Each startup is unique in its own way. Include the information that is relevant. But that does not mean that you can choose to leave information out just to save time
Unfair Competitive Advantage
This is mentioned in Objectives for the First Meeting (Subsection on Investor/Partner Objectives) on page 9 and in Competition on page 18
To Clarify, fewer startups now have the stronger protection of patents such as those enjoyed by many fabless semiconductor startups. So the startup needs to develop an unfair competitive advantage of some type that will last while it develops an installed base that it can perpetuate; typically this takes 2-3 years. That unfair competitive advantage needs to create/include barriers to competitive entry. Restated; if you can stay 1-2 years ahead of your competitors for 2-3 years; you should have the time that you need to create a substantial installed base of customers. One of the startup’s CEO’s difficult tasks is to convince potential investors, potential employees, other potential stakeholders and him/herself that this unfair advantage is real and adequate.
Competition
Please see Page 18
As noted in the White Paper, there is ALWAYS competition for budget dollars/Euros from the perspective of someone buying a product. This is not understood by many startup CEOs
Importance of this information
As discussed in pages 5-14; each startup has various uses for this information in various formats
It is worth preparing a robust plan presentation as it becomes the basis of so many other presentations; as it is revised/updated numerous times over the years
Unqualified Investors
The startup presents less information to investors before they are qualified in his mind. One reason is that a good number of very early stage investors invest only in stealthy startups. Another is to avoid providing information to investors in competitive startups. Please see my blog posts on Meeting I, Meeting II and Meeting III

Conclusion

This Post provides an Update – Early Stage Business Plan White Paper. This is for the White Paper Startup Presentations To Angel-Seed Stage Investors and Partners Recommendations for Best Practices by John Gale and helps the Startup CEO keep up-to-date.

Please See Also

The page on this website titled Business Plans from which you can download the White Paper on early stage Business Plans

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Conclusion

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