The Coolest Business Plan Ever

I'm reading a business plan that I received. 10 honking megabytes of brainwaves put to paper. 115 carefully crafted pages which gets me deep, really deep, into the mind of the entrepreneur.  You are thinking to yourself, self, how could a simple business plan allow the VC to learn tons about me and my people.

Simple.

Make tons of changes to your document, pass it to your 'advisors' for advising, get back their edits, make more changes, save and send the document to me without accepting all changes and stripping out all the notes and comments.

Consider these choices tidbits left in the document:

• "Segal used work for Microsoft so skip the name dropping, save it for the afternoon meeting, they are clueless about Redmond."

• "When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them"

• "I'd delete this section since we don't have these features on the roadmap and haven't figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won't catch this."

• Scratched out "Exchange sucks resources like a vampire in heat", replaced with "Exchange is resource intensive under certain scenarios"

• Scratched out "Competitors are 10 years behind us and will never catch up", replaced with "There is competition out there"

• "VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard."

• Scratched out "Beta is in 6 months" replaced with "code is out there now"

Sweet, eh?

If you are so inclined, you might want to create what I call the "Yo! Are YOU DAMN SURE" macro for your copy of Word that checks a variety of things before you send it out the door.

I love this gig.

Comments

[Marc Bernard]

Wow, I can hear the colour draining from their faces as they read this. :)

[rick segal]

I dunno, Marc. I am Jewish and did work for Microsoft so they do get points for the homework.. How'd the 4 year old's no training wheel adventure go?

[Ryan Fox]

I'm slightly confused. This post almost sounds sarcastically sarcastic. Are you impressed, offended, or just amused?

[rick segal]

Hi Ryan,

Given your choices, I'll go with amused, certainly not offended.

[David]

Or just install SendShield that warns you about this kind of stuff! www.sendshield.com

[Scott]

Well Bobs your uncle. Next.

[Eric]

This is hilarious on many levels. What if it was a viable product\plan? Any chance for investment after such a blunder?

[Lauren Friese]

I thought I made a bad mistake when I sent an e-mail to a journalist at the Globe and called it The Star....

[Ranjit Mathoda]

When I was a lawyer at a large law firm I made it a habit to cut and paste a Word document into a new empty document before sending it out. That gets rid of all tracked changes for sure.

[rick segal]

Eric,
Yep, I'm still reviewing the plan and I really didn't take points off as I've said before, the VC world needs lots of cleaning up so I'm not surprised at the comments.

Thanks for stopping by,

>R<

[Brian]

It looks like many of the comments came from the "advisors" so not necessarily this poor entrepreneur's own thoughts.

However, anyone who has the sense of humor to write, "Exchange sucks resources like a vampire in heat," deserves huge points for honesty and ability with a phrase....wish he'd left it in there and not gone with the more mundane sentence :-).

At least today hasn't been "boring" eh?

[rick segal]

Brian,
I totally agree with you. The visual of a vampire in heat was off the charts.

Thanks for stopping by.

>R<

[Robert]

D'oh!

[Rand Fitzpatrick]

Hah! That's beautiful. Should I start sending you reports with the changes tracked? You'll have a field day with 'em.

[Clint Laskowski]

Seriously. I think a "things to check before sending out an important document" list is a very important tool. Let's start ...

Spelling
Capitalization
Punctuation
Undefined words, terms, and acronyms
Accepted/Rejected changes and comments
Consistent of use of terms

What else?

[Tom]

Rick,

As I was scanning my reader I noticed this post and was pleasantly surprised. I thought based on the title that i was going to get tips on great business plan and instead got a good laugh at the end of the day. That's why I love reading your blog.

[g4ld3r]

Ehh. PDF anyone?

[John Bradford]

Hosting your Web2.0 business on Amazon = $20
Beer & pizza for interns to code your Web2.0 business = $5,000
Buying the Founder a new Porsche = $94,000
Sending your business plan with track changes & comments left in = Priceless

[Leigh]

I've never heard a funny Chanukah joke (especially around this time of year). My dad is an OB/GYN however, and has lots of good ones. Maybe if i ever do another start up, I can tell you one with an yiddish accent for a more Jewish affect - even if my presentation sucks, trust me, the jokes are generally worth it.

[Johnk]

You can never be too careful. I once got a resume faxed to me by a fresh University graduate with "MASTERBATE4ME" listed as the name of the fax machine in the header.
I can just visualize Career Services at the University wondering why there was an unexplained drop in recruitment that year.

[Steve]

Shocked people are still wasting their time with business plans at all.... Let alone wasting money on lawyers, actually sending stuff to VC's, and using ridicilous jargon.

here's an idea: Demonstration. 1 page mud map.

Everyhting else is a joke which sells books in business sections.
Steve.

[MRM]

i sometimes forget how funny you are Rick, but then i stop by here and get a refresher

if only i could do what you do

mrm

[Chelle Parmele]

Wow. That's impressive.

We read a lot of business plans here (paloalto.com) but I've never come across one with all the comments left in. That's pretty special.

[David D]

Ha ha... awesome. In so many ways.

[Jeremy Pepper]

Well, I'll bring up the media training comment: we have no competitors should bring the response of "you haven't done your homework" or "is there a business for this, then?"

Ugh. And, being Jewish myself, I have yet to hear a good Hanukkah joke. Besides being asked by a friend if Hanukkah Harry was real - and he wasn't joking.