Anand Lunia explains how to write a business plan for your startup

1. <seedfund>
How To Write Your Business Plan
Anand Lunia
Chief Rejection Officer
anand@seedfund.in

2. Problem
• Describe the pain that you re taking away. The
goal is to get everyone nodding and buying in.
• Try to personalize the problem.
• Example: If you go to VCs, they will ask you a
lot of questions and make nasty remarks.
Raising funds from a VC is a big pain, even after
writing a plan. Investors in VC Funds are worried
about this attitude.

3. Solution
• Explain how you take away this pain. Ensure
that the audience clearly understands what
you sell and your value proposition.
• Example: We will be a soft at heart VC. We
evaluate proposals only on how good the
business plan looks. This will help the
Investors capitalize on the great visions of the
Entrepreneurs.

4. Business Model
• Explain how you make money: who pays you,
your channels of distribution, and your gross
margins.
• One time license fee, Ad supported, SAAS,
Revenue share, Profit share etc
• We charge a small fee and small profit share
from our Investors. Even if one of the business
plans we invest in comes true, Investors wont
mind paying us.

5. Underlying Mantra
• Describe the technology, secret sauce, or magic
behind your product.
• Specifically, how does it create value for the
customer.
• Example: We don t believe in the
misconception that returns are important. It s
about supporting well written visionary plans.
We have experience of betting on plans and we
have the right DNA for no-questions-asked
investing.

6. Positioning
• Describe your position in the marketplace.
• Competitive Positioning: What stories are
the prominent competitors selling?
• Creative Positioning: What story will you tell
that customers will find either more
important or different than the stories
already being told in the market?
• Example: VCs talk about helping the
business but hardly deliver. We will make it
easy for the entrepreneur even to get
funded. This Assured Placement will
positioning will attract all Harvard Wharton
IIT IIM plans.

7. Marketing and Sales
• Explain how you are going to reach your
customer and your marketing leverage points.
• Convince the audience that you have an
effective go-to-market strategy that won t break
the bank.
• Example: We believe in pulling business. We
will give away a Lottery funding, Rs 10 crores,
and this will attract the best plans for us to
pick.

8. Competition
• Provide a complete view of the competitive
landscape.
• Never dismiss your competition.
• Everyone—customers, investors, employees—
wants to hear why you re good, not why the
competition is bad.
• Example: The competition is spends energy in
searching for good businesses. While that is not
a bad approach, we focus on good plans
instead.

9. Management Team
• Describe the key players of your management
team, board of directors, advisors, as well as
any major investors.
• Discuss how your team completes the
management trinity : production, marketing,
and financial expertise.
• Discuss what are the holes in the team and how
do you plan to fill them.
• Example: We have people who can read plans.
What we need is a leading model on our Board.
After all, Entrepreneurs should look forward to
the board meetings.

10. Financial Projections
• Provide a three year forecast
• Key metrics such as numbers of customers and
conversion rate
• Indicate Monthly Burn, if you are at the concept
stage
• This should be a bottom-up forecast taking into
account long sales cycles and seasonality.
• Making people understand the underlying
assumptions of your forecast is as important as
the numbers you ve fabricated.

11. Milestones
• Explain:
– the current status of your product or service,
• Deepika Padukone will join the Board
– What the near term future looks like,
• First Lottery funding exercise in 3 months
– any accomplishments to date, and
• Already 100 plans in waitlist for funding
– how you ll use any money that you are trying to
raise
• We aim to fund 1000 companies in next 2 years from
the current $ 1 Bn fund raise