Today we’re announcing the launch of Bizplan– a modern business planning software platform that we think you’re going to love.
We’ve learned a lot in the last few years about how startup Founders do their early planning, or in lots of cases, avoid it altogether. Everyone seemed to want a plan, but the tools that helped them digest the process were just painful.
So we came up with a better way to help startups think through business planning efficiently, and by way of that, put together a platform they can rally behind.
SOLVING THE BUSINESS PLAN PROBLEM
Most founders associate business planning with some long-form academic exercise that feels like a college term paper assignment. We wanted nothing to do with that.
What we wanted, was to focus less on “creating a document” and more on giving startups the ability to walk through the key aspects of planning their business– from how to acquire customers to forecasting when they will break even.
We did that by creating a modular approach to planning that allows the team to zero in on the key elements of the business they want to think through without having to worry about writing one giant document.
WE FOCUSED ON THREE KEY AREAS
To tackle that, we focused on three key aspects of the Bizplan product:
1. Guided Builder
We walk you through each step. A business plan is really about a series of questions on how your business will operate. We condensed these questions into easy-to-answer sections that you can work on in any order. You can also invite your team to solve problems faster, collaboratively.
2. Drag and Drop Elements
We make it easy. We took all of the stuff people fumble with in crafting a business plan, like creating Market Size charts or Key Employee showcases, and made them drag-and-drop UI elements. Drop in an element, answer a few questions, and we’ll make it look pretty.
3. Automatic Projections
We make the financials less frustrating. Frankly the most difficult part of putting together a solid plan is getting the numbers right. To help ease that pain point, we’ve built a simple yet powerful tool to help you get all your forecasting right, whether it’s figuring out salary increases over a period of time or managing COGS as the business scales.
Our focus in each aspect of the product was to take the complications of planning off the table so Founders can focus on the benefits– having answers to the hard problems startups face.
TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
As part of the Startups.co launch platform, Bizplan users can get access to a ton of resources to help shape the plan as well as put it into action, such as:
Fundable
Need to get the plan funded? Fundable has helped startups attract over $350 million in funding in nearly every industry. The first thing these investors want? A plan.
Clarity
Need expert help? Clarity has thousands of world class experts that can help with every aspect of your plan, from setting up your financials to figuring out a reasonable customer acquisition strategy.
Launchrock
Ready to launch? Launchrock has helped over 500,000 startups attract their first customers (over 19 million of them). In less than 15 minutes you can have a page ready to share with your prospective audience and give them the ability to sign up for more information.
Startups.co
Our flagship learning site with hundreds of hours of in-depth education from folks like Matt Mullenwag of WordPress and Neil Patel of KissMetrics. Also learn the detailed founding stories of industry veterans like Elon Musk of Tesla, Brian Chesky of Airbnb and Daniel Ek of Spotify.
THIS IS JUST THE START
Think of this as Bizplan v1.0. We have had a ton of requests from our community of over 1 million startups on many aspects of getting their business together– we’re working on them!
We hope that as you use the product you’ll share your thoughts and requests to help us build a tool that lets us spend less time planning and more time building.
I hope you enjoy it my friends.
Sincerely,
Wil Schroter
Founder + CEO, Startups.co
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