Ask HN: How to write a business plan for an Internet startup?

With that said, and with the huge caveat that while I've done this before, my advice might not be the current hotness:

(.) You need a table for revenue growth, quarter by quarter, in your case probably based on users and conversion rate scenarios.

(.) You might consider a seperate table for pricing; of all the things you write in the plan, pricing is the most likely to change, but do a couple scenarios, keep conversion/close rate in mind.

(.) If it makes sense for your product, segment the market and get that in a table; you might do, "home office", "small business", "enterprise", and have a pricing/phase-1/phase-2 revenue scenario for each model customer based on your pricing. Include a SWAG total addressable market size (there are, say, 2000-4000 "enterprises" to sell to).

(.) You can do a schedule table, quarter by quarter, and use it to set a conversion rate for each market segment, to chart featuresets in your product, when they'll be released, and what releasing them will do to your cash flow.

(.) If you have significant marketing expenses, break them down into line items quarter by quarter, showing some things kicking in later. You can break this down by outreach mechanism (direct mail, blogging, AdWords, research).

(.) You need a table for headcount; we just SWAG a common (somewhat lowball) fully loaded cost for everyone from management to QA; remember fully loaded adds (say) 30% for taxes, health insurance, and equipment/office/overhead.

(.) You need a table for all your expenses, quarter by quarter, which should include headcount, a line item for hosting/bandwidth/server/etc, marketing,

(.) I'm probably missing something, but with all that, you should be able to do a final seperate sheet, call it "use of proceeds", broken down by engineering, opex (hosting etc), sales, and administrative costs, quarter by quarter, against revenue.

Of all the things you "plan" now, pricing is the most likely to change, so don't get too hung up.

Lowball your headcount. Don't include anything you could reasonably outsource (like accounting, HR, graphic design).

Do you want to take a salary? What I think is, lots and lots of people pitch investors saying they'll forego salary; it's a cliche. You might look more serious if you're up front.

This is all going to sound over the top, and that's because it is, but on the other hand you're not going to do any of these things (price a product, figure out how many people to hire next month, allocate dollars to anything but AdWords) without these spreadsheets. A bunch of this stuff is optional (don't do a marketing plan if your marketing plan isn't crucial; maybe don't do a product schedule if long term product vision isn't a huge part of your pitch --- the schedule will embarass you 2 months from now).

1) Most investors of internet startups don't ask to see a business plan. Maybe half want a short (1-2 page) narrative about the business-- an executive summary.

2) I've written formal business plans for two businesses in the past and they sat on the shelf collecting dust thereafter. In 6 months they were sorta obsolete. In 12 months they were freakin' hilariously wrong. New companies change to fast to do that much formal planning.

A good investor will recognize that. They won't ask for a business plan-- but they will ask a bunch of hard questions to make sure you've thought about the important issues.