Presentation of the Business Plan

Your business plan is a very important document, and I would suggest that you do not contact investors until you have your business plan ready with the meat that investors will be looking for.

Though the business plan is very important and investors will want to see it at one time or another, this is not the first thing to show the investor.

Well, if the business plan is so important, why should I not show it to the investor right away? The answer to that is because the business plan is a very serious document which is a detailed road map of your company - the different phases you intend to execute to realize your company. The business plan should cover each milestone in the finest detail possible, economic projections and market research.

You may have to spend money in having a business plan done professionally, but it is worth it. Many entrepreneurs can spend over $50,000 to have an effective business plan done. Some of the things that a business plan should include are as follows:

The executive summary should be the presentation part of your business plan.

The executive summary is what you show investors first, and therefore it should be a separate document in itself. Before doing your executive summary, you should first make your full business plan so you can refer to the plan when drafting the executive summary.

The executive summary should be ideally between one to three pages. The object of the executive summary is to show the highlights of your business plan.

The executive summary should briefly discuss what your milestones are and how you intend to meet these milestones. The executive summary should also have some information about market data. Remember, investors like numbers, however, never over inflate or make your numbers too low. Do the research.

If you cannot do the research yourself, hire a market expert to do the research for you and spend the extra money. It is worth it.


The slide presentation is the next step of your business plan. Again, this is not the complete business plan, but it shows more than the executive summary.

You need to keep in mind that your business plan can hold sensitive information pertaining to your company, such as trade secrets, intellectual property, product designs and patents. It is important to keep in mind that an investor you may approach could be investing in your competitor, and getting a hold of your business plan would be a great boon.

The purpose of the executive summary is to get you in front of an investor. Once you are in front of the investor, you need to show the slide presentation.

So why the slide presentation, and how should it be done?

In many cases, when you meet an investor, you will be presenting your venture not only to him, but to his experts and other partners in the firm.

Venture capitalists work with other partners in a firm, and the firm decides whether the investment goes through or not.

The slide presentation should be done with a presentation program, such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote.

The presentation should be about ten slides, and the fonts should be a large enough to be easily read by everyone in the room.

The actual business plan is a rather serious document and can be many pages. The business plan should cover every milestone in the finest detail.

Under each milestone, you need to explain each phase milestone and phase, in addition to how you plan to execute each phase. You need to explain the different strategies you plan to employ to execute each phase. In most cases, the strategies need to have alternatives in case one strategy does not work. You also need to evaluate the risks involved and how you plan to manage the risks.

Risks are the events that can damage your company if something goes wrong. Risks can vary from business to business and these risks can affect how the company operates and the profits that it can make.

Other parts of the business plan need to include your accounting information. You need to have the entire amount of capital you are looking to raise, and this amount needs to be broken down into a budget that covers all the costs to meet each individual milestone.

These costs should also include a sum of money to cover the salaries for the executives; that means you, your cofounders, other on your executive team, management and staff. You need to project how many people you will have to hire in management positions and how many people you will need to hire as employees and staff. What will be the functions of the managers?

How many people will each manager oversee? You will need to have management for the different departments, such as HR, marketing and operation.

If you are a company that produces a particular product, you will need employees to deliver the product to market. You will need drivers for the trucks to deliver your product to stores. You will need people to work the assembly line, etc.

How much do you intend to pay each employee per hour? All this needs to be figured out and this needs to be added in your budget and all of this needs to be figured out as well as when you intend to hire these particular employees.

You will not need people to work the assembly line if your product prototype is not yet developed. Furthermore, you will not need drivers when your product is still in the prototype stage.

This is why milestones need to be clearly stated and each tranche needs to cover all the expenses for meeting each milestone. For this reason, it may not hurt to pay the extra money to hire a CPA to do all the accounting for you on this part of the plan.

Market projections and market research should also be included in your business plan.

Market research and your potential profit projections are very important.

You need to understand that investors are opportunists and look at risk and potential gain.

This is why you need to accurately research your market sector, take surveys, find out what is lacking in your sector and see how your product or service can fill that void