Business Planning

The Dehydrated Business Plan

John Bradley "JJ" Jackson

25 Mar 2009 • 1 min read

There are times when a full business plan is not needed. Time may not allow for the creation of a full length plan or the reader might just want a shorter version. In this case, a dehydrated business plan is often chosen.

This type of plan is a very brief version of the traditional business plan. It is also referred to as a skeleton plan or business brief. Amazingly, the process of writing the dehydrated business plan can be very effective since the entrepreneur is challenged to condense the idea into only 5 pages. This condensation eliminates the fluff often seen in full length plans.

The end product ends up reading more like a long executive summary with a few financial tables. The plan often includes the customers’ pain, the solution, the competitive advantage, and the value proposition. Most importantly it must communicate the business model---it must describe how the business will make money. Add a forecast, some basic costs, and the capital required. The plan is complete.

While this type of plan can be completed in much a shorter time, the sophisticated investor will want to know more. In this case, the entrepreneur typically scrambles to come up with the missing details. Generally, a dehydrated business plan is not designed for the process of raising capital. Maybe the best application is within a large corporate environment when the basic idea is enough to get the approval to go forward.