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 5-10 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.

John Bradley Jackson
© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved.

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