Business Plan (May 7th)

Business plan elements

  1. Business opportunity
    1. Business objective (why):
    2. Product description (what)
    3. Market analysis (where)
    4. Capital and personnel resources (how)
  2. Financial data
    1. Capital equipment and supply list
    2. Break-even analysis
    3. Three-year summary of Pro-forma income and cost projections
  3. Supporting documents
    1. Existing patents
    2. Technical analysis and benchmarking

Explanation and Examples

Market analysis

  1. Use a figure to explain the market gap and where your product will fit
  2. Qualitatively summarize your market study to support your product positioning

Capital and personnel resources

  1. Provide an estimate of the amount of investment you need. Explain how you will spend this startup funding for your facilities and personnel.
  2. Provide a logistic plan: Justify your office and fab locations, plans for research, development, production, employee training, marketing.

Capital equipment and supply list

Provide a table with all initial and annual costs. Example:

Iterm Use Cost (initial) Cost (per year) Cost (per part) …  
Electronic workstation Manufacturing $1,000        
Line worker Manufacturing     $0.3 $18/hr, $0.3/part  
Office material Property $14,900        
Energy costs Property   $600      
Total            

Break-even analysis

  1. Use the spreadsheet for the calculation.
  2. Take into account:
    1. Total investment cost
    2. Annual operating cost
    3. Annual income
    4. Interest Rate

Three-year summary of Pro-forma income and cost projections

This is a profit-loss statement for the zero-th year and the first three years of operation. Example:

Project quarter 2017-1 2017-2 2017-3 2017-4 2018-1 …
Qty sold 0 0 0   100 …
Investor contribution            
Product revenue            
Total income            
Facility            
Material costs            
Manufacturing costs            
Personnel costs            
Total expenses            
Qrtly cash balance            
Running cash balance            
After taxes            

Existing patents

Provide existing patents (with patent numbers) and justify that your product will not breach these patents.

Technical analysis and benchmarking

This contains analysis from the progress report.

More examples can be found here. These materials are from the Analytical Product Design class (2015) at the University of Michigan.