Business Plan Guidelines

Formatting

Follow these guidelines when producing and submitting your business plan and presentation. Teams that do not adhere to these guidelines will be asked to resubmit their documents.

  • Maximum of 20 pages (excluding optional cover page). Up to 5 additional pages can be used for appendices, but you will be directly judged on what information is included in the first 20 pages. Judges will not be asked or expected to read anything above 25 pages in total.
  • Name your documents “team_name.business_plan” and “team_name.presentation”. Replace spaces with underscores.
  • Submit a .pdf file for the business plan and a .ppt or .pdf file for the presentation. No .docx or .pptx file formats accepted.
  • Times New Roman, 11 – 12 pt. font size is preferred. If using a different font, the font-size should be similar to 11 – 12 pt. Times New Roman. Lines should be at least 1.5 spaced.
  • Include primary contact name, address, phone number, and e-mail.

Content

There is no universal template for a business plan, particularly for new social ventures. The following items are elements that we recommend be addressed in your business plan, as appropriate to the stage of your venture.  Please remember our six general judging criteria: concept and product, feasibility, financial sustainability, market, social return on investment, and team.  More information on each criterion can be found here.

D.light Design, the grand prize winner from two years ago, has generously offered to share their plan with teams so that they can see a high quality example of a business plan. Click here to download it.

  • Cover Page
  • Executive Summary
    • An updated, more complete version of the executive summary.
  • Mission Statement
    • A concise, one or two sentence description of the venture
  • Problem or Unmet Need
    • What is the problem you are trying to solve? What is its context or magnitude? Why is it important? What are its consequences? Keep in mind that people reading your plan aren’t necessarily experts in your venture’s field.
  • Your Solution
    • How do you propose to address the problem? Why is your solution an appropriate one? What evidence is there that your solution is effective? How far along are you in addressing the problem? Consider this in both a short-term and long-term context.
  • Market Analysis
    • How many people are affected? Who exactly are your intended customers, beneficiaries? How is this market segmented? What are the trends that govern this market and its segments? Consider models of analysis, such as Porter’s Five Forces to help you think about this.
  • Social Return on Investment (SROI)
    • What kind of social impact does your solution generate? How can you quantitatively project social impact, both short term and long term? Consider economic improvements, health improvements, quality of life, etc. How are each of these related? What are your assumptions?
    • How do you intend to measure and analyze social impact in order to determine what return on investment you are achieving?
  • Competitive Analysis
    • Who are your competitors? How are you differentiated from them? Why is your solution better suited than theirs?
  • Operating Plan and Distribution
    • How will you execute your solution? What are your plans for design and production? How will you distribute your product to your target customers? How will you scale and grow your business starting from a pilot phase? What are the key milestones for the venture?
  • Marketing and Sales
    • How will you raise awareness of your product and drive customers or users to actually use it? What are your plans for acquiring sales and what mechanisms do you intend to use? How do these factor into your company’s operating budget and growth?
  • Organizational Management
    • Who are the leaders and what role will they play? What value do advisors or mentors bring to the team? What are the weaknesses in the team and what is being done to address them?
    • What is your timeline of growth? Number of people, cost, etc?
  • Risk Assessment
    • What are the biggest risks or obstacles facing your venture? How sensitive are you to them? How are you prioritizing them? What are your risk mitigation strategies and contingency plans?
  • Financials
    • How do you plan for financial sustainability? If you are for-profit, how do you generate cash flows and what governances do you have to ensure the social mission of the company? What are your possibly sources of funding, and what kind of returns to they expect? If you are a non-profit, what are your funding sources and how do keep the venture on-going?
    • Provide a basic three to five year financial projection. What are the assumptions used for revenues and costs? How much investment is needed to reach what milestone? Breakeven analysis.
  • Appendices
    • Detailed breakdown of market analysis, SROI analysis, financial projects
    • Detailed breakdown of competitors
    • Technical notes regarding product or service
    • Resumes of key management staff
    • Articles or press coverage of the venture, its product/service, market, etc.

Remember, what is shown above are the recommended components to a business plan. We encourage you to think of them as you construct a plan that is appropriate for your venture. If you have any questions or concerns, contact us at sociale@bases.stanford.edu