Class participation can help your grade on this course, and lack of participation can hurt your grade. You won’t get a number or even a letter grade for participation, but it will influence me at the end. A person with a B business plan could end up with an A in the course if he or she were participating well. And a person with an A business plan who never came to class is going to get about a C on the course, because I’ve got tons of supplemental material on the business plan itself, but by not being in class you will have missed a lot of discussion.

Participation also includes participation in the online discussions on this site. It’s perhaps a bit overambitious to pretend that commenting on a blog, which is what’s going on with these discussions, is the latest leading edge in social media. Still, it’s a start.

Here are some important notes:

• I’m not going to take attendance, but I’m going to be disappointed if you skip a lot of classes. And I’m also disappointed if you come to class and don’t participate in discussion.
• I can’t guarantee that I won’t be offended if you’re in class doing IM, Twitter, work for some other assignment, Facebook, or anything else. You’re welcome to bring a laptop and take notes on it, but I’m a laptop addict myself and I’m quite guilty of not paying attention during a business meeting because I’m doing email. As a personal note, I really like twitter — follow me as Timberry — but I know it can be distracting. Because I suffer from the same online bad habit I’m noting here, I’m more likely to know it if you’re doing it, and that will then be more likely to affect your grade.
• A good comment, a good question, an example at the right spot in the discussion, all of those can help your participation.
• Participating in the end-of-the-course business plan can make a big difference in your grade. It’s not inconceiveable that you could have a C+ or B- in your business plan and then take an active part in the winning team, and end up with an A. On the other hand, I like to think that I can tell from the presentation for the contest when one or more of the group members weren’t actively involved.
• Please don’t email me your reason for not attending class. You’re an adult now. I assume when you’re not there that you had a good reason. I don’t take attendance and there is no such thing as an excused absence.

Due by 10 a.m. May 6

A summary memo is a 2-5 page document that you could present to a potential investor — or, in the case of this class, to the selection committee for the Quest for Edventure contest — describing the venture. It should summarize the business opportunity,  the strategy, the market, the business model, startup costs, funding plan, and initial basic numbers.

It should be emailed to me as an attachment to an email, either a BPDX file or a PDF file.

For more on this, read pages 228-233 of the plan as you go book. Or you can click here for the online version of the same thing.

And yes, we do have a time bind on this one. Ideally, it would come as the last assignment before the full plan, after you’ve done the startup costs and profit projection. Unfortunately, we need to get this done sooner because you’ll want it to prepare your submission for the contest.

Due by 10 a.m. May 18

This assignment includes two tables and some text.  The text explains your assumptions. The tables are:

1. Personnel plan, table, listing your projected salaries and wages and such for the first year broken into 12 months and then summed for the year; and then annually for the second and third year.
2. Profit & Loss, which should include totals from the sales forecast and the personnel plan, and also list expenses, for the first 12 months, then summed for the first year; and then annually for the second and third year.

Due by 10 a.m. May 18

This assignment includes two tables and some text.  The text explains your assumptions. The tables are:

1. Personnel plan, table, listing your projected salaries and wages and such for the first year broken into 12 months and then summed for the year; and then annually for the second and third year.
2. Profit & Loss, which should include totals from the sales forecast and the personnel plan, and also list expenses, for the first 12 months, then summed for the first year; and then annually for the second and third year.

Due by 10 a.m. May 27

As with other assignments, I need to get it as either a BPDX file or a PDF file attachment to an email, and the email has to arrive before the deadline. This is almost all of your grade, so make sure you get it to me on time. There are potential problems with computers and email and all, so keep backup files, try to submit early, and so on.

Must Have:

Your business plan must include as a minimum the following components, which I’m identifying here as either text topic or table. Most of these were already separate assignment, and — in case it isn’t obvious — I expect you to bundle them together into a single business plan document that you submit for this assignment.

• Summary (could also be called “Executive Summary.”) Text topic. Should include all of the information detailed in Assignment 1: the Opportunity and you’re welcome to add to that as well. If you’re working with Business Plan Pro, I like it to include the Highlights Chart. Pictures are welcome. You could also use what you did for Assignment 4: Summary Memo and bundle that into the plan. Edit this portion, so it isn’t redundant; you probably used your assignment 1 as a beginning draft for assignment 4. I expect you to read and edit the final so you make it readable for me.
• Market Analysis. Text topics and at least one table. Should include all of the information detailed in Assignment 2: Market Analysis. Pictures and pie charts and bar charts are welcome.
• Strategy. One of more text topics. Ideally you’ve got something along the lines recommended in the reading, strategy as a combination of identity, market, and strategic focus. There’s an outline example here, and you can click on it to jump to the Heart of the Plan material available online, which you also have in that Heart of the Plan section of the PAYG book in the readings. In addition, the Heart of the Plan video included in class 11 videos also covers that same material. Pictures welcome.
• Competitive Edge. Also called Secret Sauce. Text topic. Pictures welcome. For more on this, it should come up in class 5 on marketing strategy — ask me about it if it doesn’t — and you should ask our guest speakers as well. Also, read Secret Sauce on the web.
• Startup Plan: Exactly as in Assignment 5: Startup Plan. That’s at least one text topic and two tables, one for startup costs and another for startup funding. The best way to handle the text topic is to make sure that it includes the most important assumptions and explains how you intend to raise the money required (loans, investors, personal savings, etc.)
• Sales Forecast. Exactly as in Assignment 3: Sales Forecast. That’s sales and cost of sales for the first 12 months and then added up into year 1, and then for years 2 and 3 of the plan as well. And it includes a text topic that explains your assumptions, and, ideally, a couple of business charts as well.
• Projected Profit & Loss. Exactly as in Assignment 6: Projected Profit & Loss. At least one text and a table; business charts would also be nice. If it’s obvious how you make money then you don’t need to elaborate, but for some of the more innovative new technology plans, if how you make money isn’t obvious, then please make sure you talk about the business model.

Nice to have:

If you want a better grade, do a better business plan. You’ve got a lot of resources here on this website, including two complete online books, so you can see that there’s potentially a lot to add. Use outlines recommended in the readings, or some other order. Here are some specific suggestions, in more-or-less order of desirability — but not the order they appear in the plan:

• Cash flow. That requires some interaction between the profits, which you already have, and the balance sheet, which you don’t necessarily have. If you’re using Business Plan Pro, it’s almost automatic. If not, there’s a lot of detail available in the appropriate sections of the Plan as you go book and the hurdle book.
• Business offering (describing your product or service). This goes well as after the summary and before the market analysis.
• Company description: ownership, facilities, and so on. Goes well right after the summary, before the business offering section.
• Business model (as noted in the Projected Profit & Loss point above, only if it isn’t obvious).
• Financial plan: description of funding sources, return on investment for investors, exit strategy.

However, I’m not necessarily going to give the thicker, longer plan the better grade. You can get an A in this course without doing more business plan than the “must-have” portions above. For that you’d probably also have to do a very good job on the plan, and participate in class.

I’m giving you a lot of leeway with the business plan on purpose. I don’t want to define it too much, because …

1. Business planning requires a lot of flexibility. Every business plan is unique to the business and its specific situation.
2. There are a lot of resources out there that can help you do this. This is a good time to use some initiative. Particularly since your readings include two books on how to do a business plan.

This class is about starting a business, and one of the key elements in starting a business is getting things done. Through the years I’ve been teaching this course I’ve become more demanding about the tools involved. For the record, this is a matter of self defense. I want to save my time to focus on the content of your assignments, not the technology.

So I’ve come to insist on standardizing certain things. This means the burden is on you to get your work into standard formats. It also means that I’m not going to be sympathetic to technological problems.

1. Please deliver assignments as either Business Plan Pro BPDX file (for assignments 2, 3, 4, and 5) or Adobe Acrobat PDF documents attached to emails sent to me at my email address tberry [at] paloalto.com. If you’re not familiar with the various tools to create the right kind of files, find out from friends, check wikipedia on PDF or google  creating a PDF file.  I use PDF995 as a simple free PDF generator, so I can print from my computer to create the PDF file as if I were just printing to a printer. Business Plan Pro exports anything to a PDF format too, so if you’re working in Business Plan Pro you could create the PDF file automatically, but to be honest, I prefer the raw BPDX file instead. That’s a special case.
2. Please deliver your assignments to me by email before the start of the class for which they are due. I’ll use email times to check.
3. I’m sorry, but there’s no good reason for being late with these assignments. It’s up to you to work a few days in advance if you’re afraid the technology will cause a last-minute problem. Back up your work, take precautions like all the rest of us do to make sure you don’t get caught by some unforeseen problem. Be resourceful. This is, after all, a class on starting a business; and in the real world, work not done on time is just that. Excuses don’t matter.

The bpdx file is produced by Business Plan Pro, version 11. Although not required, this is my preferred format for assignments 2 – 6 and for the final business plan.

The bpdx file is the standard file used by Business Plan Pro to keep a business plan. So the name of the file is like yourplan.bpdx or myplan.bpdx. When you send an email to me, you include the bpdx file as an attachment.

If you have any trouble with this, you can use the Business Plan Pro help facility — search for bpdx — or call technical support at 541-683-6162. Please don’t ask me to do tech support for you; Palo Alto Software people pays people to be available for that from 8:30 to 4:30 Monday through Friday. It’s a local call.

PDF files are like electronic documents, easily transferable, easy to send as attachments to email, easy to view on the web. The acronym stands for “postcript document format” files, a reference to Adobe Postscript. The classic way to produce PDF files is by having an Adobe software product called Adobe Acrobat. There are lots of other ways these days. Business Plan Pro automatically produces PDF files as one of the export formats. The Mac produces PDF files as an alternative to printing.

If you’re not familiar with the various tools to create the right kind of files, find out from friends, check wikipedia on PDF or google  creating a PDF file.  I use PDF995 as a simple free PDF generator, so I can print from my computer to create the PDF file as if I were just printing to a printer. Business Plan Pro exports anything to a PDF format too, so if you’re working in Business Plan Pro you could create the PDF file automatically, but to be honest, I prefer the raw BPDX file instead. That’s a special case.

If you’re using a Macintosh, at least if it’s a relatively new Macintosh, there is an automatic facility to print your documents to PDF files. It’s related to the Preview application on Macintosh. Use the Print command on the file menu and you’ll get something like the one shown here, which is taken from the Print dialog that comes up with PowerPoint 2007.

Move your mouse over the PDF button on the lower left, and push to open a drop down menu.

Select “Save to PDF” and use the Finder to set a file name.

That will be the PDF file you can use to send to me as an attachment to your email.

,

I’ve created a minimum business plan file that you can use as a starting point with Business Plan Pro so that you have an easier and quicker way to work through what I’m calling the minimum business plan for this class.

Step-by-step

1. You can use this link to purchase Business Plan Pro direct from Palo Alto Software. Or call the tollfree number at (800) 229-7526, or the local number at 541-683-6162, and ask for sales. Tell the salesperson you are using this for a class, and need academic pricing. There is no Macintosh version, but I use it on my Mac all the time, in Parallels.
2. Install Business Plan Pro. Notice the video tutorials, and the extensive help, and the technical support available for free by email or telephone. Please don’t ask me to do tech support for the software.
3. You can use this link to get the file. It’s also on the downloads page on this site. How you actually download depends on which browser you use. For example, in Internet Explorer you right-click the mouse and use the "save target as" option to download a file. Get the file downloaded and saved on yur disk.
4. Open this minimum business plan file from within Business Plan Pro.
5. VERY IMPORTANT: use the Save-As command to save the file with a different name. You don’t want to work with the original, because then you can never start over; and you’ll run the risk of having a classmate using the same name.
6. VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t use the tasks view to go step-by-step. Use the outline view, not the tasks view, to show your files.
7. VERY IMPORTANT: Use the plan setup to make sure you’re set for the standard plan: not the simple, and not the more detailed. If you don’t, then the wrong outline points show up.

Here’s what you should be looking at … maybe not exactly, depending on where you are, but it should look something like this, with instructions showing on the upper left, an action window in the lower left (for text or tables), and the outline in the right (you an click on the picture for a larger view).

These instructions are about doing the business plan yourself without the aid of Business Plan Pro. If you have Business Plan Pro available to you and you choose to use it, then you won’t need this. You will need to have some sort of spreadsheet, or a calculator.

You can’t get around basic spreadsheet usage. If you don’t know how to start, set up a new spreadsheet (also called workbook, or worksheet), to select rows or columns and name them, and type in formulas, then you need to find out. This link may help. Also this one. And this may be an indication that you do want to get access to Business Plan Pro, because if you have that, you won’t need spreadsheet prior knowledge.

1. Start with a blank spreadsheet. How you do that depends on which spreadsheet you’re using. 
2. Set it up as shown in the illustration here, although don’t worry about the formats, like white text on a black background or the colors of the cells.
3. Set up five years in a row along the top, naming them either with the actual name of the year (”2010″ or whatever) or as numbered years “Year 1   Year 2″ etc. 
4. Set up the title row like it’s shown here, the row with the label “Potential Customers” in cell A3, “Growth” in cell B3, and CAGR in cell H3. CAGR, by the way, stands for “compound annual growth rate.

(Click the picture for a larger view)

5. Set up one row each for each market segment. The example here shows three segments. You set up as many as you need.
6. Use column B in each of the segment rows to set up a cell to contain each segment’s estimated annual growth rate as a percentage. That’s a number.
7. Use column C in each of the segment rows to set up the initial estimated potential market number for that segment. It’s a number. You type that number in.
8. Set up the following formula in cell H4: “=IF(C4<>0,(G4/C4)^(1/4)-1,0″ … don’t worry if you see an error message, it will solve itself; it’s missing numbers.
9. In cell D4, set up this formula: “=ROUND(C4*(1+$B4),0″
10. Copy cell D4 and paste it into Cells E4:G4.
11. Repeat steps 7-11 for each market segment row, but of course adjusting the row numbers in the formulas, so that, for example, in row 5 the formula in step 9 refers to C5 and G5, and the formula in step 10 refers to C5 and $B5. In row 6, C6, G6, and $B6. And so on. 
12. Set up the final summary row. Put “Total” in that row’s column A. For it’s column H, type in (or copy from another row and paste) the same formula you see in number 8, above. In this example, in which the totals are in row 7, it would be: “=IF(C7<>0,(G7/C7)^(1/4)-1,0″. In column B, type in the formula: “=H7″.
13. When you have your table as shown here completed, refer to your spreadsheet documentation (details vary) to create a market pie chart to illustrate the cells in the first year column. In this example, it would be the following:
14. For the text parts of this assignment, you can refer back to the assignment page and follow the suggested outline. Use your word processor and spreadsheet facilities to copy the table and the chart into the document, and then to print it out onto an Adobe Acrobat PDF document.