It looks like in the wake of Bubble 2.0 the written business plan is going the way of the dinosaur as even Marc Andreessen seems to think it’s no longer necessary. In a recent update to his “Guide to Startups” Andreessen said, “Don't bother with a long detailed written business plan. Most VCs will either fund a startup based on a fleshed out Powerpoint presentation of about 20 slides, or they won't fund it at all. Corollary: any VC who requires a long detailed written business plan is probably not the right VC to be working with.”
This will definitely sound counter-intuitive to entrepreneurs that survived the first dot com bust. I can remember scores of entrepreneurs reporting from the front lines of investment funding in 2001/2002 that, at the time, your business plan had to be twice as exhaustively researched and buttressed with rock solid data. Today, we have Valley veterans (that should know better) like Guy Kawasaki almost proud of having no business plan. How quickly things change back to a time when a hot idea and a good personality seem to be all one needs to get the investment ball rolling. If I didn’t know better I’d think Andreessen was inadvertently engaging in bubble talk. But we all know Andreessen would never do that, right?
*Possible new jargon watch... BubbleNap: Like a "dirt-nap" from mafia films, only this term refers to the self-induced sleepwalking of entrepreneurs who experienced the first dot com bust but wish desperately to deny that a new bubble might be on the horizon.
Photo: Rick
