business plan structure harvard

Every seasoned investor knows that detailed financial projections for a new company are an act of imagination. Nevertheless, most business plans pour far too much ink on the numbers—and far too little on the information that really matters. Why?

In an article in the Harvard Business Review , HBS Professor William Sahlman suggests that a great business plan is one that focuses on a series of questions. These questions relate to the four factors critical to the success of every new venture: the people, the opportunity, the context, and the possibilities for both risk and reward.

The questions about people revolve around three issues: What do they know? Whom do they know? and How well are they known? As for opportunity, the plan should focus on two questions: Is the market for the venture's product or service large or rapidly growing (or preferably both)? and Is the industry structurally attractive?

Then, in addition to demonstrating an understanding of the context in which their venture will operate, entrepreneurs should make clear how they will respond when that context inevitably changes. Finally, the plan should look unflinchingly at the risks the new venture faces, giving would-be backers a realistic idea of what magnitude of reward they can expect and when they can expect it.

A great business plan is not easy to compose, Sahlman acknowledges, largely because most entrepreneurs are wild-eyed optimists. But one that asks the right questions is a powerful tool. A better deal, not to mention a better shot at success, awaits entrepreneurs who use it.

Based on an article "How to Write a Great Business Plan" by William A. Sahlman in the Harvard Business Review , July-August 1997.

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The Opportunity of a Lifetime—or Is It?

Nine Questions About the Business Every Business Plan Should Answer

• Who is the new venture's customer?
• How does the customer make decisions about buying this product or service?
• To what degree is the product or service a compelling purchase for the customer?
• How will the product or service be priced?
• How will the venture reach all the identified customer segments?
• How much does it cost (in time and resources) to acquire a customer?
• How much does it cost to produce and deliver the product or service?
• How much does it cost to support a customer?
• How easy is it to retain a customer?

Who are These People, Anyway?

Fourteen "Personal" Questions Every Business Plan Should Answer

• Where are the founders from?
• Where have they been educated?
• Where have they worked — and for whom?
• What have they accomplished — professionally and personally — in the past?
• What is their reputation within the business community?
• What experience do they have that is directly relevant to the opportunity they are pursuing?
• What skills, abilities, and knowledge do they have?
• How realistic are they about the venture's chances for success and the tribulations it will face?
• Who else needs to be on the team?
• Are they prepared to recruit high-quality people?
• How will they respond to adversity?
• Do they have the mettle to make the inevitable hard choices that have to be made?
• How committed are they to this venture?
• What are their motivations?

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'I fully plan on winning the industry'

Everyone hates Friend, the creepy new AI necklace. Its 21-year-old creator is undeterred.

Earlier this week, another product contending for the future of AI companionship made its debut: an eavesdropping necklace called Friend. The device was introduced in a glossy, A24-style promotional video in which fresh-faced Zoomers speak to an AI pendant that provides emotional support, commentary, and playful jabs in the form of canned text messages. "This show is completely underrated," it texts a woman while she's watching a show and eating falafel on her lunch break. Then it texts, "How's the falafel?" The woman is seemingly heartened by this. "It's dank," she tells her necklace, "I could eat one of these every day."

The internet, however, has found Friend to be less than dank.

Unlike Siri, Alexa , and their brethren, Friend is not an ask-and-tell robot assistant. Instead, the $99 device aspires to take the place of human companionship, capitalizing on a culture in which nearly 10% of Americans say they have no close friends. With Friend, you're never alone — which, depending on how much you value solitude and privacy, is either extremely comforting or extremely creepy.

If any of this sounds bleak or dystopian, then you'll understand the vitriolic reactions to the product across the internet. A sampling from X: "Friend strikes me as a product for losers, which is a totally valid market," and "One of the more depressing things I've ever seen…Do whatever the opposite of this is." Many compared Friend to a "Black Mirror" episode.

The online commentary grew only more heated when Friend's founder, a 21-year-old Harvard dropout named Avi Schiffmann, revealed that he spent $1.8 million of Friend's $2.5 million funding to buy the website domain "Friend.com."

"People think it's outrageous that I would buy a domain like that, but this is the point of VC money," Schiffmann told me in an interview. (He is not the first entrepreneur to purchase an expensive domain — Elon Musk, Schiffmann was quick to point out, spent some $11 million to acquire Tesla.com.) Friend's investors include Caffeinated Capital's Raymond Tonsing, Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas, and Morning Brew cofounder Austin Rief. "People think my investors hate me, but they could not love me any more," he said.

Still, Schiffmann admitted that the online reaction to Friend is not what he expected. "I honestly think it's because the video was too good," he said."That, maybe, was my biggest mistake. There hasn't been a video this high quality about AI companionship since 'Her,'" — the Oscar-winning 2013 film in which Scarlett Johansson plays an AI voice assistant so transfixing Joaquin Phoenix's human character falls in love with her.

Schiffmann's original vision for an AI hardware device was a pendant that would act as a more standard-fare AI assistant called Tab — he once described it as a " wearable mom ." But after spending a lonely night in Tokyo, he began considering a more intimate version, a "friend" that could offer camaraderie and emotional support. "A good friend that sends you a text like 'Good luck on the interview' is more productive than reminding you that you have a meeting in five minutes," he said.

A venture-funded AI-friendship necklace is something of a hard pivot for Schiffmann. In 2020, when he was 17, he built one of the first COVID-tracking websites. Anthony Fauci presented him with a Webby Person of the Year award. He went on to build a tool that tracked Black Lives Matter protesters and a website that helped refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine find people offering spare rooms and couches around the world. But Schiffmann sees a throughline in all these projects: "These are all really just big art projects to me," he said. "I haven't been able to come up with a stronger intrinsic [reason] why it's worth doing anything like this at all. It's just something to do and I'm bored. But maybe I've just read too much Camus."

Related stories

"I'm building friends for myself, but I also have a ton of friends," he added. "I don't think it's a complete substitution. If one of your five close friends is an AI, it's a good thing, especially if you fear judgment from other people. It can fill in gaps when you're traveling and it's late at night and you want to talk to someone."

Of the many AI hardware devices that launched in recent months, such as Humane's AI pin, Meta's smart glasses, and Rabbit's AI-powered R1, Friend is the most personal contender. Not only does it aspire to be a close confidant, it's also privy to all its users' conversations. As in, it never stops listening. The incessant eavesdropping that people fear when it comes to devices like Siri and Alexa is a selling point to allay Friend users who fear being alone. Friend needs to have access to every aspect of your life in order to work, Schiffmann said. "You wouldn't put headphones over your dog," he said. "It makes it feel like it's actually there with you. It's nice to be with a sentient entity."

I'm just chilling at my house smoking cigarettes and continuing to work."

Schiffmann is not the only tech founder building an AI companion in the form of a pendant. In fact, on the day Friend launched, a competing AI hardware founder named Nik Shevchenko released a diss track — as any self-respecting 23-year-old AI hardware founder would — insinuating that Schiffmann stole his idea. Shevchenko is also building an open-source competitor AI pendant, which he wears in his rap video, that looks a lot like Friend's. It is, in what seems to be more than a coincidence, also named Friend. "For those who don't know / I built Friend / renamed your Tab/ jacked my style," Shevchenko raps.

When I asked Schiffmann about Shevchenko's claims, Schiffmann told me it was the opposite: Shevchenko had copied him . (It would not be the first time that Shevchenko built an open-source competitor that closely resembled another AI hardware device. In March, the AI pin company Humane sent Shevchenko a cease-and-desist letter after he launched a similar device called Whomane.) "There are a lot of people building open-source competitors," Schiffmann said. Shevchenko "is the most annoying one."

"Maybe I am annoying," Shevchenko said when I reached him for comment. But he disagreed with at least some of Schiffmann's claims. He actually had been copying another AI-companion pendant, he said. "The project that we built was indeed fascinated by another project but it was not Avi's Tab. It was an open-source wearable called Adeus." There are nearly as many upstart AI-companion pendant necklaces, it seems, as there are Taylor Swift friendship bracelets.

Based on the public's initial reaction to it, Friend appears to be a long way from product-market fit, in that people do not want this product. Schiffmann disagrees. "People underlyingly want this," he told me. As for Friend's online detractors, they are just "being Twitter tech people and, like, yappin'," he said.

Schiffmann is unbothered by the vitriol, he said. When it comes to creating Friend, "every decision I made was guided by personal vibes."

"I'm just chilling at my house smoking cigarettes and continuing to work," he continued. And Schiffmann has big plans for Friend. "I fully plan on winning the industry," he said. "If this is what I can do with $2.5 million, wait till you see what I can do with $100 million."

Zoë Bernard is a feature writer based in Los Angeles. She writes about technology, crime, and culture. Formerly, she covered technology for The Information and Business Insider.

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Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed

• Francis J. Greene
• Christian Hopp

It’s particularly important if you plan to raise money.

When asked about an opponent’s plan for their impending fight, former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson once said: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” It is a school of thought now fashionable in entrepreneurship circles. The truth, though, is that we just don’t know if it pays to plan. For every study that shows that it does, another study comes along and says that start-ups should just learn by doing. We wanted to study entrepreneurial planning, but with more context than previous efforts. We found that it pays to plan. Entrepreneurs who write formal plans are 16% more likely to achieve viability than the otherwise identical non-planning entrepreneurs. More than that, we were also able to see what makes people write business plans in the first place.

When asked about an opponent’s plan for their impending fight, former world heavyweight champion Mike Tyson once said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

• FG Francis J. Greene is Chair in Entrepreneurship in the University of Edinburgh Business School.
• CH Christian Hopp is Chair in Technology Entrepreneurship in the TIME Research Area, the Faculty of Business and Economics, RWTH Aachen University.

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Life after gold: tackling the emotional void following a business sale.

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Arrival fallacy is the illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our ... [+] destination, we will reach lasting happiness.

For every Olympic athlete, those weeks of competing represent the culmination of years, perhaps even decades, of focused, intense work. What happens next is not so well-known, but it is very real and common. Coined by Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar , the “arrival fallacy is the illusion that once we make it, once we attain our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness.” In other words, an accomplishment frequently never makes us as happy as we thought it would because our focus has been on the destination rather than the journey.

It's clear why this might cause Olympians to experience post-glory malaise or depression. After the intensity of training, the adrenaline-pumping competition, and the heady moments of glory comes the trip home, the laundry, and re-integrating into “normal life.”

Life Will Change

This success paradox is also common among the sellers of mid-market businesses. After dedicating so much of themselves to the business, as if it were a child, it’s common for owners to experience a certain level of distress when it’s gone. Yale professor A.J. Wasserstein explains , “Before the exit, the owner is filled with structure and meaning; they wake each day with a clear mission as a CEO: lead, build value, grow, and drive operational and customer service excellence. After the exit, there is a sense of being adrift.” Wasserstein observes that this void often causes sellers to experience symptoms of mourning as they lose a sense of identity, meaning, and structure.

Life will change post-transaction

When Your Business Is Your Identity

As an owner, you are at the center of your business's universe, with employees, suppliers, and service providers all vying for your attention. You're admired and respected in the community. Your many sacrifices to build the business often came at the cost of other aspects of your life. Therefore, your role as CEO often becomes your self identity. Once the business is sold, this attention disappears, and it can be challenging to adjust from being the star to feeling irrelevant.

Searching For Purpose

Life as a business owner provides a source of fulfillment. Being responsible for supporting your family and your employees’ families provides significant meaning. Moreover, your team’s camaraderie and shared mission create a bond. You are working together (much like members of an Olympic team sport) to accomplish goals. When the company is winning , success is addicting. With the sale of the business, owners are often left without a forcing mechanism to stretch and accomplish goals.

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Work provides consistent daily, weekly, and seasonal routines that help mark the passage of time. Without this structure, days can blur together. Without a workweek, Saturday loses its significance.

Most owners dream of the day that they can sell for a substantial amount of money, kick back, and enjoy the good life. However, there is a limit to how much leisure you can enjoy and how many golf rounds you can play—eventually, ambitious owners start to feel bored. Leisure becomes truly valuable when it is balanced with work and the effort of striving for something. After a few months, the new reality settles in, and sellers often begin to feel lonely and unfulfilled.

Personal Transformation

Few owners take the time to truly contemplate what life will be like after a sale. They typically only focus on being freed from the daily grind of managing employees, making payroll, and the other burdensome responsibilities that come with leading a business.

Once those things are gone, a plan is needed to fill this void. This transition offers sellers an incredible and beautiful gift – the opportunity to apply their entrepreneurial talents and drive to reinvent themselves. The options are limitless, so the biggest challenge is to figure out what you want to do.

One way to start is to begin considering some key questions. Start by asking:

• What would I do if money were no object?
• What are the situations in which I am at my very best?
• What were my childhood dreams?
• What have I contributed to the world so far in my life, and what do I still have to contribute?

Your answers will be highly personal, and it may take some digging to figure them out. A spiritual leader or a life coach can be an excellent resource for helping you navigate this journey. In my experience, most Type A business owners want to avoid the stress of 80-hour work weeks but aren't excited by a full retirement. Though challenging, finding a balance between the two is ideal. By confronting these hard questions ahead of time, you can intentionally design your future life filled with fulfillment and impact.

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Apple revises DMA compliance for App Store link-outs, applying fewer restrictions and a new fee structure

Apple has further revised its compliance plan for the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) rulebook, which, since March , has forced it to give iOS developers more freedom over how they can distribute and promote their content on its mobile platform.

The iPhone maker is already under investigation by the European Commission for suspected noncompliance with the DMA — a market contestability regulation that allows for fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for violations (or 20% for repeat offenses).

Back in June, the EU confirmed it would directly probe the fee structure of Apple’s new DMA business terms, following complaints the company was using “ junk fees ” to try to circumvent the bloc’s rules. So these new amendments to Apple’s DMA plan are taking place in the context of that ongoing enforcement. Apple also claims it’s been taking feedback from developers, which it says has informed the revisions to its compliance plan.

The new changes, which Apple has made available for developers to preview Thursday ahead of a planned consumer rollout this fall, concern the option it provides developers distributing apps in the EU that allows them to communicate external offers, such as by including links in their apps to redirect users to a website for making a purchase.

One big change Apple announced Thursday is that developers who include link-outs in their apps will no longer need to accept the newer version of its business terms — which requires they commit to paying the Core Technology Fee (CTF) the EU is investigating.

In another notable revision of approach, Apple is giving developers more flexibility around how they can communicate external offers and the types of offers they can promote through their iOS apps. Apple said developers will be able to inform users about offers available anywhere, not only on their own websites — such as through other apps and app marketplaces.

How developers inform users of these offers is also being freed up, with no more Apple templates requiring certain language to be used. Apple said it will allow multiple URLs for link-outs, including links with redirects and intermediate links. However, it stipulates developers must not use URL parameters for tracking and profiling users for ad targeting.

Still, developers will be allowed to use an actionable link — that is, a link-out that can be tapped, clicked, or scanned — to easily take users to their destination.

In another change, Apple is adding an option that will enable users to opt out of notifications it displays around link-outs, informing users they will be transacting outside the App Store if they purchase an external channel. However, Apple will continue to show these notifications by default unless users opt out.

Apple refers to the notifications as disclosure sheets but developers critical of its approach to DMA compliance have attacked them as “ scare screens ,” arguing they’re intended to pressure iOS users not to leave the App Store.

New fee structure for link-outs

Alongside the bundle of aforementioned changes giving developers more freedom to use link-outs to send their iOS users to external offers, the company is revising its fee structure for link-outs via some further unbundling: Two new fees will apply to purchases completed by users of iOS apps via link outs.

Apple is branding the first new fee an “Initial Acquisition Fee,” which it says reflects the value the App Store provides in connecting developers with customers in the EU. This fee will levy a 5% commission, both under Apple’s new business terms and its original terms.

The second fee is branded the “Store Services Fee,” which Apple says reflects the ongoing services and capabilities it provides to developers, such as app distribution and management; App Store trust and safety (including App Review); rediscovery, reengagement and promotional tools and services; and app analytics and insights.

This fee will be a 10% standard commission fee or a 5% discounted commission (e.g., for developers enrolled in the App Store’s small business program) under Apple’s new business terms; or 20% standard and 7% discount under Apple’s existing terms.

Apple says the new dual fee structure replaces the reduced commission it had applied in its new EU business terms (of either 10% or 17%).

The Initial Acquisition Fee will see Apple taking a commission of 5% on sales of digital goods and services made by a new app user on any platform for the first 12 months following an initial download from its App Store of an app with a link-out entitlement.

The fee won’t apply in the case of existing iOS app users; it will only apply to new users who download an app for the first time through the App Store, per Apple.

The Store Services Fee will see Apple taking a commission of 10% on the sales of digital goods and services made by app users on any platform that takes place within a fixed 12-month period from the date of any install, including app updates and reinstalls, in the case of an iOS app that has the entitlement profile to link out.

Apple says the fee will continue to be levied for existing iOS users who continue to receive installs of the app with link-out capabilities. But it says the fee will be reduced to 5% for the majority of developers enrolled in the App Store small business program or with subscriptions after their first year.

Apple suggests the revisions will mean developers on both its new and existing terms will pay lower rates for linking out to offers through the App Store — especially so in the case of existing users.

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Google Pixel 8 devices made in India start rolling off the production lines just ahead of the Pixel 9 launch.

Apple says Patreon must switch to its billing system or risk removal from App Store

Apple has threatened to remove creator platform Patreon from the App Store if creators use unsupported third-party billing options or disable transactions on iOS, instead of using Apple’s own in-app…

Enhance your brand: Host a Side Event at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Elevate your brand’s presence at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco by hosting a custom Side Event during “Disrupt Week,” taking place October 26 through November 1. Engage face-to-face with…

Meta, Universal Music Group address AI music in new licensing agreement

Meta and Universal Music Group (UMG) announced on Monday the expansion of their multi-year music licensing agreement, which enables users to share songs from UMG’s music library across Meta’s platforms…

China’s autonomous vehicle startup WeRide seeks US IPO at $5B valuation

WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company, is officially gearing up for a U.S. public debut, over a year after China started easing its effective ban of foreign IPOs. The company is…

Prediction marketplace Polymarket partners with Perplexity to show news summaries

When users click on an event on Polymarket, they will now see a summary of news related to the event based on search results from Perplexity.

Synopsys’ plans to buy Ansys for $35B falls on UK regulatory radar

The U.K. antitrust regulator has confirmed that it’s carrying out an early-stage inquiry into Synopsys‘ plans to buy Ansys. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an “invitation to…

The best hacks and security research from Black Hat and Def Con 2024

Here is a look back at the top security research from the annual hacker conferences, Black Hat and Def Con 2024.

Conduit’s cross-border payments expand from LatAm into Africa with $6M round

Cross-border payments for businesses in emerging markets remain significantly untapped, despite small to large businesses using banks and legacy fintechs to transact trillions of dollars in transaction volume annually.  A…

Bharti will become BT’s biggest shareholder after buying a 25%, $4B stake from Altice

BT, the U.K.’s former incumbent telecoms carrier, is picking up a major new investor today as telecoms companies look for stronger footing in the rapidly shifting technology and communications market.…

Elon Musk’s X targeted with nine privacy complaints after grabbing EU users’ data for training Grok

X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, has been targeted with a series of privacy complaints after it helped itself to the data of users in the European…