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How To Create a Lean Business Plan (2024)

Learn how to create your own lean business plan, with a step by step guide and an example, in this article.

There are two types of entrepreneurs: those who start a business with careful planning and those who jump right into it without a formal business plan. Both offer avenues to success, but starting a business with a plan helps you visualize that path—and, more importantly, stay the course.

But sometimes your business plan is too long or comprehensive for your needs or audience. That’s when your lean business plan comes into play. 

What is a lean business plan?

A lean business plan is a shortened version of your full comprehensive business plan. Lean business plans are useful for when you need to modify your plan for a specific audience. Typically the lean business plan is for internal use. For example, if you want to share your business plan as part of the onboarding process for new hires, you may use a lean business plan to avoid overwhelming them with too much information.

While a detailed business plan may have lots of information and full paragraphs, your lean business plan includes only the most important, need-to-know information. You might use more bullet points and lists in your lean business plan than in your regular business plan.

Further, your full business plan talks about the what, why, who, where , and how behind your business idea. Your lean business plan, on the other hand, zeroes in on the how behind your business.

What are the benefits of a lean business plan?

• A lean business plan enables a business to quickly adapt to new market conditions
• It distills the business’s offerings to their essence
• It highlights what sets the business apart from competitors.
• It takes less time to create
• It makes it easy for investors and business partners to grasp the company’s mission

Lean business plan template

Your lean business plan template should have the following sections:

• Executive summary (optional)

Company description

Market analysis, products and services, customer segmentation.

• Marketing plan

Logistics and operations plan

Many times, you can also omit the financials section of your lean business plan.

If you want to follow along, consider starting with this business plan template as a base and then trimming it down to fit your lean business planning needs.

How to write a lean business plan

For the purposes of this article, we’re going to take our fictional Paw Print Post business plan example and modify it to be a lean business plan. If you don’t already have a full business plan, you can follow this business plan writing guide to get started. Then you can adapt it as follows to suit your lean business planning needs.

Executive summary

The executive summary should have bullet points highlighting what’s to come in the rest of your lean business plan document. The job of the executive summary is to draw your readers in and get them interested in the information that follows. Call out exciting or surprising bits of information to pique their interest.

• List your company’s key points: name, business model, product/service, USP.
• Identify the target market and financial highlights.
• Use bullet points to organize these details in a concise manner.
• Write a draft of your executive summary, ensuring it’s compelling and brief.

In the company description, provide a clear and concise overview of your business. Explain what you sell, your business model , and your business type.

• Summarize what your company does in two sentences.
• Define your business structure and mention the founder’s background.
• Write down your short-term and long-term business objectives.
• Create a bulleted list incorporating these points.

The market analysis section highlights the research you’ve done to validate your business idea. You’ll want to outline the fact that there’s a sizable audience who is willing to spend money with a business like yours.

Your market analysis section of your lean business may also consist of a SWOT analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You may also summarize your competitive analysis , perhaps listing your competitors and their strengths and weaknesses.

• Gather research data on your industry and target market.
• Perform a SWOT analysis for your business.
• Identify key competitors and note their strengths and weaknesses.
• Bullet your findings for inclusion in the lean plan.

This section of your lean business plan will outline what exactly you plan to offer for sale for your customers. 

• List all products or services your company offers.
• Describe the customer experience from start to finish.
• Keep descriptions clear and brief.

This section of your lean business plan puts your audience into groups based on shared characteristics. Customer segmentation is helpful because it allows you to define specific audiences and create targeted promotions and messaging that appeal directly to those groups.

• Define your primary customer segment.
• List the characteristics that define this segment.

Marketing strategy

The marketing plan should outline your pricing strategy , promotional channels, and sales venues.

• Detail your pricing model and justify it based on your market analysis.
• List your main marketing and promotional strategies.
• Define where and how customers can purchase your products or services.

This section will cover the day-to-day operations, including suppliers, production, and shipping.

• List your suppliers and their role in your business.
• Detail the production process step by step.
• Explain your shipping and fulfillment strategy.

For each section, ensure you focus on the essentials that matter most to your business’s strategic planning and operation. Keep it concise and actionable with bullet points for easy reading.

Lean business plan example

Here is a lean business plan example you can use to inspire your own. 

COMPANY: Paw Print Post

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Paw Print Post is a sole proprietorship that sells customized greeting cards featuring a pet’s unique paw print. Founder Jane Matthews runs the business using her extensive experience in the pet industry and formal graphic design training.

The pet industry generates $100 billion each year, globally. Paw Print Post’s high-end greeting cards fill a niche in the market serving pet owners who don’t want the mess of a traditionally captured paw print involving ink or plaster. All customers need to do is send in a digital image of their pet’s paw.

Paw Print Post’s ideal customer is a woman based in North America who considers herself a “cat mom” or “dog mom.” These greeting cards are priced as premium cards with volume discounts for larger orders.

COMPANY DESCRIPTION

Type of business : sole proprietorship run by owner Jane Matthews

Industry: pet industry (primary); some goods could be categorized in the greeting card industry

Business objectives:

• Immediate: Launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto
• Two-year goals: (1) Drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards; (2) Expand into two new product categories

Team: Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee

• Contractors hired as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set.
• Standing contract for five weekly hours of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.

MARKET ANALYSIS

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Paw Print Post’s flagship product is a line of greeting cards customized with a pet’s unique paw print. Here’s how it works:

Customers send a digital image of their pet’s paw

Paw Print Post edits the image and adds it to the front or interior of several card options, including:

• New pet welcome
• Pet loss condolences
• Pet birthdays
• Adoption milestones
• Training course completion
• Service pet work commencement

CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION

• A woman who owns a cat or dog
• Lives in North America, 25–55 years old
• No children
• Shops online at least once a week
• University-level degree
• $50,000 average annual salary
• Values her time
• May refer to herself as a “cat mom” or “dog mom”

MARKETING STRATEGY

• Price. A single card costs $9.50, while bundles of identical cards reduce the price, with three for $20 and six for $30.
• Product. Paw Print Post’s greeting cards solve a specific problem—pet owners want custom, high-end products featuring their pet, and a paw print is a unique and affordable way to do so. Since pet owners only need to take a digital image of their pet’s paw, it’s a lower-effort way to customize cards than what exists in the market currently.
• Promotion. Leading industry trade shows, partner promotions with established products, and digital ads on both Facebook and Instagram.
• Place. Paw Print Post will have an online store at pawprintpost.ca where customers can place their orders. Paw Print Post will ship all orders to customers’ chosen addresses.

LOGISTICS AND OPERATIONS PLAN

Suppliers: Local print shops for one-off prints, given that each item needs to be made to order, and cheaper offshore options won’t work.

Production:

• Customer places order and sends their digital image
• Jane takes five minutes to process the image in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop before sending to the local printer
• Local print shops offer one- to two-day turnaround for custom orders. Each custom card will cost $2 for setup and 75¢ for each print, so the costs for each bundle offered are:
• One card: $2.75 (Price: $9.50, margin: $6.75)
• Three cards: $4.25 (Price: $20, margin: $15.75)
• Six cards: $6.50 (Price: $30, margin: $23.50)

Facilities: Jane processes images and ships orders from her home office; all contractors maintain their own facilities.

Equipment: Paw Print Post already owns the required software and hardware to process the images.

Shipping and fulfillment: Paw Print Post will fulfill orders using Shopify Shipping and may look into local fulfillment options or contractors to help scale if needed.

Inventory. Paw Print Post does not hold inventory and all orders are created as they come in.

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Lean business plan FAQ

How do you write a lean business plan.

• Start with an executive summary: Write a high-level overview of your business strategy, objectives, and how you plan to achieve them.
• Describe your business: Detail the products/services you offer, how you will price them, how you plan to market them, and how you plan to organize the business.
• Identify your target market: Describe your target customer, the size of the market, and how you plan to reach them.
• Outline your financials: Provide a financial overview of your business, including projected income and expenses, break-even analysis, and financial goals.
• Define your operating plan: Outline the day-to-day operations of the business, from staffing to inventory management to customer service.
• Provide supporting documents: Include any supporting documents, such as résumés, contracts, or legal documents.

How long is a lean business plan?

A lean business plan is typically shorter than a traditional business plan, usually no more than two pages in length. It usually consists of a brief overview of the business, the current situation, the goal, the action plan, budget and timeline, and a conclusion.

What are the 4 types of business plans?

• Startup business plan: A detailed document used to define and plan your business’s objectives, strategies, and tactics.
• Growth business plan: A plan used to identify and capitalize on opportunities for growth.
• Internal business plan: A plan used to assess the internal strengths and weaknesses of a company.
• Strategic business plan: A plan used to set long-term goals and strategies for achieving them.

How is a lean plan different from the traditional business plan?

A lean plan is a simplified version of a traditional business plan that focuses on the core elements of the business, such as the mission, strategy, and key activities. It emphasizes identifying and testing assumptions, keeping plans short and simple, and focusing on the customer. The traditional business plan is more comprehensive, with a greater focus on financials, market analysis, and operations. It also requires a longer timeline and more resources to complete.

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Fundamentals of Lean Planning Explained

Noah Parsons

11 min. read

Updated April 15, 2024

Let’s face facts: Writing a traditional business plan is a hassle. 

• A traditional business plan takes too long to write.
• Most people won’t even read it from cover-to-cover.
• It’s often outdated by the time you finish writing it.
• It doesn’t lend itself to frequent and easy updating—and that’s the core of the problem.

Historically, entrepreneurs have taken months to craft detailed plans without even gathering feedback from potential customers. They’ve viewed business planning as a single hurdle to get their business up and running or a thick wad of paper to shove across a banker’s desk in order to get the funding they need.

These business plans end up as just a collection of guesses and assumptions, instead of a proven roadmap for growth. 

But planning is still critical, even if the business plan might be broken. Studies have shown that businesses that set goals and track their progress grow 30 percent faster than those who “just wing it.” Furthermore, even established businesses grow faster when they have a plan . 

So what if I told you there was a better way to do business planning? One that lets you adjust and refine your plan as you gather more information about your business and customers.

A method known as Lean Planning.

• Welcome to the Lean Planning method

Lean Planning is a 4-step process that helps you discover a business model that works and manage your company successfully.

Here’s the Lean Planning process:

• Create a one-page plan
• Test the plan
• Review your results
• Revise your plan

These 4-steps replace the traditionally lengthy business plan with a 20-minute planning process. This ensures that you are taking small steps, reviewing your results, and creating incremental improvements—all while reducing your risk of failure.

It’s also simpler and faster than writing a traditional business plan. And, possibly, the greatest benefit is that this method can benefit both startups and established businesses. 

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If you’re a startup

Lean Planning helps you quickly figure out if your idea is any good and what you need to change to build a viable business.

If you’re an established business

Lean Planning works even if you’re already up and running. It helps you continually refine and tweak your strategy while measuring your progress toward your goals. After all, planning is about making better management decisions, not about producing a thick document that sits in a drawer.

Read on to learn how to make the lean model work by creating your own one-page business plan .

• Step 1: Create a one-page plan

The Lean Planning methodology starts with a one-page plan you can create in 20 minutes .

That’s right—one page. Lean Planning is a simple methodology and your one-page plan should be simple, too. You can download a lean planning template and fill it in as you follow the steps below.

What to include in your one-page plan

• Strategy: What you’re going to do
• Tactics: How you’re going to do it
• Business model: How you’re going to make money
• Schedule: Who is doing what and when

Let’s dive into each section.

Your business strategy

Your business strategy is simply an overview of what you want to do and who your customers and competitors are. Start by identifying the problem you are solving for people and follow up by explaining your solution to this problem.

The problem you’re solving

Businesses exist to solve problems for customers. Their products and services fill a need or satiate a desire. If all you have is a solution that is in search of a problem, you’re going to have a hard time building a successful business. So, start with the other side of the equation and focus on how you can help your customers solve a problem.

Start small with just one or two sentences or a few bullet points to identify the problem you are solving. Do the same thing to describe your solution.

Your ideal customer

Now, quickly describe your target market. Who is your ideal customer? If you know how many potential customers are out there, great. If you’re in the early stages of fleshing out your business idea, don’t worry too much about detailed market research . Instead, focus on defining your ideal customer —who are they, and what are their key attributes?

Your competition

Finally, create a shortlist of your competition . How do your potential customers solve their problems today?

That’s it. A business strategy doesn’t have to be complicated with Lean Planning. It’s just a few bullets points that describe the essence of your business: what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for.

The next section of your one-page plan is a short outline of your business tactics. This is just an outline of how you will make your strategy happen. You’ll be thinking about sales, marketing, the team you might need , and any partners or outside resources you’ll need to leverage.

Your sales strategy

Start by thinking through your sales strategy. Are you selling online or building a physical store? Maybe both? Or, perhaps your product will be sold in stores owned by other companies.

Your marketing strategy

Next comes your marketing strategy. How are you going to reach your customers? How do they find out that you exist and that you solve their problem?

If you need to build a team to grow your business, who are the key people that you’ll need to hire? If you’re an existing business, who are the critical employees that run the company and execute your strategy?

Key partners and resources

Finally, think about other businesses that you might need to work with to make your strategy happen. Are their key suppliers or distributors that you’ll need to have relationships with?

Remember, this is on a single page, so each of these sections should just be three to five bullet points each.

Now it’s time to build a schedule. Lean Planning is all about getting things done, so you need a timeline to follow.

Your next step is to get out from behind your desk and go talk to your potential customers (I’ll go into more detail on this in a moment). Your goal will be to verify that you’ve defined a solid strategy . To that end, a startup’s schedule should include things like conducting customer interviews, sending out surveys, researching physical locations, interviewing potential suppliers, and so on.

Your schedule will probably be focused on specific business milestones that are related to executing your strategy and implementing your tactics.

It’s critical to have accountability here. Your schedule should have dates and people responsible for completing each task.

Finally, make sure to include a time to regularly review your plan. You’ll want to review and revise this plan frequently, so having a regular review point is critical. I recommend a monthly review cycle, but reviewing more frequently is fine, too.

Business model

Even if you have a problem that’s worth solving, a solid solution to the problem, and a target market that needs your solution, you don’t have a business unless the numbers work out. You need a business model that works. The last component of your one-page plan is a basic forecast and budget to ensure that a great idea can actually lead to a great business.

Yes, forecasting and budgeting do mean looking into the future, and no one knows the future (at least I don’t!). But, it doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds.

Putting together some basic, bottom-up sales forecasts and a basic budget for expenses will quickly tell you if you have a business model that works—one that can create a viable business that will pay the bills.

At this stage, it’s important not to paint an incredibly rosy picture of your financial prospects. Instead, the sales forecasts should be as realistic as possible. Assume that not nearly as many people as you think will show up in your store. Assume that your website won’t get mainstream press coverage.

With this “realistic” forecast, do you still have a viable business? Can you turn a profit ? If you can only be successful with incredibly high volumes of customers, you may need to take a second look at your pricing, expenses, and other aspects of your business model. Or, make sure that you get the kind of funding that’s needed for large marketing and PR campaigns.

You can get started on your one-page plan right away by downloading our free template . You should be able to complete an initial draft in under an hour—that’s much faster than writing a traditional business plan.

• Step 2: Test the plan

Now that you have your one-page plan in hand, you’re ready to start putting the plan into action to see if your ideas will work.

Depending on your business stage, you’ll do this in different ways. If you’re a startup with an unproven idea or an existing business that’s considering a new strategic direction—your next step is to validate them.

Your one-page plan is just a set of assumptions about a business. Ask yourself:

• Do the target customers actually have the problem that you think they have?
• Does the solution you’re proposing actually solve their problem?
• Do your target customers want to pay for your solution? How much?

Reducing risk is your goal in the early stages of starting a business

Starting a business is full of risks . There are just so many unknowns, and it’s incredibly risky to just build your business based on a set of assumptions about your target market, their problems, and how they’ll react to your solution.

Your plan is a really just a set of educated guesses that need to be answered and then revised on a continuous basis until most unknowns are removed. That’s how you reduce risk.

So, you need to take the very simple, but very challenging step of actually talking to your potential customers .

Look at your first version of your plan as a set of assumptions that need to be proven true or false and then go back and revise your assumptions as you go. Refining your plan so that it’s a collection of facts instead of guesses can be the difference between a successful business and a failure.

If your business is up and running, focus on implementation

For more mature businesses that already know a lot about their target customers, the goal of the plan is to help guide implementation. In this situation, use a one-page plan to get everyone on the same page, set goals, and manage the business.

• Step 3: Review your results

Both Silicon Valley startups and Main Street small businesses need to know how they are doing. Which means  Are they growing according to plan? Why or why not? If not, what changes need to be made? Should the plan change?

For new startups

If you’re just getting started and don’t have many (or any) metrics to track yet, you should be reviewing the results of your customer interviews and any other information that you’ve gathered that would change your strategy. Perhaps you’ll be refining your solution or even tweaking the definition of the problem you are solving. Perhaps you’ll refine your marketing and sales strategy.

For established businesses

Beyond tracking key financial metrics such as cash , sales, expenses, accounts receivable, and accounts payable, businesses must track the other key metrics that are critical to their success. These other key metrics might be website visits, foot traffic in the store, tables turned in a restaurant or any other core number that drives business success.

Reviewing your results regularly is key to better management and success. These metrics should be reviewed at least monthly in a regular plan review meeting with key business partners and employees. This is when you refine your plan and your pitch if necessary and track your ongoing action plan.

• Step 4: Revise your plan

Lean Planning is a process, not just a document. It’s is all about continuous improvement. You’re quickly defining a strategy, experimenting to see if that strategy works, reviewing the results, and revising the plan before you start again.

Lean Planning is never finished. It’s simply a process for running your business better, more efficiently, and setting you and your team up for success.

What if you need a more detailed business plan?

There may be a time when you need a more detailed business plan. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some people might want to read it, you may need to submit a full plan for funding and you might even want to document your strategy in more detail. 

Your detailed business plan will be born from your one-page plan. The ideas will transfer from bulleted lists to sentences and paragraphs. You’ll add more detail to your sales and marketing strategy, your pricing strategy, and perhaps your manufacturing plans and distribution strategy.

For a step-by-step guide to creating a detailed business plan, check out our guide .

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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How to Write a Lean Business Plan (With Template and Examples)

A lean business plan is a concise summary of your business’ key details. Here’s how they differ from traditional plans, and how to write one.

Read more posts by this author.

When you decide to start a business, at first you may just have an idea: a product you’ve imagined, a problem you want to solve, or people you want to help. But turning that idea into a viable business requires you to think through the specifics. What will your business model be? How will you turn a profit? How will you grow? Who do you need on your team? What do you actually need to do ? This is the kind of information you need to provide in a business plan.

Your business plan is the blueprint for your company, mapping out the specifications you’ll follow to build a successful business. It should also assure stakeholders — like partners, employees, regulators, or investors — that you’ve thought through the challenges and opportunities, that you have all the ingredients for success, and that your idea will work. 

Altogether, a traditional business plan can amount to dozens of pages, and the visualizations, research, and financial information can take months to prepare. But not every business calls for that level of formality or comprehensiveness. In some situations, a traditional business plan requires more work and detail than is actually beneficial. That’s where you’ll want to write a lean business plan instead. 

A lean business plan is a concise summary of your company’s key details. It briefly outlines how your business works and the path you’ll follow to become profitable. Think of it like an MVBP: a minimum viable business plan.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of writing a lean business plan, and we’ll provide a template with examples. First, let’s discuss how a lean business plan differs from a traditional one.

A lean business plan vs. a traditional business plan

A lean business plan gives someone the idea of what your business looks like and how it works, but unlike a traditional business plan, it’s not designed to convey all of the nuts and bolts of your operations. It may be the only business plan you ever create, or it may be a placeholder or building block you develop into a more detailed business plan down the road.

A lean business plan is a brief overview, not a comprehensive guide

A traditional business plan should contain everything you need to preemptively answer basic questions potential investors and/or cofounders would have, especially regarding your financial information, relevant expertise, market research, and operational details. Investors want to know how their money will get spent, the potential market share, and the founders’ experience. Hence, traditional business plans tend to be loaded with numbers, graphs, and charts, and can take months to create. 

You can still use a lean business plan to court investors, but the greater the stakes, and the less familiar people are with you, the more thorough they’ll expect you to be. For major investment pitches, a lean business plan should be considered more of an at-a-glance overview that supplements other resources, while a traditional plan is more of a tome covering everything about your business.

Thanks to its condensed and informal format, a lean business plan is far more approachable than a traditional plan, which can make it extremely helpful in the onboarding process for new hires and keeping employees on the same page about the company’s direction, purpose, and goals.

A lean business plan helps you get started faster

The main person a lean business plan will help is you, the entrepreneur. This is especially true if you’re bootstrapping . You don’t need to spend months doing exhaustive research on competition, ad budgeting, market demographics, and financial projections. A lean business plan strips this process down to the bare bones and gives you something lightweight to work with and adjust as you progress. 

You’ll distill the main components into a plan that outlines your business idea, what market problem you’re solving, how you’ll solve it, how much money you need, and when you’ll break even. This makes your idea feel concrete and tangible, giving you steps to get your business idea out of the “someday, maybe” phase.

This accelerated planning process helps you validate your idea before you spend a great deal of time and resources. It’s easier to get mentors, friends, family, and potential collaborators to review a one- or two-page overview of your business idea than it is to get them to read a 40-page business document. And when they’re done, it’s a lot easier to address feedback, too.

A lean business plan tends to focus on smaller milestones

Depending on your intended use, a lean business plan may also involve smaller, more short-term goals and milestones, whereas a traditional business plan should specify all of the milestones you need to achieve in order to become profitable, including a timeline for reaching them.

Mature businesses tend to have more traditional business plans

A business plan for a small niche tech startup is going to look very different from a business plan for an international retailer expanding into new countries. The more mature your business is, the greater the stakes are, and the more complex your business plan will inherently be. 

Traditional business plans require far more work

With a greater level of detail, a traditional business plan is clearly going to be significantly longer than a lean business plan. You may dedicate entire paragraphs (or even pages) to describing how various aspects of your business will work, while a lean business plan will usually be more of a summary of each component. 

There are no hard-and-fast rules about lengths for either of these documents. The goal is just to convey all of the information necessary for its intended audience and purpose. But a traditional business plan can easily amount to dozens of pages, while a lean business plan may require as little as a single page of writing.

Now let’s dig into the process of actually writing your lean business plan.

How to write a lean business plan

Writing a lean business plan is a lot less intimidating than spending weeks on a traditional plan. And it doesn’t have to be nearly as formal — it can be as simple as a basic Word document, a slide deck, or a spreadsheet. Whatever format you choose, the point is that your lean business plan needs to succinctly describe what your business is, how it will make money, and how you’ll make it work. 

You’ll cover a lot of the same information as a traditional business plan, but you don’t need to be nearly as thorough. Similar breadth, far less depth. Here’s what the writing process looks like:

Identify your audience and use case

Summarize essential business components, add additional elements as useful and relevant, plan to make adjustments.

A lean business plan that you write for your cofounder may look different than a plan you share with employees, mentors, or peers. While there are some pretty standardized components, like your business concept, product or service, and target market, what you decide to include will likely depend on your intended audience.

A cofounder or partner, for example, will need to see the big picture, clearly and succinctly communicated, with goals and next steps that align with your shared vision. Employees, however, will get the most from a lean business plan that includes details related to their roles. Depending on what they do, that might look like more focus on marketing plans, sales channels, or product development. Your scale may also affect how specific or generalized your plan is. If you have a small team (or intend to have one), your plan may name specific roles or even individuals. But with a larger company, it may refer more broadly to the types of work that needs to be done.You don’t necessarily need different business plans for different audiences, but your plan should be informed by who will see it and what you intend for them to gain from it.

Generally speaking, a lean business plan should include the same (or similar) components you would provide in a traditional business plan, but with far less detail. What would be pages and paragraphs in a comprehensive plan may be reduced to a sentence or two — just enough to communicate the main point.

Here are some of the elements you may want to include, but note that this isn’t an exhaustive list, and some of these components have enough overlap that you don’t need them all. Just pick the ones that best convey what your business does, how it works, and what you intend to accomplish.

Business concept

This should be a brief overview of your idea. What is your business? A specialty shoe store? A niche social app? A commercial plumbing service? In a sentence or two, describe what your business does. 

Business model

Your business model is essentially how you plan to make money. Are you manufacturing a product you’ll sell in bulk to resellers and wholesalers? Is it a retail business? Direct-to-consumer, or business-to-business? Are you generating a user base that you’ll sell advertising to?

Business goals

These are specific milestones you intend to achieve. Before you start listing goals, consider the scope of your plan and how long you intend this document to be current. With a lean business plan, you’ll likely include some smaller, more incremental steps you intend to accomplish in the short term. This might look like starting operations in the next six months, hiring particular roles within a year, reaching production or sales targets, becoming profitable, or accumulating a certain number of users. 

Whatever goals you include in your lean business plan, make sure they’re measurable and connected to a schedule.

Target market

Who are your customers? Defining your target market helps clarify your focus and the size of the opportunity. Identify the specific segments of businesses, consumers, or organizations your business will serve or appeal to.

Competitive landscape

Understanding your competition is vital to evaluating the opportunity your business represents. Name specific competitors and the categories of businesses you’ll be up against, and describe any competitive advantages you plan to leverage.

Go-to-market strategy

Your go-to-market strategy describes how you’ll solve a problem or address a need within your target market. What actions will you take to engage and acquire customers? What resources will you utilize?

Financial state

Your current financial state and projections will be most valuable to investors, but it’s important that your lean business plan includes some details about your income and expenses so employees, partners, and other stakeholders can get a broad understanding of your financial position and what you’re expecting in the near future. What assets do you currently have? What are you spending on payroll, leases, utilities, and materials? What does your budget look like?

Sometimes adding components to your lean business plan can help convey useful information without requiring significantly more work. You may cover some of these details in other components, but if it feels appropriate, you may want to dedicate a couple sentences to one or more of these as well. Note: These are all optional in a lean business plan, but may be more expected in a traditional business plan.

Mission and vision statements

Mission and vision statements distill your company’s purpose and broad, long-term plan into a couple succinct sentences. Your mission is why you exist, and your vision is what you want your business to become. While you don’t have to include these in your lean business plan, they can be useful components to help give employees and other stakeholders an overview of your company.

Product or service description

Your lean business plan should clearly articulate what you actually offer your customers or users. If your business concept and other overview information doesn’t already cover this, it’s worth writing a couple sentences about what differentiates your product or service from competitors.

Sales channels

Depending on your business and how you intend to use your lean business plan, it may be worth specifying the channels you’ll use to actually sell your product or service. Will you have a direct-to-consumer online store? Will you send sales people door to door? Are events a major sales opportunity? This may be covered by your strategy or business model, but adding specificity will help people understand more about your operations and organizational structure.

Marketing plan

Similarly, including a marketing plan shows where you’ll focus your efforts to grow awareness and acquire leads. What marketing channels and tactics will you use? How will people hear about your business and learn about your offerings? 

This may appear to be a lot of components, but remember that you won’t use all of these. You’ll likely only choose about five or six total, including optional ones. Going beyond that will run the risk of creating redundancy, and you want every component of your lean business plan to feel like it makes a unique contribution.

Lean business plans aren’t set in stone, and as your goals change, you reach new milestones, and your financial state changes, this document will need to be updated. You may also find that you want to add new sections, or expand on existing ones over time. Since a lean business plan doesn’t have the same scope and level of detail as a traditional plan, it’s easier to modify as needed, and making changes is a much smaller commitment.

Lean business plan template

Here’s a template you can use to create your own lean business plan. You can download a PDF version below.

[Insert company name]

Business Concept or Business Model [One or two sentences summarizing your business idea and/or how your business will generate revenue.]

Business Goals [One sentence per goal or milestone you intend to achieve, with each goal attached to a timeline.]

Target Market [One sentence describing who your customers are.]

Competitive Landscape [One to three sentences naming specific businesses your company will compete against and describing the competitive advantages you will leverage.]

Go-to-Market Strategy [Three to five sentences explaining the actions you will take and resources you will use to acquire customers and grow your business.]

Financial State [One to three sentences describing your current financial position, including income, revenue, and expenses. One to three sentences describing your financial projections for 12 months from now.]

Lean business plan example

Here’s a fictional example of what a lean business plan might look like using our above template.

Topher’s Loafers

Topher’s Loafers is an online marketplace for consumers to buy and sell lightly used slip-on shoes. TL provides templated product pages for sellers to list their shoes, facilitates the transaction, and coordinates shipping with a third-party carrier. TL receives 15% of every sale made on TophersLoafers.com.

By the end of 2024, Topher’s Loafers will have 6,000 established sellers (with complete selling profiles and at least one sale) distributed across 40 states. By June of 2025, we will have developed partnerships with three additional major retailers.

Topher’s Loafers primarily targets men aged 25–50 with a household income of <$100,000 living in the continental United States.

Competition

Topher’s Loafers’ main competitors are online marketplaces including eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, and Poshmark. TL will take on these established marketplaces by offering built-in rewards for repeat purchases, creating a more relevant in-store search experience, and enabling top sellers to earn better margins.

Topher’s Loafers is licensed to sell in 49 states and currently has sellers established in 17 of them. The business will primarily increase penetration in these states with a combination of digital and print advertising, and will expand into new states by partnering with national shoe influencers (we have deals with three of them already). We’re also working to secure slots at local loafer conventions. Most importantly, we’ve established a relationship with a major apparel store to sell shoes returned in an “unsellable” state, which occurs often due to their generous return policy.

To date, Topher’s Loafers has generated $50,000 in revenue and just over 5,000 sales. Our expenses include $2,000 per month in ad spend, $4,000 for slots at loafer conventions, $1,000 per year on software subscriptions, and $200,000 on compensation for five employees. By the end of H1 in 2025, we'll be on track to generate $100,000 per year. We expect to break even by the end of 2026 and reach profitability by 2027.

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Lean Business Plan Template & How-To Guide

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Historically, business owners have devoted months to constructing a detailed plan to establish strategy, executive, and financial numbers for their business. Although a strategic plan is often created, these entrepreneurs often miss a big piece: gathering feedback from potential customers.

Without collecting data and insight from target customers, the detailed business plan becomes a document of assumptions and guesses rather than a proven success blueprint.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

Lean business planning allows you to more quickly and accurately develop your business plan based on actual customer feedback and interactions.

On this page:

Key benefits of lean startup business planning, can you use a lean plan to raise funding, key elements of a lean business plan.

• Lean Planning Process
• Putting The Lean Plan Into Action

Review Your Results & Revise Your Plan

Lean business plan faqs, other helpful business plan articles & templates.

The lean startup business model is supported by a one-page business plan that does not require extensive financial forecasting or long-term market research and development plans. While the traditional business plan details every aspect of your company’s operations, the lean business plan focuses on key factors that present immediate opportunities for new companies to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. This approach allows you to maintain company focus on your core mission and avoid adding unnecessary information that can weigh down your final document.

The lean startup movement has encouraged entrepreneurs to shorten their plans down from hundreds of pages to a one-page business plan or less – essentially eliminating the need for small businesses to create traditional plans at all. Rather than spending time creating lengthy reports, owners can simply list their core values, mission statement, market analysis, marketing strategies, and projected financial statements – all on one page.

Some companies even document their entire value proposition on a single sheet of paper which serves as both the foundation for further market research and development to improve its product or service offering. By having this type of information readily available to share with investors or clients, your company will appear more professional and prepared without taking up too much time creating unnecessary documentation.

Developing a lean business plan is a critical step in launching or growing your business. However, it’s important to note that if you’re seeking VC funding , bank funding, or angel investors , a traditional business plan is required. Such a plan includes additional research, strategy, and financial forecasts to give investors and lenders the information they need to determine whether they will receive an adequate ROI (return on investment) if they provide funding to you.

Below are nine key elements of a lean business plan example:

Business overview

Describe what the business does.

Value propositions

Detail the value your business brings to the market and the industry.

Key partnerships

List the key partners, including suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, vendors, or software firms, with whom your business will work.

Key activities

List the key activities your business will perform to gain a competitive advantage, grow market share, and fuel profits.

Key resources

List the resources that your business has at its disposal to create maximum value. This could include human capital (your own experience or that of your core team), intellectual property, patents, funding, etc.

Customer relationships

Describe how your customers will interact with your business. Will you have personal or automated channels of communication available? Chart out the end-to-end customer experience journey and how you intend on building customer relationships.

Customer segments and channels

Specify your target audience, what requirements of theirs you cater to, how you reach out to them, and, most importantly, the steps you are taking to generate a customer experience that will result in long-term loyalty.

Cost structure

Define your key costs and variable costs, and how they represent a competitive advantage if applicable. A lean startup business plan (versus a lean business plan for an existing company), needs to also include key startup costs you anticipate in launching your company.

Revenue streams

Describe how your business generates money. What are your revenue streams or sources, for example, selling advertising space on your app or publication, membership fees, direct sales, etc.? List all your revenue sources in this section, starting with the source that delivers the largest revenue.

Download Your Free Lean Business Plan Template

Lean Business Planning Process

To create your lean business plan, follow these 4 steps:

Create the Plan

Your lean business plan will start with you, your business idea, and one sheet of paper. Yes, one sheet is all you will need.

Business Strategy

You will first begin by explaining your business strategy. This is simply a summary of what you are planning to do, who your customers are, and who your competitors are.

Identify the problem you are trying to solve along with your solution and potential alternative solutions. Then, describe your target customers. Focus on defining and describing the audience you expect to serve, who they are, where they live, etc. Lastly, explain who your competitors are. Describe what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

Easy enough, that is all you need for your plan. With lean business planning, you simply create a business strategy that focuses on the essence and function of your business: what you’re doing and who it’s for.

Course of Action

The next piece of your lean business plan is laying out an outline of your course of action. This section will illustrate how you’re going to make your strategy happen. Here, you will focus on sales, marketing, your team members, and any potential key partners or future relationships in the business world.

Sales Strategy

It is important to first begin creating your course of action by establishing just what your sales strategy is. Will you be selling in a physical store or online? Or both? Consider whether or not your product will be sold in stores owned by other companies, and who these companies would be.

Marketing Strategy

Next up is creating your marketing strategy. Think about how you will effectively and attractively reach your potential customers. Here, consider the following:

• Target market
• Online presence
• Advertising
• Public relations
• Special promotions

Team Members

The success of your course of action will be dependent on the team members who execute it. If you need to build a team, think about who the key people are that you will need to hire. What are their qualifications and characteristics? If you already have an existing business, highlight the key members that help run your company and accomplish strategy and success.

Partners and Business Resources

Begin to think of the other businesses that you might want to work with. Most likely there are other companies that you will have to work with to make your strategy work. Brainstorm all key resources, business partners, distributors, and key suppliers that you will need to have relationships with.

After constructing your Course of Action, it’s time to create your schedule. Since lean business planning is centered around efficiency, designing an organized schedule is key.

For startups:

If you’re starting a new business, you should begin with getting to know your customers. For you to grow a viable business, you must understand your customers’ views, wants, and needs. Your goal here will be to ensure that you’ve developed a strategic, organized strategy. A startup’s schedule will often include sending out surveys, interviewing customers, and researching locations.

For established businesses:

For most businesses that have been around, your schedule should be focused on achieving the business goals you have identified. Your schedule should have specific actions with names, dates, and even times. The schedule you create should hold your business and its employees accountable for their work and progress.

The final part of scheduling is to make time to regularly review your Lean Business Plan. As your business progresses, so will your Lean Business Plan. Setting a regular review time is critical to get your business moving in the right direction and your team members on board.

Forecast and Budget

Even if you have the best business idea in the world, if the numbers aren’t there, it won’t work out. The final section of your Lean Business Plan should depict a business model that forecasts and budgets for the future.

Here, all you have to do is create basic bottom-up sales forecasts and a basic budget for expenses. Do not try to sugarcoat here, these numbers should be as practical as possible. With this, you will be able to identify just what will and won’t work for your business.

By taking on this pragmatic sense, you may begin to feel like your business will not be able to succeed unless you are flooding with customers or getting daily news coverage. You may need to alter your business model here and adjust your pricing and expenses to ensure that you can turn a profit. Also, keep in mind any funding options for large-scale marketing and PR campaigns. Keep a realistic view, but also be sure to acknowledge offers that may be available to help you out.

Putting The Lean Business Plan Into Action

After you have completed your lean business plan, it’s time to put it into action. Your main goal here should be to get a deeper understanding of your customers. Is your product solving their problem? Are they willing to pay for it? Do they want something else?

Reaching out to your customers early on will help you get a grasp on their wants and needs to make the necessary alterations to your Lean Business Plan for ultimate success. It will also provide you with some insight as to what products you may want to produce in the future.

As earlier mentioned, your lean plan should be reviewed regularly to discern just what is working and what isn’t. Compare your results with your lean plan. Are sales growing according to plan? Does the plan need to be changed?

For startups who have little to no metrics to track, review your customer interviews, surveys, or any other information that you have gathered about the industry. Here, you can begin to continually refine your plan and strategy if necessary.

If you are an established business, review your recent results with those from the past. Take note of your key metrics as well as foot traffic in stores, website visits, and any other critical units of measure for your business success.

After analyzing your results, it’s time to revise your plan. Remember that your Lean Business Plan is a process rather than a finalized document, and it is made for continuous improvements. Don’t be afraid to make any necessary changes to aid in your business’s success.

Lean business planning might just be the key to your company’s ultimate success. This simple method of business planning has helped many startups and existing businesses advance and flourish such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon. By focusing on reviewing, revising, and business management, lean planning allows you to test out different strategies to find the best one to create a successful business.

How to Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

What is a lean business plan?

A lean business plan is a compact, single-page document typically for internal use. Lean planning is a short-term business plan strategy for making small changes and measuring the results to improve the efficiency of the business. This compares to the formal business plan which is typically very detailed, includes 10 key components , and can be up to 15-25 pages in length.

What is the purpose of a lean business plan?

The lean business plan is primarily for internal use, so it doesn’t have to be a fancy document. The purpose of this plan is for you to document the changes you’ve made to your business so that you can analyze their effectiveness in improving business operations, marketing, and/or sales over a short period.

How long is a lean business plan?

The lean business plan is typically a one-page document to describe your business strategy including your goals, targeted audience, your business model, and how your sales and marketing strategies work to support your business goals. 

How do you create a lean business plan?

Refer to our article on ‘ Lean Business Plan: How-To Guide & Template ’ for the 4 steps in creating a lean business plan or a lean startup business plan template . You can also download our free lean plan template to help you get started. 

How to Write a Lean Business Plan

A lean business plan is a tool used by startup companies to validate their business idea and drum up funding from investors. Unlike a traditional business plan, which can be hundreds of pages long, a lean business plan is typically only 10-20 pages.

The advantage of using a lean business plan is that it forces you to focus on the key aspects of your business, such as your value proposition and target market. This makes it easier to communicate your business idea to potential investors.

Tips for Writing a Lean Startup Business Plan

If you’re thinking about writing lean startup business plans , here are a few tips to help you get started:

Keep it short and sweet

Remember, the whole point of a lean startup business plan is to be concise as you try to propose to business partners. So, don’t try to cram too much information into your 10-20 pages. Stick to the essentials and cut out any fluff.

Focus on your value proposition

Your value proposition is what sets your business apart from the competition. It’s what makes your customers want to buy from you instead of someone else.

When crafting your value proposition, think about what benefit your product or service provides for your customers. For example, if you’re selling a new type of toothbrush that is more effective at preventing cavities, then your value proposition might be “The toothbrush that prevents cavities better than any other.”

Know your target market

Your target market is the group of people who are most likely to buy your product or service, sometimes referred to as customer segments. When writing your lean business plan, be sure to include information on who your target market is and how you plan to reach them.

Describe your business model

Your business model is how you plan to make money. There are a variety of different business models, so it’s important to choose the one that makes the most sense for your particular business and is in line with your business strategy.

For example, if you’re selling a physical product, your business model might be “retail” or “direct-to-consumer.” But if you’re selling a service, your business model might be “subscription” or “pay-per-use.”

Outline your go-to-market strategy

Your go-to-market strategy is how you plan to get your product or service into the hands of your target customers. There are several different channels you can use to reach your target markets, such as online advertising, PR, or direct sales.

When outlining your go-to-market strategy, be sure to include information on which channels you plan to use and why you think they will be effective.

Create financial projections

One of the most important parts of your lean business plan is your financial projections . This is where you estimate how much revenue your business will generate and what your expenses will be.

Creating realistic financial projections is crucial for convincing investors to give you funding. But it can also be one of the most challenging parts of writing a lean business plan.

If you’re not sure where to start, there are some online templates and calculators that can help you generate financial projections for your business.

Get feedback from others

Once you’ve completed a draft of your lean business plan, it’s a good idea to get feedback from other people. This can help you identify any areas that need clarification or further development.

You can get feedback from friends, family, mentors, or even potential investors. Just be sure to take all feedback with a grain of salt and use your best judgment to decide what changes, if any, you should make to your plan.

Keep it updated

As your business grows and changes, so too should your lean business plan. Be sure to review and update your plan regularly to ensure it remains relevant and accurate.

Benefits of a Lean Business Plan

Many benefits come with using a lean business plan:

• You can get started quickly : Because they’re shorter and less detailed, lean business plans are much easier to write than traditional business plans. This means you can get started on your business faster.
• You can save time and money : Writing a lean business plan will take less time and money than writing a traditional business plan. This is because you won’t need to do as much research or hire someone to help you write it.
• You can raise funding more easily : Investors are more likely to give you funding if you have a lean business plan. This is because they can see that you’ve thought through your business and have a clear idea of what you’re doing.
• You can adapt more easily : Because they’re shorter and less detailed, lean business plans are much easier to change than traditional business plans. This means you can quickly adapt your plan as your business changes.

Using a Lean Business Plan to Raise Funding

If you’re looking to raise funding for your business, a lean business plan is a great way to do it. Investors are more likely to give you funding if you have a lean business plan because they can see that you’ve thought through your business and have a clear idea of what you’re doing.

To increase your chances of getting funding, be sure to include information on your business model, go-to-market strategy, and financial projections in your lean business plan. You should also get feedback from others to ensure your plan is clear and concise.

Sections of a Lean Business Plan Template

There are some different sections you can include in your lean business plan, but the most important ones are your executive summary, business model, go-to-market strategy, and financial projections.

• Your executive summary should give a brief overview of your business. This is where you can talk about what you’re selling and why it’s different from what’s already on the market.
• Your business model should explain how you plan on making money. This is important for investors to see so they know your business is viable.
• Your go-to-market strategy should outline how you plan on getting your product or service into the hands of your customers. This is important for investors to see so they know you have a growth plan.
• Your financial projections should show how much money you think your business will make in the future. This is important for investors to see so they know your business is a good investment.

Resources needed to Write a Lean Business Plan

The resources you need to write a business plan vary depending on the type of plan you’re writing. If you’re writing a lean business plan, you won’t need as much information as you would if you were writing a traditional business plan.

That said, there are a few resources you should always have handy when writing a business plan:

• Your business idea: You need to have a clear idea of what your business is before you can write a business plan.
• Your target market: You need to know who your target market is so you can create a marketing strategy that reaches them.
• Your financials: You need to know your financials so you can create realistic projections for your business.

Getting Feedback on Your Business Plan

When you’re finished writing your business plan, be sure to get feedback from other people. Ask them if it’s easy to understand and if they have any suggestions for changes. Remember, not everyone will have the same opinion, so it’s important to take all feedback with a grain of salt and use your best judgment to decide what changes, if any, you should make to your plan.”

Actioning Your Lean Business Plan

Once you have your lean business plan written, it’s time to start taking action. This is where you’ll put your plan into motion and start working towards your goals.

Create the Plan

The first step is to create a plan. This means outlining what you need to do to achieve your goals. Write down each task you need to complete, and then create a timeline for when you plan on completing it.

Make sure your timeline is realistic, and don’t be afraid to adjust it as needed. You may find that some tasks take longer than you thought, or that you can complete some tasks faster than you expected.

Get Started

Once you have your plan created, it’s time to get started. Begin working on the tasks you’ve outlined, and make sure you’re staying on track. If you find yourself falling behind, don’t be afraid to adjust your timeline.

Remember, a lean business plan is meant to be flexible. As your business grows and changes, so too will your plan. Be sure to review and revise your plan regularly to ensure it’s still relevant and accurate.

Course of Action

There are a few different courses of action you can take when writing your lean business plan. You can choose to write the plan yourself, or you can hire someone to help you. You can also use a template, or create your own from scratch.

If you’re not sure where to start, we recommend using a lean business plan template. This will give you a solid foundation to work from, and it will make the writing process easier.

Once you have your template, you can start filling in the blanks. If you get stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out to a business consultant for help. They can provide guidance and feedback to ensure your plan is on track.

Forecast and Budget

To get started, create a timeline of when you want to achieve each goal. Then, break down each goal into smaller tasks that you can complete. As you complete each task, check it off your list.

It’s also important to track your progress along the way. This will help you see how well your lean business planning is working and make adjustments as needed.

Reviewing & Revising Your Lean Business Plan

To review and revise your lean business plan, you’ll need to:

• Check your progress against your original timeline using all key resources
• Make changes as needed
• Review your financials, revenue streams, and other vital metrics regularly
• Update your plan as your customer relationships and business planning change
• Get feedback from other people
• Take action on your plan
• Celebrate your successes!

As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into writing and revising a lean business plan. But don’t worry, we’re here to help. Our team of experts can provide guidance and feedback to ensure your plan is on track.

A lean business plan is a great way to get your business off the ground. It’s important to remember that your plan is meant to be flexible, so don’t hesitate to make changes as needed. Be sure to review and revise your plan regularly to ensure it’s still relevant and accurate.

If you need help writing or revising your lean business plan, our team of experts can help. We offer a wide range of services to suit your needs, and we’re here to help you every step of the way.

Lean Business Plan FAQs

What is a lean business plan.

A lean business plan is a concise and effective way to outline your business goals, strategies, and progress. It’s a flexible and adaptable plan that can be updated as your business grows and changes.

Why should I use a lean business plan?

There are many benefits to using a lean business plan, including:

• It’s a great way to get your business off the ground.
• It helps you focus on what’s important.
• It can be updated as your business grows and changes.
• It’s a great way to raise funding.
• It’s a great way to track your progress and ensure you’re on track.

How do I write a lean business plan?

There are a few different ways you can write a lean business plan. You can use a template, hire someone to help you, or create your own from scratch.

How often should I review my lean business plan?

You should review and revise your lean business plan regularly to ensure it’s still relevant and accurate. We recommend reviewing it at least once a year.

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The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Lean Startup Business Plan

Starting a business can be both thrilling and terrifying. On one hand, you have this brilliant idea and can’t wait to bring it into the world. But there’s also the nagging fear that your amazing concept might fall flat or fail to gain traction.

So how do you make sure your startup succeeds? The answer is charting out a solid business plan.

I know, I know. Just hearing the phrase “business plan” brings back bad memories of dry, long-winded documents from business school. But for startups, there’s a better way to plan out your venture – something called the lean startup business plan.

The lean startup approach focuses on streamlining the business planning process so you can start testing your idea faster, without getting bogged down with lengthy sections and financial projections you can’t possibly predict accurately at such an early stage.

In this beginner’s guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to create a lean startup business plan template that helps you quickly validate your business idea with real-life customers.

What is a Lean Startup Business Plan?

First things first – let’s define what exactly the lean methodology means when applied to an entrepreneur’s business plan.

Put simply, a lean startup business plan is a streamlined, no-fluff version of a traditional business plan. It’s designed for speed and adaptability rather than comprehensiveness.

The lean startup movement first became popular around 2008. It emphasizes testing a product or service idea quickly, using a minimum viable product (MVP), and getting real user feedback before committing to long development and release cycles.

The key principles of lean startup are:

• Rapid build-test-learn loops
• Scientific testing with real customers from day one
• Iterating based on validated learning

Most new companies that take the lean approach never reach an official launch stage. Instead, they continuously test with and adapt to real customers – refining their MVP and pivoting directions based on evidence of what does or doesn’t get market traction.

So how does that tie in with writing a business plan?

Well, the traditional business plan model doesn’t fit the lean paradigm shift.

Lengthy, complex, intricate business plans take too much time to write. Attempting to project multiple years of expenses, sales, hiring, growth rates etc…..it’s all just guesswork when you haven’t started selling anything yet.

The lean startup business plan tosses unnecessary details out the window and instead focuses only on critical hypotheses and assumptions that must be tested as quickly as possible.

Investors like this approach because it shows you:

• Know what assumptions make or break your business
• Can test them quickly at low cost
• Will adapt based on real data

So if you’re an early stage startup looking for funding or entering an accelerator program like Y Combinator, a lean business plan is likely your best bet to showcase your entrepreneurial abilities.

Now the big question….

What Does a Lean Startup Business Plan Include?

The lean startup template pares down the typical business plan format to just the essential elements early-stage investors care about:

• Problem  – What pain points will your product address? Why are those needs not being met?
• Solution  – How will your product alleviate that pain better than alternatives? Why will customers buy from you over other options?
• Target market  — Who has that specific problem and will buy your solution? ( Note: Be specific!  “Everyone” is never the right answer.)
• Competition  — Who else is tackling that customer problem? How is your solution fundamentally better or different?
• Key features  – What’s the minimum feature set to address target customers’ needs on day one and provide value?
• Marketing & sales  – What tactics will you use to reach early adopters? ( Note: For most startups, digital sales & marketing channels rule supreme. )
• Operations  – Outline your core business processes. Don’t go into granular detail, just highlight how you’ll deliver value to customers.
• Milestones  – What big assumptions will you test? Include timelines + costs to conduct experiments so you can demonstrate a logical thought process.
• Financials  –  Optional  Breakdown high-level estimates only if useful. For the lean startup plan, elaborate projections are unnecessary and speculative. Focus everything on testing key assumptions.

You may have noticed one conspicuously absent item – the Executive Summary. We’re skipping it because unlike traditional business plans sent to various stakeholders, your lean startup plan has just one audience – startup investors.

And remember, the lean methodology is all about using real-life data instead of guesses and best-case scenarios. So even if some assumptions in your original lean business plan don’t pan out, that’s actually great news! It gives you hard evidence to adapt intelligently while developing your MVP.

Now that you know what the lean startup template includes at a high-level, let’s go through each of the core sections in more detail.

First and foremost, you need to spell out exactly what customer problem your startup aims to solve. (And yes, it needs to be an actual must-solve problem, not a nice-to-have).

Start by broadly describing the pain points your target customers face. Get tactical by including stats, data or quotes that showcase why this issue is so urgent for them.

Then explain how the problem ties into a larger trend in your target industry. Paint a big picture view of why common solutions up until now have failed to address this pain sufficiently.

Essentially, convincingly convey that there’s a pressing customer need ready for innovation.

You need to display beyond any doubt that you:

• Deeply understand your target customers’ challenges
• Can explain why those problems exist in the first place
• Will provide a compelling solution tailored to fix them

This sets the stage for why launching a startup to address this issue makes so much sense.

2. Solution

Now that you’ve framed the problem, shift gears into explaining your startup’s solution. Start by providing an overview of your product and how it alleviates target customer pains better than alternatives already on the market.

Then embellish with details on:

Product Benefits

How specifically will your product make customers’ lives easier? Don’t just describe product features or functionality. Speak directly to how you’ll empower them to achieve something that’s currently difficult, inconvenient or even impossible for them to accomplish on their own.

Competitive Advantage

What specifically sets your solution apart from potential competitor offerings and substitutes? Is it higher quality, better convenience, lower cost, less hassle, faster performance – or perhaps an innovative model that’s never been seen before in the market?

Highlight your startup’s special sauce that no one else can easily replicate. Explain barriers to entry that will hinder copycats.

Customer Incentive

Why will target users’ purchase from your brand over chasing other options? It usually comes down to believing you can deliver significantly MORE value than alternatives or solve an urgent pain nothing else currently satisfies. Make your case for why you fit one or both scenarios.

Scalability

Particularly if you are pursuing venture capital investors, explain how your business can rapidly scale up to tap a very large global market with your solution. Outline a blueprint for how you realistically grow from thousands to millions of customers in the coming years.

Remember, don’t drown potential investors in intricate details about every single product feature and technical specification. They care most about how your solution nails the value proposition trifecta:

• Targets an urgent customer problem
• Provides 10x+ better value over existing options
• Can scale to a very large market long term

If you can compellingly check all three boxes, you’ll spark investor interest even with limited hard evidence at such an early phase.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you won’t eventually need to back up your claims. However, the lean startup plan is more about framing hypotheses than definitive proof. We’ll cover how to demonstrate enough evidence to warrant launching experiments soon.

For now, stick to crafting an intriguing startup story that sets you up to start testing fundamental assumptions very soon after funding. There will be plenty of time to figure out minor product details once you validate solving a pressing problem for real paying customers.

3. Target Market

Up until now, I’ve used the term “target customer” quite loosely. But it’s time to get very specific on who those real-world people actually are for your startup.

Venture capital investors want to quantify the population size and traits of target buyer personas in precise detail. So you need to describe exact psychographic and demographic qualities of your beachhead market – the subset of overall customers you tackle first to gain a foothold quickly.

Start by explaining your total addressable market (TAM) – the entire population who could plausibly need and want your solution for the core problem it tackles. Depending on the ubiquity of that issue for consumers and/or businesses, the TAM could be very narrow or encompass hundreds of millions globally.

Then segment down from that full market to identify your specific beachhead target customer population. The ideal beachhead often has these characteristics:

• Suffers from the problem much more painfully than casual groups
• Has already tried existing solutions without sufficient success
• Has disposable income to purchase a premium solution for relief
• Is easy to access and serve operationally in early phases
• Isn’t incredibly price sensitive
• Can provide extensive feedback on the product
• Has influencer qualities to attract wider market segments

Nail down quantifiable population size estimates for this core beachhead subset. Combine publicly accessible data from existing market research reports with reasonable inferences or assumptions from adjacent industries.

But resist the founder’s tendency towards magical thinking – “If we nailed even just 1% of the market…!” Generic hypotheticals don’t sway experienced investors focused on tangible traction signals.

Paint a detailed demographic picture of exactly who fits the mold of a hot prospect customer for you in the beginning.

For B2C startups , call out relevant attributes like:

• Marital/family status
• Home ownership

For B2B startups , highlight qualities like:

• Industry vertical
• Company size
• Title seniority
• Annual revenue
• Tech adoption habits

Then outline statistical commonalities across your core beachhead buyers – what key similarities unite this subgroup vs. the entire population facing the problem?

Finally, convey TAM expansion opportunities once you solidify solutions tailored for that first niche. But defer outlining detailed ways to extend your reach right now since nailing product/market fit with just one segment is the critical prerequisite to win over adjacent groups.

Position your solution as optimized for an underserved niche ripe for disruption based on competitors failing to deliver adequate solutions. Then segue into how your distribution plan concentrated on this “low-hanging fruit” beachhead will purposefully evolve later to expand TAM reach long term.

4. Competition

What the competition section lacks by traditional business plan standards in length, it more than makes up for in strategic rigor.

The core question competitive analysis must answer:

Why are current solutions in the market failing to adequately alleviate your target customers’ pain?

Start by inventorying existing competitor products/services currently used by prospects experiencing this problem. List out the main options your target persona has for solving their struggles today, even if those solutions don’t perfectly fix the issue or fully satisfy them.

Then contrast point-by-point specifics on why your solution beats competitors, especially on the metrics most important to your target niche. Show how you will “disrupt the disruptors” because even pioneering products have limitations needing innovation.

Criteria to call out where you claim competitive advantage:

• Convenience
• Scale potential
• Business model innovation

Back up any bold claims of superiority with limited initial evidence beyond conjecture — data from beta user testing prototype versions, customer quotes from initial beachhead outreach, or precedents from analogs in adjacent markets.

Take care to focus specifically on competitors targeting the same early adopter beachhead market segment though. Details contrasting solutions for other peripherical segments are unnecessary right now.

Round out competitor analysis by itemizing macro trends almost certain to diminish prospects for legacy products over the next 5-10 years. These should make the rationale behind your startup now abundantly clear even to skeptics.

5. Key Features

Thus far you’ve made a case for:

• A pressing customer problem inadequately solved
• Your startup’s superior solution
• Quantified target beachhead market

Now it’s time to shift to specifics on the crucial product and feature details enabling your entire value proposition.

Remember – only include what’s absolutely necessary for launch based on addressing revealed target customer needs!

Err on the side of a minimal feature set early on. Describe additional functionality prospects request once you start serving initial customers.

Outline the critical set of features required to deploy a minimum viable product (MVP) with just enough core attributes to satisfy early adopters on day one.

Organize by:

Must-Have Features

What feature absolute “must-haves” must be ready for early adopters to provide enough value converting from current solutions?

Nice-To-Have Features

What would enhance perceived value but aren’t imperative to activate paying users? Defer these to later product milestones.

Future Features

Briefly mention functionality on the long-term roadmap to showcase platform potential.

Think of must-have features as the “walking version” of your product – unscalable manual processes providing baseline value perfect for testing with friendly early adopters.

Then nice-to-haves represent the “jogging version” – automating more of the workflow via technology – while future functionality serves as the “running version” enhanced for steep vertical scaling.

In conjunction with digital tools, brainstorm creative ways to manually deliver MVP experiences centered around must-haves. This showcases your determination to activate solutions for that first tiny niche even sans a fully built production-grade product.

Emphasize with investors that you respect their money enough to not waste it on premature optimizations. Your plan ensures you build and roadmap additional functionality responsibly IF AND ONLY IF initial feature experimentation proves substantial product/market fit warranting doubling down.

6. Marketing & Sales

Thus far you’ve covered the key value proposition and functionality your startup will offer. Now shift to tactical specifics on how you’ll connect your novel solution with that clearly defined target beachhead.

Start by breaking down your blended omni-channel market blueprint to cut through the noise and achieve conversion lift.

Here is an ideal framework pairing both scalable and targeted elements for seed-stage ventures:

Paid Digital Marketing

• Targeted Facebook/Instagram/TikTok Ads
• Search/Display Retargeting
• Streaming Radio Spots
• Industry Forum Sponsorships
• Highly-Targeted Content Marketing

Grassroots Outreach

• Beachhead Email Outreach
• Beachhead Calls/Texts
• Industry Event Networking
• Local University Campus Reps
• Early Adopter Referral Programs

Earned Media

• Contributed Articles
• Podcast Interviews
• Reviews / Testimonials
• Referral Partnerships
• PR Launches & Press Releases

The glaring omission? Sales team headcount.

Early on, founders must handle sales themselves to economize cash burn. Hiring reps too early risks overextending finances before ensuring product viability.

So spotlight your personal founder sales fit first. Play up hands-on selling experience within the specific market context you’re pursuing with this venture.

Then convey a scaling plan centered on refining and automating conversion funnel elements that empirically guide qualified leads to become delighted long-term customers.

The core funnel methodology goes:

• Broad-based brand awareness marketing → Baits wide audience
• Lead capturing mechanisms → Filters for buyers
• Consultative selling touchpoints → Focuses high-potential targets
• Frictionless conversion → Delivers ROI proof

If your business model doesn’t fit this framework, adapt concepts accordingly while sticking to the seed stage constraints of capital efficiency and lean experimentation.

7. Operations

By this point you’ve described WHAT your startup does and WHO it serves. Now it’s time to explain HOW you’ll deliver on ambitious promises to customers.

Start by simply framing core business processes required to get your product or service from raw inputs all the way through to solving target user pain points.

For physical products, that could involve flows like:

• Design concepts → Engineering specifications → Prototyping → Manufacturing → Quality assurance → Packaging → Distributing → Support

For software platforms:

• Product requisites → Cloud infrastructure → Coding → Version control → Usage analytics → Onboarding → Technical support

For services:

• Prospecting → Onboarding → Account Management → Delivery capacity → Quality control → Supplemental services → Support

You get the idea. Just define macro processes without diving into granular details. Those come through experimentation!

Primarily, concentrate operational details on two crucial pillars:

• Proprietary unfair advantages that supercharge efficiency to delight customers while maintaining profit margins despite tight costs. Common examples include algorithms, datasets, novel business model frameworks, or embedded industry experts.
• Partnerships or platforms enabling you to deliver baseline functionality matching incumbent competitors on day one. Don’t attempt to build everything end-to-end or innovate across every dimension from the start! Leverage existing commoditized solutions while you test differentiated value propositions focused on solving target customer problems 10x better.

Essentially, convey you grasp the key 20% inputs that drive 80% of customer value. If the processes seem complex, find ingenious ways to simplify. Position enhanced intricacies as optional add-ons once baseline product/market fit is proven vs. overbuilding the wrong advanced solution.

8. Milestones

The milestones section represents the culmination of everything you’ve documented thus far. Here, outline the step-by-step process for methodically testing the riskiest assumptions underlying your startup.

In conjunction with the experiment design, detail concrete metrics or signals indicating whether hypotheses prove true or false. Then estimate costs, durations, and resource requirements for rapid experiments.

Frame assumptions through statements structured like:

We believe [this capability] will result in [this customer reaction]

Then design tests around the ability to measure:

• behavioral changes
• sentiment improvements
• usage increases
• revenue lift

Common milestone tests to consider:

• Solution Viability – Manual then automated demonstrations quantifying interest
• Demand Validation – Willingness to prepay as a signal
• Market Sizing Accuracy – Applying proxies from analogous use cases
• Business Model Fit – Contrasting pricing sensitivity across customer segments
• Feature Prioritization – Gauging reactions to mockups or limited functionality
• Operational Scalability – Maximizing utilization before adding overhead

Combine testing both internally-facing operations and externally-visible customer experiences. But concentrate on product/solution related hypotheses first.

Beating competitors takes precedence over backend experimentation. Optimize business operations AFTER establishing winning customer value propositions.

The key is conveying to investors an empirical, metrics-driven approach centered on turning critical assumptions into facts or disproving them faster than incumbents hampered by legacies and red tape.

Cement belief you’ll double down on evidence proving repeatable formulas to acquire and monetize target niche segments. And quickly cut losses spending minimal capital if data suggests limited viability.

9. Financials

We’ve made it clear that traditional multi-year financial projections typical of standard business plans are counterproductive guesses for early stage startups.

However, seed investors still want to see back-of-napkin math you’ve done to quantify potential venture scale. So mock up top level metrics more as directional guidelines than definitive targets.

Take utmost care however NOT to pull imaginary hockey stick numbers from thin air. Founders claiming $100 million valuations on basic eCommerce stores face extreme investor skepticism…and deserve to!

Baseline financial model components should include:

• Estimated Customer Acquisition Costs Per Beachhead Channel
• Willingness-To-Pay Price Range For Target Personas
• Logical Volume Estimates Based On Analog Use Cases
• Assumed Conversion Rates Each Funnel Stage
• Operational Unit Economics At Various Scale Points

Use inherently bottom-up thinking grounded in realities of what combination of inputs would need to scale to hit specific 8-figure outcomes. Top-down abstract number picking lacks validity.

And remember, early-stage startup financial models serve more as instruments of learning than definitive targets. Adapt projections based on empirical evidence once live.

Concentrate everything on validating customer demand first. Defer advanced modeling of operational minutiae or elaborating hockey stick projections.

Getting REAL buyers is all that matters initially.

Bringing It All Together

Despite extending 3k+ words at this point, the lean startup methodology boils down to an elementary formula:

• Start by deeply understanding a pressing customer problem
• Design an innovative solution specifically addressing root causes
• Concentrate on dominating an underserved niche beachhead market segment
• Validate demand empirically through rapid testing
• Scale up deliberately only once achieving initial product/market fit

In that sense, think of the lean business plan format as more of an exercise in startup soul searching than a stuffy document.

It pushes founders to pressure test their value proposition, business model, and operational viability through the lens of target customers rather than theoretical academic assumptions.

You can’t survive let alone thrive in the brutally competitive startup game without getting inside the hearts and minds of actual buyers needing your solutions.

So escape the temptation to overly complicate initial planning with intricate spreadsheets and 40-page reports professional managers expect.

Instead, concentrate efforts on distilling explanations of the crucial assumptions requiring testing above all else before launch.

Then close your lean startup business plan with next step calls-to-action so readers clearly understand how you’ll leverage funding to start rapidly experimenting using the scientific method.

Now…go show the world what your brilliance is made of!

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Partha Chakraborty

Partha Chakraborty is a venture capitalist turned entrepreneur with 17 years of experience. He has worked across India, China & Singapore. He is the founder of Tactyqal.com, a startup that guides other startup founders to find success. He loves to brainstorm new business ideas, and talk about growth hacking, and venture capital. In his spare time, he mentors young entrepreneurs to build successful startups.

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How to make a lean business model canvas

Imagine that you have an idea for a new product or business. Yet, as enthusiastic as you are about the potential for this nugget of inspiration, you’re also plagued by this question: Will it work? Is it actually a viable idea?

A lean business model canvas is a one-page business plan that helps you break down your product or business model, question and test your assumptions, and determine if your idea actually has legs.

• Lean business model canvas explained: What is a lean canvas?

You might also hear a lean business model canvas referred to as a variety of other, similar terms like a lean business canvas, lean business plan, or even simply a lean canvas.

This tool was created by Ash Maurya and is an adaptation of the original business model canvas by Alex Osterwalder .

You can think of a lean business model canvas as a straightforward business plan that skips the fluff and gets to the most important elements you need to identify or evaluate (primarily, the problem you’re solving).

When you have an idea for a product or business, you’ll use a lean business model canvas template to fill in the various sections (more on those in a minute) and validate your idea.

The lean canvas is most frequently used by lean startups, which use a lean startup methodology to deliver products to customers faster and determine whether or not the business model itself is viable. In short, lean startups and lean canvases are all about moving fast, testing, and iterating.

Lean canvas example

One of the best ways to understand a lean business model canvas is to see one. So, let’s set up a lean canvas as an example.

Perhaps you have an idea for a business: You want to create an app or a website that’s essentially a database of parks and playgrounds, which parents can search and filter using location, features (splash pad, baby swings, etc.), and more.

You want to dig into your idea even further using a lean business model canvas. Here’s a simple peek at what that could look like after jotting your initial notes down:

Lean canvas vs. business model canvas

There’s a lean business model canvas and then simply a business model canvas . The two terms are often confused, as they have a lot in common — and the lean canvas is an adaptation of the business model canvas.

However, the biggest difference is that a business model canvas is focused on a specific product while a lean canvas focuses on a specific problem.

This means that the business model canvas has a few blocks that you won’t see on a lean canvas. These are:

• Key partners (lean canvas replaced with problem)
• Key activities (lean canvas replaced with solution)
• Key resources (lean canvas replaced with key metrics)
• Customer relationships (lean canvas replaced with unfair advantage)

That’s the gist, but here’s a chart that digs even more into the difference between a business model canvas and a lean canvas:

• What is included in a lean canvas?

Now that you have a better grip on what exactly a lean canvas is let’s break it down even further. The typical lean business model canvas has nine elements or quadrants. These are:

• Problem: A brief description of the top three problems you’re addressing.
• Solution: The proposed fix for the problem you’ve identified.
• Unique value proposition: Why your solution is different and what will make people buy.
• Unfair advantage: Something you have that can’t be easily copied or bought.
• Customer segments: Who your target customers or users are and if they can be further segmented.
• Key metrics: The important numbers that will indicate how your business is doing.
• Channels: The free and paid channels you’ll use to reach your customers.
• Cost structure: All of your fixed and variable costs.
• Revenue streams: How your business model will earn income.

However, our lean canvas template here at Miro dives even deeper with the addition of a few more elements, including:

• Existing alternatives: How these problems are currently solved today.
• High-level concept: A simple X for Y analogy (e.g., “Zillow for playgrounds”).
• Early adopters: Characteristics of your ideal customers who will jump right on the bandwagon.
• How to make a lean canvas in Miro

A lean canvas can provide a lot of clarity about a business model or a product idea. Ready to create one with your own team? Getting started is easy.

• Grab our lean business model canvas template and create a new Miro board . You can put as many canvases on one board as you need.
• Define the product or business idea you’re working on, and then fill in the blocks with different types of content. You don’t just have to use text — you can also use pictures, videos, and more.
• Invite your team and/or advisors to the board so you can brainstorm , collect feedback, and collaborate in real-time.
• Come back to the board regularly to make necessary changes, add new information, and discuss progress.

And that’s it! Once you’ve created your own lean business model canvas, you can move forward with a product or business idea with more strategy — and a lot more confidence too.

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Lean Business Plan Template

Are you too struggling to figure out how to write a lean business plan?

Well, you’re not alone—many entrepreneurs do! A lean business plan is the first document that introduces your business to potential investors or partners.

So, it has to be appealing to persuade potential investors or partners!

Making a plan visually appealing with all the essential information about your business can get overwhelming. Worry not—here is a guide on writing a lean business plan with all the sections and an example.

Thus, don’t wait any longer and dive right in.

What is a Lean Business Plan?

A lean business plan is a short, one-page document that acts as a roadmap for your business.

It focuses on the most important aspects like what your business does, who it is for, what makes it unique, and how it helps you make money.

Unlike traditional business plans that are lengthy and complex, a lean business plan is simple to understand.

It also provides a foundation for creating a more detailed business plan later.

Writing a lean business plan follows a customer-centric approach. So, let’s begin by understanding a lean business plan outline.

Components of a Lean Business Plan

• Customer Segment
• Unique Value Proposition 
• Cost Structure
• Revenue Streams 
• Key Metrics
• Unfair Advantages

The problem statement talks about what problems your business aims to solve for potential customers.

First, try to understand what top problems are your product or service solving for your target market. Know that your business idea is not viable enough if it isn’t solving any practical problem.

Along with it, mention your customers’ pain points. The most efficient way is to figure out your ideal customer profile first, and then understand their pain points.

Discuss what are the solutions your customers are looking for and how your idea fits in their requirements.

While doing so, try avoiding jargon and any technical terms that will be hard to understand. Also, back your problem statement with evidence and facts instead of assumptions.

Existing alternatives

This is the second part of the problem section. In this section, mention the existing alternatives that are solving your potential customers’ problems.

The businesses solving the same problems are your current competitors. These alternatives are what customers are using or considering as of now.

Understanding these existing alternatives helps you identify how your solution can stand out and provide greater value to customers.

2. Customer segment

The key to writing this chapter is to understand your target market and separate them into various customer groups. Consider demographics, psychographics, and consumer behavior while bifurcating.

To identify target customers, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are we creating value for in our business model?
• Who are our most important customers?

This way, you will be able to identify your most profitable segments too.

Once you’ve your customers, here are the various components to include in this chapter:

• Types of Customer Segments
• Mass Market
• Niche Market
• Diversified
• Multi-sided platforms/ markets

Creating a customer profile

The customer profile defines the customer segment more clearly for your company by assessing the customer’s pains and gains.

To understand customer pain points better, we can categorize them as follows:

• Undesired outcomes, problems, and characteristics
• Pain severity

Customer Gains: Customer gains are the results or benefits that customers want. Ideally, this is what your product or solution must provide. This is how we can categorize gains:

• Required Gains
• Expected Gains
• Desired Gains
• Unexpected Gains
• Gain relevance

Early Adopters

Early adopters are the customer section that is among the first customers to try out your product or services.

Since they are more in need than others of something to solve their problems, they will forgive the imperfections or flaws of the early releases. This would help you better test and collect the actual feedback for your solutions.

Want to create a Customer Persona in Easy Steps?

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3. Unique Value Proposition

Once you’ve identified your target audience, you should also pinpoint the strengths of your product or service that attract them.

In other words, how would you describe your business to target customers in just ONE sentence (possibly less than 200 characters long)?

A Unique Value Proposition is a sentence that tells why what you do is different from competitors and why that difference matters to customers.

This is a critical parameter in your plan and is hard to get right. It might take years of experience and a lot more market analysis to make that one sentence.

It usually combines:

• The target segment
• The key problem
• The key benefits the customers are going to get after having the product/service.
• The special and unique way you will deliver it

For example, Google’s USP is “Organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful” .

4. Solution

How would you solve customers’ problems? Outline a possible solution for each problem.

Describe your business idea briefly and in concise sentences that explain what the customer experience is going to be. Make sure you don’t go with the technical words here and keep it all simple.

We have already written a problem chapter. Now match your every solution with its associated problem from the problem chapter. Make a one-to-one association between the problem and the solution, keeping your product offering in mind.

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5. Channels

Once you know the solution, it is time to attract customers. List your inbound or outbound marketing strategy to spread your reach: How are you going to acquire your customers?

When your product is ready to solve customers’ problems uniquely, you need to speak loud so customers know that you have the solution for their problems.

Here are examples of some marketing channels: social media, paid online advertising, TV ads, PR, cold calls, Google Ads etc.

List all the possible channels you are going to use for your business, and how will you leverage them to spread the reach.

6. Cost structure

Now, this is one of the most important sections, as your potential investors or business partners will want to know about the costs.

Costs are necessary as they help you to identify how many customers you need to cover your costs.

The accuracy of costs depends on whether you have an existing business or the business is in just the idea stage. If your business is at the idea stage, you will have to make assumptions regarding cost structures.

Write this section last. At an early stage, you don’t even need to write down these numbers. You’ll have more clarity on cost figures once you implement your ideas.

7. Revenue streams

This slide of the lean startup plan template outlines how you will generate income for your business.

Start by listing all the sources of revenue. It could include the way you will charge as in through product sales, service fees, subscription model, or any other mode.

8. Key metrics

Identify the key numbers that indicate your business’s performance: these are the metrics you’ll use to monitor your progress.

Every business, regardless of its industry or size, relies on key performance metrics.

Define the customer actions you’ll track to measure your progress and evaluate your business performance. For example, some of the metrics you can track are:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
• Customer churn rate
• Gross profit
• Conversion rate
• Website Traffic

9. Unfair Advantages

The “unfair advantage” is a single, clear, and compelling statement that states why you are different from your competitors and worth paying attention to. Do you have more resources, access to more patents, or better brand recognition?

This section is a little hard to describe. Many entrepreneurs make mistakes while defining this section.

It has to be about something that you already have, which cannot be copied or bought and would require a considerable amount of time for anyone else to build.

To understand your unfair advantage, ask yourself: why do I believe I have more chances to be successful than anyone else in my chosen business vertical?

For example: Tesla’s technological innovation in electric vehicles (EVs) and battery technology is a key unfair advantage. The company’s EVs offer superior performance, range, and charging infrastructure compared to traditional automakers.

Now that we know what all sections to include in a lean business plan, let us go further and see an example.

Lean business plan example

Below is an example of a restaurant lean business plan to have clarity:

Benefits of a Lean Business Plan

A lean business plan is an efficient and condensed business plan to draw investors’ attention to your business in its initial stage.

Some of the advantages of a lean business plan include:

• Simplicity: Only the main elements of a business are focused on a lean business plan, which makes it simple for readers to understand.
• Efficiency: A lean plan writing takes less time and resources than a traditional business plan.
• Actionable insights: It helps you track key metrics and performance indicators at one glance.

The Quickest Way to turn a Business Idea into a Business Plan

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That’s it for today. We hope you found this lean business plan writing guide helpful. If you are still confused, you can always use a business planning software like Upmetrics, for both your lean and traditional business plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many pages should a lean business plan be.

A lean startup business plan is also known as a one-page plan. So, as the name suggests, it should be one page only covering the main elements of a business.

What is the difference between a traditional business plan and a lean business plan?

A business plan is a detailed document showcasing everything about a business, including its goals, revenue streams, financial projections, funding ask, call to action, target market, and a lot more.

On the other hand, a lean plan is short, focusing on the most important parts of the business.

Where can I find free templates and resources for creating a lean business plan?

There are several options from where you can find a free lean business plan template. Here are some options:

• Upmetrics: It offers a free lean canvas that is easy to customize and provides other resources too for your business plan.
• Score: SCORE offers a variety of business planning templates, including lean plan templates, that you can download for free.
• SBA: The SBA website offers resources for small business owners, including business planning templates and guides.

About the Author

Vinay Kevadiya

Vinay Kevadiya is the founder and CEO of Upmetrics, the #1 business planning software. His ultimate goal with Upmetrics is to revolutionize how entrepreneurs create, manage, and execute their business plans. He enjoys sharing his insights on business planning and other relevant topics through his articles and blog posts. Read more

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Lean Canvas: How To Create a Business Plan that People Will Actually Read

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth… – Mike Tyson

Which, let’s face it, happens to most start-ups and entrepreneurs. Around 75% in fact.

You have the best idea. You spend days, weeks, and months perfecting a 40-page business plan filled with five-year forecasts, 18-month roadmaps, and in-depth marketing strategies. You confidently pitch it to stakeholders and investors.

Then you get punched in the mouth.

Potential investors go quiet or “ haven’t had time to read it ” and you’re left with an expensive, wasted deliverable and a chunk of time that you’ll never get back. Worse still, your product isn’t any nearer launching and you haven’t secured any buy-in or investment.

What. A. Waste. Of. Time.

Traditional business plans are of little use to start-ups, and of no real interest to investors.

But what’s the alternative?

A one-page business plan inspired by Eric Ries ’s Lean Start-Up methodology and specifically designed for emerging entrepreneurs: The Lean Canvas.

The Lean Canvas is a living framework that allows you to quickly capture your idea or concept, thoroughly validate it, and then continuously share, improve, and most importantly move on it.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking:

How can a one-page Lean Canvas possibly replace a 40-page business plan?

How can i tell the entire story of my business on one-page, is a lean canvas really enough to help me secure investment or buy-in.

I have the answers to all these questions and more in this Process Street post.

Ready to dodge some punches?

Creating a detailed business plan (complete with comprehensive forecasts, roadmaps, and strategies) and pitching it to investors has always been the first step new businesses and entrepreneurs take to secure buy-in or investment, right?

Why business plans don’t work for start-ups

During the early stages of an idea or a business, all you really have is a strong belief, a clear vision, and a lot of untested assumptions: You believe there’s a market for it. You think your pricing will generate $X in revenue, and you hope your product roadmap will look a certain way.

But you don’t really know. How can you? You haven’t tested the concept.

Of course, your business model might be based on similar businesses, products, or concepts, which allow you to hypothesize the future. But you can’t provide any concrete proof or evidence that your idea is going to work.

Which is surely the sole purpose of a business plan?

Plus, a business plan typically takes ages to write as it requires lots of detailed, accurate information. And, it becomes obsolete incredibly quickly, as and when you encounter the various operational and marketing challenges that inevitably arise.

So, instead of being a clear, factually accurate, representative proposition, a start-up’s business plan tends to be a wishy-washy, out-of-date, speculative document.

And, what do investors, Angels, and stakeholders hate more than anything…? Exactly.

The alternative to speculative, inaccurate, & obsolete business plans

Start-ups face a vicious circle: You can’t prove your concept without investment, but you can’t get investment without proof.

The original concept of a business plan was to break this circle and give investors the information they needed to justify a decision on whether to fund the idea or not.

But as we’ve already established, not only is a start-up’s business plan incredibly time-consuming to create, it’s difficult to digest and full of guesses rather than reassuring facts. As a result, all that hard work can often get bypassed by investors.

The answer to this dilemma is the Lean Canvas. The Lean Canvas is an actionable, entrepreneur-focused, one-page business plan.

Inspired by Alex Osterwalder ’s Business Model Canvas and the principles behind the Lean Start-Up movement and eradication of waste , Ash Maurya developed the Lean Canvas framework specifically for start-ups.

He felt that spending time creating a business plan that was often inaccurate, obsolete, and ignored was unproductive and a wasteful.

“ Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value. ” – James Womack , Leanstack , Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup

So, he developed the Lean Canvas; a one-page, easy-to-digest document that:

As you can see, the Lean Canvas is a set of nine blocks:

• Value proposition
• Unfair advantage
• Key metrics

Each block presents clear, concise, and accurate information in a digestible format. It takes less time to complete, it’s easy to keep up-to-date, it gives investors the information they need, and it paints a clear picture of the business or idea on one page (instead of 40).

What’s not to like?

OK, you get it: It’s a waste of time creating a semi-fictional business plan that won’t get read. But, seriously ? How can you convey how fantastic your idea is on one, single page?

To answer this, we’ll need to look at each of the nine components that make up the one-page Lean Canvas framework.

Lean Canvas component #1: Customers ‍ ‍

The first block to fill out is all about your customers. As you might do with a business plan, you need to determine who your user base is and understand what makes them tick.

Go deep and build up a customer profile for each group of customers you’re targeting. Get under their skin and get to know them as people:

• Who is your intended audience?
• What type of person are they?
• What are their likes, dislikes, and pain points?
• What’s their average day like?
• What makes them happy?
• What frustrates them?

One thing you must do during this exercise is define who the early adopters of your product are likely to be.

Identifying this group of people is essential because you can use them to validate your ideas.

Ask them questions, send them feedback surveys, and get them to trial your product. Collect these valuable insights and use them to iterate your Lean Canvas, determine the direction you take your product in, and justify your ideas.

Real customer opinions and feedback are valuable proof points that investors will trust.

Lean Canvas component #2: Problem

The next step you need to take should be in the shoes of your customer. Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes so you can identify the problems they might face with (and also without) your product.

Conduct interviews, carry out tests, or send out surveys to help you uncover the real issues they’re likely to face or are already facing.

Interact with your product yourself, or ask an unrelated third party to give it a try. Consider the experience from your customer’s point of view and objectively identify what works and what doesn’t.

Take this back to your Lean Canvas and tweak your idea accordingly. Use it as evidence to prove the concept you’re pitching.

Lean Canvas component #3: Solution ❗

Next, you need to describe what your product is going to do. What will it solve? What’s the ultimate vision?

You might feel that your product solves several problems and is the answer to everything. But, remember, this needs to be clear and concise.

So, play around with each solution to see what sticks. Assess your features and capabilities, carry out research, collect feedback, and brainstorm with your team so you can narrow it down to one or two solid solutions that are grounded in evidence.

Lean Canvas component #4: Channels

How will your customers find your product? How will they come into contact with you or your product?

List every single channel or touchpoint that you could use to get your product in front of your audience.

You might want to use a mixture of paid channels, like Facebook ads or trade fairs, and free channels like SEO or blog posts. Create a content strategy to help you decide where best to center your efforts and show investors that you’re able to provide the best experience to your customers at every step of their journey.

Lean Canvas component #5: Value proposition ⚡

Write out a punchy statement that explains the core value of your product.

Think: Why would your target customer care about it? What will it do for them? What problem does it solve? Why is it a better option than the competition?

Sell the end-benefit not the solution, and keep it short, catchy, and powerfully persuasive (eg. the film ‘Alien’ isn’t a film about aliens, it’s “ Jaws in Space ”).

Three words of warning though:

• Don’t confuse a value proposition with a tacky slogan. For instance, M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand…” is a slogan, not a value proposition.
• Don’t write a sentence that’s all hype and no substance. For example, “The best product EVER made” is pure hype. There’s nothing to back it up and investors will see straight through it.
• Don’t use meaningless buzzwords or jargon. You might think that phrases like “value-added interactions” make you sound like a prestigious expert, but they don’t. They make you sound like a pretentious airhead.

This block is one of the most important ones to get right. Your value proposition is how investors will see you and your product, and how they will describe you to other partners and investors.

Lean Canvas component #6: Unfair advantage

Whether you know it or not, you have an unfair advantage over your competitors. All you have to do is find out what it is!

What makes you stand out? What puts you streets ahead of your competitors? What do you have that others can’t replicate or acquire?

It might be your internal team; it might be in-depth knowledge or inside information; or it could be your unique position within a community.

It’s there somewhere. Dig it out and put it on display.

Lean Canvas component #7: Revenue

This is where you’ll need to identify the sources of income that will keep you and your business afloat.

Create a simple pricing model and test it out on your early adopters. Does it work for them and for you?

You might charge a subscription fee; you might generate income through advertising on your platform; or maybe you’ll get customers to pay for their usage. Maybe it’s a combination of all three!

Just remember to keep it as simple as possible, test it out, and keep iterating until it’s perfect.

Again, testing it out on early adopters backs up your concept.

Lean Canvas component #8: Costs

I probably don’t need to tell you that over 90% of start-ups fail because they don’t consider the proper costs of launching and running their business.

So, list all of your expenses.

Consider everything, from customer acquisition and retention costs, to distribution and office overheads. And to make sure you don’t miss any key costs, work through each of the nine blocks in your Lean Canvas and consider the costs that each might bring.

Lean Canvas component #9: Key metrics

To be able to prove the success of your product, you’ll need to set clear, easy to measure metrics.

Outline what you plan to track and why.

Identify the indicators that will demonstrate how well your company is doing. For instance, you may choose to measure the number of users, downloads, or social followers you get; or you may focus on retention figures, brand interactions, or costs, etc.

Fill in this section of your Lean Canvas with the metrics that are most critical to the problem you’re trying to solve with your product.

Now you’ve seen what goes into a Lean Canvas, can you see how it’s possible to tell the whole story of your business on one page?

Key things to remember when creating your Lean Canvas

The trick to creating an effective Lean Canvas that fits onto one page is to:

• Fill in all 9 blocks in the above order and work your way through each one logically.
• Fill each block with concise notes and link-out to images, documents, and other related information.
• Remember it’s a fluid, working document that’s not set in stone.

To test the Lean Canvas out before you share it with investors, go through each step and relay the story to yourself:

We will help [customers] solve [problem] by providing them with our [solution] . They will know about us through [channels] and they will be convinced to join us because [value proposition] and because we [unfair advantage] . We will charge them by [revenue] which will cover our [costs] . We will measure our performance by tracking [key metrics] .

It should all flow nicely, like a story where everything is linked. If it doesn’t, it needs more work before you show it to investors.

But wait a minute. Don’t investors expect to see a business plan? Will they take a one-page Lean Canvas seriously?

Why the Lean Canvas works for start-ups

The Lean Canvas is centered around validation and justification. It’s about working the idea out, asking for feedback, and using that feedback to iterate your plan until your idea becomes a valid one.

Your Lean Canvas then becomes living proof that your concept will work. Investors will value proof of concept 10X more than 40 pages of empty promises and unfounded statements.

Not only that, but it’ll take you hours, not months to put together. So, if you get punched in the mouth again, it’s no biggie. Just go back and rework it based on investor feedback.

And it’s quick and easy to update; it moves as you move, allows you to pivot, and it means that you can get your product out to market quickly. These are all reliable indicators for VCs, Angels, and investors that a start-up can take off.

“ It lets you focus on building your business faster, by capturing your idea, collecting feedback, and iterating on it dynamically. ” – Infolio , How to Create a Lean Canvas

To prove the Lean Canvas concept even further, let’s take a look at it in action.

The Lean Canvas in action

Below are two hypothetical Lean Canvas examples from a couple of familiar companies who, although it’s difficult to believe, were start-ups themselves once…!

In summary, Google’s Lean Canvas story (if the Lean Canvas existed back in 1998!) might have gone a little like this:

We will help all web users to find what they’re searching for easily by providing them with technology that allows them to search and find relevant content . They will know about us through other users and they will be convinced to join us because they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for quickly (unlike with competitors) and because we have an innovative combined citation-ranking system . We will make money through investment and advertising revenue which will cover our hosting and development costs . We will measure our performance by tracking the number of search requests and the percentage of users who end their search on the first page .

And, Facebook’s Lean Canvas might have gone like this back in 2004:

We will help all college students to communciate with their peers online by creating an online communication platform that will allow them to connect with their friends, share photos, and chat . They will know about us through referrals from other students and they will be convinced to join us because it’s a student orientated communication platform and because we have invented a new type of website: A social network with social features! We will make money through investment and advertising revenue which will cover our hosting, development, and payroll costs . We will measure our performance by tracking the number of daily, weekly, and monthly active users .

To conclude…

Despite the obvious benefits of the Lean Canvas, it has to be said that:

“A one-page document of this kind may not satisfy every potential investor at every financing stage. But many investors will consider a document like this to be more than adequate. ” – BSchools , Can a Lean Canvas Replace a Traditional Business Plan?

I think we can all agree that the moral of this story is: don’t waste months agonizing over a hefty business plan that no one is likely to read.

Instead, create a Lean Canvas. Tell the story of your business with key information that’s up-to-date and backed by research, testing, and customer proof. Get the ball rolling in one afternoon, with one page.

Think of it this way, which would you rather do:

“ Spend 6 months pitching investors so you can refine a story based on an untested product? Or, spend time pitching customers so you can tell a credible story based on a tested product? ” – Ash Maurya , Leanstack , Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup

I’d rather roll with the punches with a Lean Canvas. You?

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Amanda Greenwood

Amanda is a content writer for Process Street. Her main mission in life is to write content that makes business processes fun, interesting, and easy to understand. Her background is in marketing and project management, so she has a wealth of experience to draw from, which adds a touch of reality and a whole heap of depth to the content she writes.

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Lean Canvas is a 1-page business modeling tool used by millions of people.

Get others to see what you see:

Stop creating long and boring business plans that no one reads. Start communicating your big idea clearly and concisely.

A Lean Canvas helps you deconstruct an idea into a business model using 12 building blocks.

Access to the Lean Canvas tool requires a LEANFoundry membership:

In addition to the Lean Canvas tool, you'll receive a free email course that teaches the key mindsets behind the Continuous Innovation Framework . You can unsubscribe anytime.

Lean Canvas is used by over a million people that span startups, universities, and large enterprises.

What is a Lean Canvas?

Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea using twelve business modeling building blocks.

A Lean Canvas can describe a business model, a product release, or even a single feature, making it a highly popular business model innovation and product management tool used by millions worldwide.

If you have ever written a business plan or created a slide deck for investors, you’ll immediately recognize most of the building blocks on the canvas.

Lean Canvas helps you communicate your idea clearly and concisely to key stakeholders.

You can outline multiple business models on a Lean Canvas in one afternoon instead of writing a business plan, which can take several weeks or months. More importantly, a single-page business model is much easier to share with others, so it will be read by more people and updated more frequently.

Lean Canvas helps you systematically build and launch successful products.

When taking on a complex project, like, say, building a house, you wouldn’t start by putting up walls. You’d probably start with an architectural plan or blueprint — even if it’s just a sketch.

Building and launching an idea is no different.

Most entrepreneurs start with a strong initial vision and a Plan A to realize that vision. Unfortunately, most Plan As don’t work.

It has statistically been shown that two-thirds of successful startups report drastically changing (or pivoting) their plans along the way.

So, what separates successful startups then isn’t necessarily starting with a better initial plan (or Plan A) but finding a plan that works before running out of resources .

Until now, finding this better Plan B or C or Z has been based largely on gut, intuition, and luck. There has been no systematic process for rigorously stress testing a Plan A.

The first step to iterating your Plan A is gaining clarity on your Plan A.

This is what the Lean Canvas helps you do.  

What is the difference between Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas?

Lean Canvas was adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and optimized for the Lean Startup methodology.

The motivation behind Lean Canvas was creating a more founder-focused business modeling tool better suited for early-stage products.

It replaces these boxes on the Business Model Canvas: key partners, key resources, key activities, and customer relationships with these boxes: problem, solution, key metrics (KPIs), and unfair advantage (a defensible competitive advantage).

See what's different

Planning, Startups, Stories

Tim berry on business planning, starting and growing your business, and having a life in the meantime., lean business plan to get what you want from your business.

Are you running your own business or looking to start a new business? The lean business plan is an easy way to set down your strategy, tactics, milestones, and essential business numbers. Just do it for yourself and your team, with a few streamlined bullet points for strategy and tactics; plus lists of key milestones, tasks, assumptions, and performance metrics; and essential business numbers. Then review and revise it regularly and you’ll have your progress towards goals, and accountability.

Lean Business Plan in Four Steps

One: strategy.

Two: Tactics

Strategy is useless without tactics. In a lean business plan, tactics define your choices related to pricing, channels, website, mobile app, launch dates, features, benefits, messaging, media, promotion, platforms, locations, signage, financing, recruitment, bundles, and so forth. There is no reason to define all this in detail, or defend it for outsiders. Just decide and set it down as a bullet points. These are the core thoughts of marketing plan, product plan, and financial plan — but just what you need to do it. You don’t need elaborate text. Keep what you say about your tactics simple.

Three: Concrete Specifics

A lean business plan includes milestones to make your planning real. Milestones include dates, deadlines, tasks, responsibilities, and plan your budget and goals to reach specific milestones. List your important assumptions. Set dates for review and revision, plan vs. actual analysis, at least once a month. Set performance metrics you can track. Match every key task with somebody who owns it and lives with its results.

Four: Plan for Cash Flow

A lean business plan includes a sales forecast, spending budget, and cash flow. Profits don’t guarantee cash in the bank. Allow for time to wait for clients to pay, and money to buy what you have to before you sell. The purpose of forecasting is management not accurately predicting the future. Connect the dots so sales depends on drivers of sales like traffic, conversions, leads, closes, and so forth. Match sales forecast to projected spending on sales and marketing expenses.

Review and Revise Often

Always track results and review and revise often. What’s happened with the plan? Were assumptions valid? Was it executed?

Lean startup? Yes. Borrow the concept of minimum viable product and apply it to minimum business plan. Borrow the concept of small steps and frequent reviews and apply it to planning and management.

Nothing lends credibility like milestones met. Nothing says planning better than a revised fresh plan. Be a line, not a dot.

The Lean Business Plan is to Get Stuff Done

Times have changed. Don’t do a big traditional business plan but don’t throw out planning either. Do it right. Do a lean business plan. Your business deserves it. Focus, set priorities, highlight execution and specifics, manage cash. Get what you want from your business, whether that’s high-tech growth and funding or independence and peace of mind. It’s not about a plan; it’s about optimizing your life.

After reading through your standard business plan the purpose for me is to help my family focus on new potential small business or business’s in the near future . I will hold your basic outline close to my heart. It was very easy to follow and yet made since because it created an easy bullet list of the most important points to focus on. Thank you for publishing.

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How to Build a Lean and Efficient Business Plan Your business plan must be ready to accommodate rapid changes so that your company can follow suit. Here are five ways to make your business plan as lean and effective as possible.

By Tim Berry Edited by Dan Bova Apr 17, 2013

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

The concept of the lean startup , developed by entrepreneur Eric Ries , looks at how product development cycles can be shortened and businesses can run more efficiently by continuously measuring progress and feedback. This philosophy is particularly relevant when it comes to thinking about your business plan .

In business, it is the continuous planning process that matters. Your business plan, like your business, is a living, evolving, flexible thing. It requires rapid changes and fact-based decision making. I like the body metaphor implied by the term. Lean doesn't just mean thin; it also means healthy, muscular and efficient. Here five ways to help make your business plan leaner:

1. Make strategy the heart of your plan. Strategy is focus -- focus on specific target markets using specific products or services. Your strategy is based on some strength or characteristic that links you to your preferred buyers and the solutions you offer them. It defines how you want to set your business apart from the crowd. Strategy isn't text -- it's concepts. You can summarize strategy in bullet points, using charts or even with a series of images.

To test your strategy statement, read it and ask yourself whether it describes your unique business or could be applied to many others. Is it specific enough to be implemented? Does it define a market, product and branding focus? While everything in a business plan is subject to change, the strategy changes more slowly than the rest of the plan in response to changing conditions.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask Before Determining Your Target Market

2. Summarize more, elaborate less. Your business plan is held up by eight key core concepts: market, product or services, production, marketing, sales, distribution, management and finance. A fat business plan describes each of these key areas in elaborate detail. Lean business planning means using more bullets and less text. It refers to trends and ongoing assumptions as economically as possible, explaining them in detail only where the detail isn't already understood.

3. Track progress and manage course corrections constantly. Track your progress with lists and tables full of numbers that you can use to course correct. This is lean to the extent that it's specific, concrete and measurable. The most important part of this is a list of milestones. These are scheduled achievements and activities, each of which ought to have dates, budgets, performance measurements, expectations for spending and sales and specific assignments for task responsibilities.

Aside from these milestones, good planning also needs regularly updated projections of sales, costs, expenses and cash. The projections should be just detailed enough to offer good plan-verses-actual analysis for better management. For example, monthly projections are probably essential for at least the next six months, and usually 12 months is better; but monthly projections beyond a year are most often a waste of time. The goal isn't guessing right (which never happens) but rather laying out the probable results and connecting the dots (like expenses to sales) so you can track progress and make useful changes.

Related: What Angel Investors Want Now

4. Dress up your plan with descriptions. Descriptions you use to dress up your plan depending on the audience might include market details, technical or scientific background, company history, bios of the management team, generic market research, proof of concept and competitive analysis. Like clothes, you make these descriptions appropriate to the occasion. For example, you might need to prove a market to assure investor or to prove financial stability to assure bankers.

5. Be consistent about updates. Planning for a startup is a lot like diet and exercise. Business planning is a process, not an event. Like diet and exercise, the key to staying lean is regular repetition over a long time to generate real positive benefits. You don't do it once, or even once in a while. You review and revise your plan regularly.

Related: 3 Marketing Lessons from the Rise and Fall of Ron Johnson

Entrepreneur, Business Planner and Angel Investor

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