4 ms·

I don't think that writing a business plan implies being "committed" to it, or sacrificing agility, nor does it mean putting away the radar screen once the plan

I don't think that writing a business plan implies being "committed" to it, or sacrificing agility, nor does it mean putting away the radar screen once the plan is written. Eisenhower famously found that "that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." And for many people, the act of writing things down facilitates the process of analysis. I think that history has shown that you, Patrick, have a perpetually up-to-date mental business plan available to you in a non-written form; unfortunately, not everybody is able to do the necessary calculations in RAM.

patio11 17y ago
So in a business plan you might do something like, e.g., crunch some numbers to guess market size, right? Let's see what happened when I tried that, using the facts and model available to me in mid-2006: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/06/29/guestimating-market-size/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/06/29/guestimating-market-size... I analyzed, alright. The conclusion I came to -- total addressable market size of 1,500 -- is so ludicrously wrong that it embarrasses me. For added irony, note how I express skepticism that I would actually be able to sell as many as 1,500 copies. On the plus side that blog post probably took me twenty minutes to write and I never actually acted upon it. (By, for example, shelving the software as not being lucrative enough -- I mean, I did the math, clearly it was doomed as a moneymaking proposition.) I don't think most business plans are that cheap and I don't think most folks promptly set fire to them after printing.
- michael_dorfman 17y ago
  I guess what I am calling for are business plans that are that cheap (or nearly so), and just as flammable. My point is, you did the exercise of trying to figure out your market size. The fact that you were (ludicrously) wrong doesn't mean that it wasn't an exercise worth doing. You obviously thought the project was worth continuiung, despite the (assumed) size of the market, and the same conclusion could have been drawn just as easily if the analysis had been on paper, instead of a blog post. Come to think of it, "business plans via a series of blog posts" isn't a terribly bad way to go at it, all in all. It's certainly worked well for you.
- jpablo 17y ago
  I'm curious, what's have been the actual market size ?
- revorad 17y ago
  From this page - http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month - your total sales to date are around $76,700. At $30 a piece, that's ~2500 copies sold. That's not so bad I think, considering you arrived at your estimate of 1500 by pulling quite a few percentages "out of your hindquarters".
  - tptacek 17y ago
    He came up with a TAM of 1500, not a sales projection of 1500. Normal products capture small fractions of their total addressible market.
    - revorad 17y ago
      But if you know there are other products in your space, how can you ignore those numbers when you come up with a TAM? Surely, he didn't invent bingo software?
evanrmurphy 17y ago
Wise quote. If you're open to plans changing, then this is all good. Make a lot of plans, and then don't worry about sticking to them. A different word could help, though. People feel bad when they don't stick to their plans, and so are often led to the extremes of either not looking ahead at all or not being willing to abandon yesterday's forecasts. How about business sketch?

patio11 17y ago

So in a business plan you might do something like, e.g., crunch some numbers to guess market size, right? Let's see what happened when I tried that, using the facts and model available to me in mid-2006: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/06/29/guestimating-market-size/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2006/06/29/guestimating-market-size... I analyzed, alright. The conclusion I came to -- total addressable market size of 1,500 -- is so ludicrously wrong that it embarrasses me. For added irony, note how I express skepticism that I would actually be able to sell as many as 1,500 copies. On the plus side that blog post probably took me twenty minutes to write and I never actually acted upon it. (By, for example, shelving the software as not being lucrative enough -- I mean, I did the math, clearly it was doomed as a moneymaking proposition.) I don't think most business plans are that cheap and I don't think most folks promptly set fire to them after printing.

michael_dorfman 17y ago
I guess what I am calling for are business plans that are that cheap (or nearly so), and just as flammable. My point is, you did the exercise of trying to figure out your market size. The fact that you were (ludicrously) wrong doesn't mean that it wasn't an exercise worth doing. You obviously thought the project was worth continuiung, despite the (assumed) size of the market, and the same conclusion could have been drawn just as easily if the analysis had been on paper, instead of a blog post. Come to think of it, "business plans via a series of blog posts" isn't a terribly bad way to go at it, all in all. It's certainly worked well for you.
jpablo 17y ago
I'm curious, what's have been the actual market size ?
revorad 17y ago
From this page - http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month - your total sales to date are around $76,700. At $30 a piece, that's ~2500 copies sold. That's not so bad I think, considering you arrived at your estimate of 1500 by pulling quite a few percentages "out of your hindquarters".
- tptacek 17y ago
  He came up with a TAM of 1500, not a sales projection of 1500. Normal products capture small fractions of their total addressible market.
  - revorad 17y ago
    But if you know there are other products in your space, how can you ignore those numbers when you come up with a TAM? Surely, he didn't invent bingo software?

evanrmurphy 17y ago

Wise quote. If you're open to plans changing, then this is all good. Make a lot of plans, and then don't worry about sticking to them. A different word could help, though. People feel bad when they don't stick to their plans, and so are often led to the extremes of either not looking ahead at all or not being willing to abandon yesterday's forecasts. How about business sketch?