Increasingly it seems that "entrepreneurship" is becoming synonymous with "internet software startup," which I find very troubling. It's critically important to

Increasingly it seems that "entrepreneurship" is becoming synonymous with "internet software startup," which I find very troubling. It's critically important to recognize that web startups are in a unique position compared to almost every other type of business. In a web startup it can often take roughly the same amount of time to make a first version of the product as it would to write a business plan. When time to make a product or a plan are equal, the relevant question becomes obvious: Will I learn more from making and testing V1 or from making a business plan? But there are very few other business categories where there is parity between the resources required to write the business plan and the resources required to create the product. For example, I work on electro-mechanical systems which often have multi-year development cycles. In our case the relative cost of a business plan is very low, even if we only gain 10-20% additional knowledge about the venture. The value of a business plan is also likely to be tied to the volatility of the market that the business is entering. Web-based businesses are outliers in terms of market stability as well. Given how quickly the web is changing, a plan would likely contain outdated information before it was even completed. But if you're starting a restaurant the costs are much more stable and there's no reason you couldn't figure them out before spending any money.