From what I understand, VC's and Angels in tech startups don't use business plans. They use a 10-15 slide PowerPoint deck, and the elevator pitch, or a 15-30 s

From what I understand, VC's and Angels in tech startups don't use business plans. They use a 10-15 slide PowerPoint deck, and the elevator pitch, or a 15-30 second pitch. If you're building a web product, and you're in a tech hub like the Valley, Boston, NYC, Austin, etc... I wouldn't bother with a business plan. If you're not in a tech center, I'd bet you're going to have a hard time raising funding with or without a business plan, but YMMV. If you're gung ho on a business plan, the "Business Plans for Dummies" is a decent start. SCORE: http://www.score.org/index.html http://www.score.org/index.html offices usually have a lot of good resources on business plans, bus. plan writing software you can use, etc... They would probably have someone who would be willing to look the plan over and critique it for you. And, I know it was mentioned elsewhere, but the Small Business Administration has a lot of resources for small businesses: http://www.sba.gov/ http://www.sba.gov/ You also might want to try your local chamber of commerce as well. If you're in a smaller/mid-size city, business people are probably going to be your sources of funding, so you might as well go where they are and start networking. You could make your business plan and ask for a critique from a couple of them and see if it gets you anywhere.