Back in the dot-com days I wrote a lot of businessplans, both for my own things and for others. I excelled at the whole hockey-stick curve and the "we will enha

Back in the dot-com days I wrote a lot of businessplans, both for my own things and for others. I excelled at the whole hockey-stick curve and the "we will enhance shareholder value by doing x" (I always put in this Cryptonomicon quote to see if anyone noticed - noone ever did). The businessplans I wrote were flashy, followed the agreed format (index, executive summary, etc. etc.) and sold the product well. What I see now, but didn't then was: 1) The more shiny your businessplan is the more clueless investors you'll attract. (Clueless investors say "oohh that's amazing growth you show in that graph", good investors say "yeah so what, where are the assumptions?" Dealing with clueless investors takes up a lot of time, knowledgeabe investors will back you with a plan written on the back of a napkin if the think you can pull it off. 2) As mentioned in the article, a businessplan isn't a business. I would start to believe my own hype and act like we were all already riding the hockeystick to startup fame. 3) Businessplans tend to get stale, and (bad) investors will expect you to do what your businessplan tells you to do. Even when conditions have changed, which they always do. Now I see businessplans as shallow shiny objects that don't really deliver any value. A one page strategy plan and an excel chart tracking numbers is sufficient, at least in the early stages. Time spent writing a businessplan is much better spent writing code or getting customers.