Business plans and financial models are useless, yet they are not. They force the entrepreneur to put some level of deep thought into the entire endeavor and c

Business plans and financial models are useless, yet they are not. They force the entrepreneur to put some level of deep thought into the entire endeavor and create some sort of initial hypothesis. Even if it proves to be entirely incorrect in future, it provides a very good starting point, that you can keep iterating upon as you learn more. Most of the times you don't know what you don't know and the business plans and financial models force you to think the entire thing through and start getting a feel for what you know and what all you perhaps don't know. Edit: to be very clear, I’m not suggesting that one develops an old style 50 page business plan. I’m simply suggesting that one must have at least a basic understating of the business, the need, the opportunity, the revenue model and so on. It’s a business after all.