I am building a social network and would like to write down a business plan that outlines the goals of the site and the long-term vision, as well as financial projections.<p>However I cant get started since I have no idea how to structure the entire thing.<p>There are a lot of resources online about writing business plans for a non-web business, but I cant find any that helps out with writing a business plan for a web-based app or service.<p>Any ideas where I can get some help? Any resources you guys know of?
What are you wanting to accomplish with the business plan? Not that it's a bad idea really, but if it's currently your only hurdle to building this thing, then just jump over it and keep going.<p>One of the nice things about web startups is that they don't tend to require this sort of pre-planning planning. Just build a product, launch, iterate, get help as you go.
Unless you have a sure-thing outside investment deal just waiting for your business plan, don't waste your time. If you decide to go ahead anyway, go ahead and "outline the goals of the site" but throw away the long-term vision and financial projections.<p>I can't think of anything more useless than long-term anything/financial projections for a startup. Both are simply fantasy, with no basis in reality.<p>I know it's really cliche these days but you need to identify the one, or a maximum of two, goals for the site and just build it (minimum viable product). Trust me on this. I spend 2+ years building something grand that just fell on it's face. I would have liked to have figured that out 2 years earlier. Every "feature" you think is going to make the site great is really just a liability and time sink.<p>Unless you have a lot of cash, your only asset is time and writing a business plan is wasting it.
What you need is something like this: <a href="http://www.paloalto.com/business_plan_software/" rel="nofollow">http://www.paloalto.com/business_plan_software/</a><p>I've used it, and it's pretty good.<p>It will create the entire structure for you, so all you have to do is fill in the data. It might have sample business plans for a web based business, which you can edit to suit your objectives.
After careful though based on everyone's feedback, I decided to go with jotting down the broad objectives and an informal list of specific objectives and a tentative budget for marketing.<p>Perhaps once we have the site completed and launched and there is some growth, I can rewrite the plan in a more formal manner based on the usage of the site.
Don't.<p>Write a technical spec and marketing goals/strategies. Any financial projections you make will be wrong.<p>The most important part of your plan will be a functional prototype