Business Plan for Startups: Company Description

The next aspect in the Business Plan for Startups series is your Company Description and its product and services. These aspects let everyone who reads your business plan to know the whys of your business.

Your company description states what your business is all about. While your busines products and services tells people the value your business will add to them. You should encure that these aspects are well written.

How to Write your Company Description

First, ask yourself what business will you be in? What will you do? The answers to these question should guide you in writing the following contents of your company description.

• Mission Statement: explain the reason for your business. You should also include its guiding principles.
• Company goals and objectives: Goals are where you want your business to be in the next couple of years. Objectives are the progress markers along the way to achieving your goals. Clearly define your business goals and objectives.

Other parts of your company description that are important is (i) your business philosophy. This should contain things that are important to you in business. (ii) your industry. Describe what this is. (iii) your most important company strengths and core competencies. (iv) your background experience, skills, and strengths. and (v) your legal form of ownership e.g. Sole Proprietor, Partnership, Corporation, or Limited Liability Corporation (LLC).

How to Write your Product and Services details

First, ask yourself to whom will you market your products or services? Who are your target market? You should be able to briefly expain these here.

To efficietly write this aspect of your business plan, you should do the following.

• Describe in depth your products and/or services. Here, you should focus more on what your products and services are and how they are beneficial to your intended customers. Technical specifications, drawings, photos, sales projection, profitability etc should be in the Appendix section of your business plan. You can refer to the appendix from this section of your business plan.
• Describe the factors that will give you competitive advantages or disadvantages over your competitors
• Describe what the pricing are. This could either be any from a free trial to a paid structure of your products and/or services?

Both aspects, Company Description and Products and/or Service Description should be written on separate pages. There should be a clear distinction between both.

Other sections of a Business Plan for Startups

There are other sections that are very important in your business plan. You should be able to include these sections and come up with contents that makes your business appealing. These sections are as follows

– Marketing Plan
– Operational Plan
– Management and Organizational Plan
– Financial Plan
– and more

These sections are somewhat complex and you should NOT use one approach to write them. This is why it is difficult to guide you using a fixed template. However, if you need help, you can always contact me using the form below. Be prepared to go into specifics. I’ll be glad to offer my assistance in writing your business plan.