[kondro]

I guess it depends on how you define business plan.

Business plans are important because they force you to think about things you need to accomplish to have a successful business. Potential market, competitors, goals, cashflow, etc are all very important to starting a company and founders need to all agree on the these things to progress.

However, I don't think a formalised 50-page business plan with research, etc is really all that necessary. It's much more important to have actually thought about all the things that affect the success or failure of your company than to have documented them.

[whitegloveapps]

I think you're right. Planning is worthwhile; the business plan becomes a time sink when people focus on making it long and perfectly formatted, and have financial projections out for many years. The reality is, a startup is still looking for its business model; all the things that flow from that will change if the model changes.