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Business Plans: Home

This guide is designed to help you create a business plan or assess the feasibility of a business idea.

About this Guide

Use the tabs across the top or the links below to help find information for your business plan:

  • Examples & Templates This tab gives sources of examples of completed plans and templates for making your own.
  • Business Model Canvas Find templates, examples, and other resources to design your business model.
  • Target Market Looking for data on your customers? Check out this tab.
  • Industry Look here for information on your broader industry.
  • Competitors Find resources to build a list of competitors.
  • Financials Find industry ratios and costs, profits, and more data about existing companies.
  • Funding Create a list of potential investors or learn about alternative financing options.

Good to Know Before you Start

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Customers

If your customers are individual people, use market research reports to find segmentation, consumer preferences, and buying patterns. If your customers are businesses, use an industry report to find the size of the market, market drivers, and geographic concentration.

Industry

Industry reports provide general information about the industry - all the companies that sell the same product or service. These reports also include largest companies, suppliers, emerging trends and regulatory changes, performance benchmarks, and key business issues.

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