Business Plan

Scott Case, chief executive of the Startup America Partnership , offered some unconventional advice for entrepreneurs the other day at a Washington Post conference on small business that I helped moderate. Don't waste your time on the business plan. I thought he was just being provocative. After all, preparing a business plan is part of the canon of chores we are told we absolutely have to do if we are going to create a new business. Then Bob Litan, vice president at the Kauffman...

Businesses compete in the marketplace, and now they can compete for discounted rental space at Riverdale Park Town Center. Prince George's County, town officials and Washington-based Douglas Development Corp. — owner of a significant portion of the center — have launched a contest whose winners are awarded below-market rentals at the under-utilized facility. The development company owns 15,416 square feet of space at the center, which has largely been vacant for more than a decade, said Town Council member Jonathan...

As an online business owner or potential startup, one of the major documents you will need to write to monitor your business and to get funds from potential investors is your business plan. For many people this is a daunting task, but thankfully, software makes this a bit less stressful. In today's marketplace, there are four fairly common sources of funds. While many believe venture capitalists are the best source for small businesses, less than 2 percent will ever get funds from them.

Ryon Lane wanted to run to yoga class. There was just one problem with that plan: his mat. A three-mile jog from Capitol Hill to Dupont Circle with a rolled-up piece of rubber resting on his shoulder wasn't particularly appealing. So the lawyer hopped online to shop for a mat he could fold up and stash in a backpack. Lane couldn't find one, which is why people searching for a similar product today are stumbling across his Kickstarter campaign for the YogoMat . The lightweight design — with attached straps that allow for easy cleaning...

When starting a business one of the first hurdles you encounter is getting past the Business Plan barrier. The thought of pulling together a 30-page document that requires you to describe plans you haven't made yet becomes such a huge challenge that many avoid it at all costs — even to the extent of putting off starting their business. For others, they get past it by promising themselves they'll get it done once they get a few free moments (translation: never). For most of the people we mentor at SCORE , a national...

T h e three auto industry veterans — novices when it came to high-finance pitche s — we re a bit anxious as they entered the sprawling, 42nd-floor conference room at the Carlyle Group's Manhattan offices, with p olished cherry walls and a killer view of Central Park. Armed with PowerPoint and their "thousand-page business plan," the men were seeking expertise from Wash ington-based Carlyle, which had made a fortune for its founders and investors during 25 ...

Jeremy Brosowsky never pictured himself in the garbage business. A serial entrepreneur, he is 39, with an Ivy League degree and a stint at Goldman Sachs on his résumé. But when he turned his attention to sustainable agriculture, he realized that what Washington needed most wasn't another urban farm. It was compost — rich, organic matter to enrich city soils — for the city farms already out there. Trash, even "good" trash like compost, is not usually appetizing enough to make it into the pages of the Food section.

"I was five blocks away when I heard someone scream, 'They're sold out!' And a little part of me died. " Georgetown University senior Christine Gallagher was talking about cupcakes -- specifically, the ones being produced and sold at Georgetown Cupcake at the rate of about 800 per day, $2.75 each. That's 700 more than Canadian-born sisters Sophie LaMontagne, 30, and Katherine Kallinis, 28, thought they would sell when they created a business plan six months ago. But since Valentine's Day, when they opened...

Owing brotherly debts to Moses, Saint Nicholas, California gold rushers and ZZ Top, the competitive beard growers we meet in IFC's new Friday night reality show, "Whisker Wars," travel the land to enter contests to see who has the best facial hair. The winner will represent the United States in some sort of European beard showdown; the competitors are divvied up into such categories as "mustache," "partial," "full/natural" and "freestyle. " The full/natural group appears to be the primary fixation of...

Ryon Lane wanted to run to yoga class. There was just one problem with that plan: his mat. A three-mile jog from Capitol Hill to Dupont Circle with a rolled-up piece of rubber resting on his shoulder wasn't particularly appealing. So the lawyer hopped online to shop for a mat he could fold up and stash in a backpack. Lane couldn't find one, which is why people searching for a similar product today are stumbling across his Kickstarter campaign for the YogoMat . The lightweight design — with attached straps that allow for...

Position: Chief operations officer of ServicePower Technologies, a Reston company that provides mobile field management technology. Fresh out of college, Joe Wang and two friends opened a restaurant on the campus of Ohio State University. Though the business plan looked great on paper, Wang and his partners had a rude awakening during the summer when students were scarce and revenue plummeted. After closing the business, Wang discovered a passion for operations.

Angela Cody-Rouget talks about Major Mom, her Denver, Colo.-based organizing business virtually every day, but it's rarely in front of a large group. Last week, the retired Air Force major put her nerves aside and pitched the business plan for her six-year-old company to a group of women veteran entrepreneurs and military spouses as part of a pitch contest, held at Capital One Financial Corporation's headquarters in McLean. For the most part, audience feedback for Cody-Rouget's two-minute pitch was positive.

This is the second column in a series by SBA Administrator Karen Mills for On Small Business. Check back to the site each Monday for the latest entry. One of the central questions confronting policymakers today is: How do we accelerate the pace of job creation ? While start-ups receive a great deal of attention, there is another segment of businesses that can fuel economic growth—existing establishments. At the U.S. Small Business Administration ...

One of the central questions confronting policymakers today is: How do we accelerate the pace of job creation? While start-ups receive a great deal of attention, there is another segment of businesses that can fuel economic growth — existing establishments. At the Small Business Administration, we recently crunched the numbers on existing establishments and found that those that are growing created 8.7 million private sector jobs between March 2011 and March 2012, which is the most...

Best Practice: Securing corporate partners Nonprofit: Share Our Strength Type of work: Works to end childhood hunger through grants, advocacy and services to low-income families Area location: Northwest Washington Number of staff: 170 full-time Annual budget: $49 million When Billy Shore, the head of Share Our Strength, needs help from business donors, he speaks their language. The national charity that fights childhood hunger has been able to attract top Fortune 500...

About six months ago, Thor Cheston's nascent beer business was strapped for cash. He needed $125,000. Without it, he said he couldn't move forward with lease negotiations for the location which he hoped would eventually hold the Right Proper Brew Pub, a neighborhood brewery, bar and restaurant. "We were coming to a crossroads," Cheston said. Cheston and his business partner, John Snedden, who owns Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Co. in Northwest D.C., had already raised about a quarter of their budget through private...

When I first launched Pappas Group in 2003, I went from executing advertising strategies for some of the world's favorite brands to doing much of the same, but running a small business , to boot. I spent long days at the office not only tackling the branding needs of my clients, but writing contracts, reviewing résumés, signing off on payroll, bills and taxes. In short, handling the millions of tasks (and unpleasant surprises) that small business owners face every day as they work to keep their companies...

Like many early-stage entrepreneurs, Shefali Friesen poured all her personal savings into her start-up , a mobile service for adding bits of music evoking emotions to text messages. As she worked toward her graduate degree in music at New York University, Friesen felt neither the start-up nor the musician crowds really understood her vision. "If I'm with music people or artists, I'm a musician who has a start-up, and if I'm in the start-up community, I'm a start-up who does music.

Many thoughts flash through a woman's mind on the eve of a double mastectomy — most prominently fears about her mortality. But in the thicket of complicated emotions that crowded Laurel Kamen's brain as she sat in her Kalorama apartment contemplating her diagnosis of breast cancer, she also had to reckon with fretfulness about her future wardrobe. A woman of accomplishment and intelligence, who is neither shallow nor narcissistic, Kamen had none of the tortured ambivalence about fashion and style that...