The Twitter Lesson: No Business Plans Please
Seeing that Twitter closed a funding round, and spotting the associated incredulity about Evan's company not having a business plan, reminded me of something: Whatever your feelings about Twitter, business plans are overrated, and profits perhaps even more so.Why? Two reasons. First, because VCs are professional nit-pickers. Give them something to find fault with, and they'll do it with abandon. I generally tell people to come to pitch meetings with less information rather than more. Sure, you'll get pressed for more, but finesse it. Presenting a full and detailed plan is, nine times out of ten, a path to a "No" -- or at least more time-consuming than having said less.
Profits are a different issue. Being profitable too soon gives investors, rightly or wrongly, an idea of what the margins are on the business, as opposed to what they could be in some perfect world. As a result, it takes a mighty force for them to not start wading in with discounted present value worksheets, and the like, thus hammering your valuation and generally making funding much more complicated (and equity consuming) than if you were wildly unprofitable.
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