As a small business entrepreneur, you’re very possibly in possession of something very valuable – a great idea. To make the most of that idea, you need to be able to communicate it crisply to potential investors, clients and employees.

This is where a knockout business plan comes into play. Once you have one, you have the road map for your business laid out in front of you. You can clearly show anyone who is interested what your company is all about, your plans for the future and how you plan to grow revenues.

With this in mind, this infographic below will help you put together a great business plan, including everything you should include, as well as how to make it succinct and engaging. Finally, it will show you how to put your business plan into action.

This is an edited version of a post originally posted at The Payroll Blog. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.

“If you go to the Middle East looking for oil, you don’t need to stop in Israel. But if you go looking for brains, energy and integrity, it is the only stop”, so said Warren Buffett a long ago about the Israeli ecosystem. No one can sum up Israel’s innovative startup ecosystem better, as he speaks from his own personal experience, having purchased 80% of Israeli tungsten carbide tool marker ISCAR for $4 billion way back in 2006.

Israel is a living example of the saying ‘Adversity is the mother of all inventions’. It’s stunning to see so many startups emerge from a country with a population of 8 million facing adverse conditions. Israel has witness almost double per capita venture capital investments as the US and 30 times more than all the members of the European Union combined.

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that "For a small country, Israel will have an oversized impact on the evolution of the next stage of technology we all use".

Here are some promising Israeli startups: 

1. Ctera


What it does: Cloud storage and data protection

Why it’s hot: CTERA offers its services to telecom operators, ISPs and companies to help them create, deploy and manage cloud storage services quickly and easily. In July it raised $25 million bringing total funding to $45 million. Backed by Bessemer Partners, Benchmark Capital, Venrock and Cisco, its considered by some to be a candidate to be the ‘Dropbox of the enterprise’.

2. Appsflyer

What it does: Mobile app measurement and tracking

Why it’s hot: Appsflyer is a mobile apps measurement platform that allows app developers, brands and agencies to measure and optimize their entire mobile customer acquisition funnel from one real time dashboard. The company’s SDKs are installed on more than $800 million mobile devices measuring more than $500 million in mobile ad spend annually. In March it raised a $7.1 million round from Pitango Venture Capital and Magma Venture Partners.

3. SundaySky

What it does: Marketing platform that helps brands tell compelling stories that matter to the consumers

Why its hot: SundaySky’s SmartVideo lifecycle marketing platform generates hundreds of thousands of SmartVideos daily, powering customer acquisition, service, growth and loyalty touch points across a range of industries. Their customers include AT&T, Office Depot and Allstate with revenues having tripled since 2012. They have raised a Series C funding of $20 million from Comcast Ventures.

4. Wibbitz

What it does: Text-to-video platform that can automatically turn any text based article, post or feed into a short video

Why it’s hot: Wibbitz re-packages textual content into rich video summaries that can be watched on the web or mobile devices. In 2012, the company has raied a $2.3 million Seies A round from Horizons Ventures, Initial Capital and lool Ventures. It launched its mobile app in June 2013 and browser plugin in this year. Their platform generates close to 10,000 clips per day.

5. Neura

What it does: Makes the ‘ devices around us cognizant of the users they serve’

Why it’s hot: Neura aims to make Internet of Things devices work together, regardless of brand and anticipates users’ requirements. It pulls data from sensors into its Harmony platform, creates rules based on user behavior and applies that intelligence to anticipate what devices should know or do. It currently works with more than 40 partners. The team has raised $2 million in funding from undisclosed investors.

6. Consumer Physics

What it does: World’s first affordable molecular sensor that fits in the palm of the hand

Why it’s hot: The company’s SCiO is a tiny spectrometer that allows users to get instant relevant information about the chemical make-up of things around them, sent directly to their smartphones. With every scan, SCiO learns more, enabling the device to get smarter. Its Kickstart project was successfully funded in June raising EURO 2.7 million from 10,000 backers (the goal was $20,000). They have also raised a funding round backed by Khosla Ventures and other angel investors.

7. SimilarWeb

What it does: Web measurement and competitive intelligence.

Why it’s hot: SimilarGroup helps Internet users find and interpret web content. Its SimilarWeb services helps companies benchmark performance against competitors, increase web traffic and discover opportunities to broaden their audiences using clickstream activities of tens of millions of Internet users around the world. This year the company has raised a large Series C round from Naspers (Its Nasper’s first investment in Israel).

8. LiveU

What it does: Pioneer of broadcast-quality, video over cellular solutions that allow live video transmission from any location.

Why it’s hot: LiveU’s 3G/4G LTE bonded uplink solutions are used by the world’s leading broadcasters, news agencies and online media in over 60 countries. Their services have been used for the London 2012 Olympics, 2012 US Presidential Campaign, 2011 British Royal Wedding, Hurricane Irene and many other global events.

9. Fiverr

What it does: Global online marketplace offering tasks and services usually for $5

Why it’s hot: Fiverr provides a living marketplace for millions of micro-entrepreneurs in close to 196 countries. So far it has enabled more than three million tasks. In August Fiverr raised $30 million from Qumra Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners in Series C.

10. BillGuard

What it does: Free credit and debit card protection; scans statements for fraudulent charges

Why it’s hot: BillGuard uses crowd-sourced big-data analytics to harness the collective knowledge from million plus consumers reporting billing complaints online and to their merchants and banks. Since its launch in 2012, the company claims to have saved its users from nearly $60 million in unwanted or fraudulent charges. It’s one of the first financial service to be integrated with the new iPhone Passbook Wallet, they also have an android app.

Though small in size and lacking in natural resources, Israel has cultivated a wellspring of ideas that has enabled it to be one of the world’s largest sources of innovative startups.
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This is an edited version of a post originally posted at yourstory.com, by Subodh Kolhe. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.

Alberto Savoia defines pretotyping as “building the right product before you invest in building your product right.” His book “Pretotype It” lists a set of seven techniques for pretotyping. Additionally, this post highlights other five ones that should be included.

Seven Basic Pretotyping Techniques:

1. The Mechanical Turk – Replace complex and expensive computers or machines with human beings.
   Also known as
   
   
   • starting with a service
   • wrapping a thick protective blanket of consulting around your product so that no one is hurt by it
   • selling the holes not the drill
   • Wizard of Oz (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain).
   • Flintstoning (Fred Flinstone’s feet powered his “car”).
   • Manualating (a backward formation from automating)
   • the concierge method
2. The Pinocchio – Build a non-functional, “lifeless”, version of the product.
   Useful for form and fit validation. Jeff Hawkins famously carried around a block of wood to get an appreciation for what a PDA might feel like.
3. The Minimum Viable Product (or Stripped Tease) – Create a functional version of the product, but stripped down to its most basic functionality.
   A basic approach for any bootstrapper – make sure you have the simplest offering that customers are willing to buy before you worry about adding features (and delaying time to break even revenue).  In reading this Savoia is using the Marty Cagan MVP model “smallest possible product that has three critical characteristics: people choose to use it or buy it; people can figure out how to use it; and we can deliver it when we need it with the resources available – also known as valuable, usable and feasible.”
4. The Provincial – Before launching world-wide, run a test on a very small sample.
   Start in a niche. When in doubt zoom in or traction.
5. The Fake Door – Create a fake “entry” for a product that doesn’t yet exist in any form.
   I am not a fan of this except in very limited circumstances for B2B markets as it can be very corrosive to the trust required to built a long term business relationship. And at least with software products for business, a longer term relationship is normally intrinsic to the customer’s calculation of the value of your offering. If you start to erect “Potemkin village” products that have too many false fronts or facade items in your menus and options prospects may doubt the entire offering.
6. The Pretend-to-Own – Before investing in buying whatever you need for your product, rent or borrow it first.
   Find a way to use tooling or equipment before committing to  a significant purchase.
7. The Re-label – Put a different label on an existing product that looks like the product you want to create.
   Often a more complex product can have menu items deleted or entire branches of a menu tree pruned to explore whether this is a market for a simpler offering. At Cisco we didn’t stuff two connectors on a four port router and changed the paint job to create a “lower cost” model until the box could be re-designed.

Additional five techniques:  

1. The holodeck – simulate the effect of a product on a workflow: understand where the next bottleneck is to determine how much benefit eliminating one or more steps (or reducing one or more category of error) will actually yield. This is the default method for “system on a chip” design approaches but it seems that we will see more service workflow simulations as a part of the development of new service offerings in the future.
2. Family Tree – verify that manual implementations exist for what you plan to automate, has someone written an Excel macro (or an EMACS macro)  to solve the problem. Are people already following a checklist to prevent a category of errors? Replacing workarounds involves less behavior change (at least in terms of a customer’s view of the real problem) than getting them to try something without antecedents.
3. “What’s On Your Mind” – understand the customer’s view of the problem and the constraints your solution has to satisfy before proposing one.  This normally requires an active curiosity about the customer’s perception of their needs.  This is not the same as asking them for features and implementing them without considering the deeper implications.
4. Picnic in the Graveyard – do research on what’s been tried and failed. Many near misses have two out of three values in a feature set combination correct (some just have too many features and it’s less a matter of changing features than deleting a few). If you are going to introduce something that’s “been tried before” be clear in your own mind of what’s different about it and why it will make a difference to your customer.
5. Want Ad – ask customers to write up a job description with a focus on “results to be achieved” by your product. Clayton Christensen calls this the “jobs to be done” model for a new produce (See also Chapter 3 from Innovator’s Solution“What Products Will Customers Want to Buy“)

Take a look at Savoia's new technique: The One Night Stand. Primarily aimed at retail innovation it says you can create “a complete service experience without the infrastructure required by a permanent solution.  Here are some details from the  “Pretotyping Cheat Sheet” by Leonardo Zangrando (leonardo@pretotype.co.uk):

• How: Deliver target customers the real experience in an extremely narrow geograpic scope and time frame.
• Why: Avoid large infrastructure investment until validating market interest and actual use.
• Where: In the same real-life situation where the innovation will be used but with limited time and geographic scope.

Three situations where this is most appropriate:

1. The solution is-or depends critically upon–an interactive service experience
2. You expect demand for the offer will be sensitive to the choice of channel, and you need to test a number of possible customer interception points
3. You want to validate a large homogeneous market before scaling up

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This is an edited version of a post originally posted at http://www.skmurphy.com, by Sean Murphy who has worked in a variety of roles: software engineer, engineering manager, project manager, business development, product marketing and customer support. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.

Startups often represent excitement in the small business world, because of their ability to innovate with great new ideas. Some even grow into giants that become household names and many have created products and services that make our lives easier.

Despite a major bump in the road with the recent recession, startups have still grown by 49 percent since 1982. And in their first year, new startups create an average of three million jobs.

Obviously, these small businesses serve an important function in our economy. Take a look at the infographic below and find out more about the world of startups, from the best places to launch them to their survival rates and more!

This is an edited version of a post originally posted at The Payroll Blog, by  Stefan Schumacher is the editor of The Payroll Blog. He has 10 years of experience as a journalist, including as a producer for syndicated radio, a newspaper reporter and editor, and a trade magazine writer and editor. You can connect with Stefan on Google Plus. You are free to re-edit and repost this in your own blog or other use under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License terms, by giving credit with a link to www.startupcommons.org and the original post.