One-Page Business Plan Templates with a Quick How-To Guide

By Joe Weller | April 6, 2020

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In this article, we’ve gathered a variety of free, one-page business plan templates for you to download in Excel, Word, and PDF formats. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a one-page business plan template for a service business , business plan template for a product business , business plan for a real estate agent , a Lean business plan template , and more. To help get you started, we’ve also included an example of a one-page business plan , and  a quick guide on how to create your one-page business plan .

One-Page Business Plan Template

one page lean business plan

Download One-Page Business Plan Template

Excel  | Word  |  PDF | Smartsheet

Use this one-page business plan template — designed to be simple, organized, and easy to use — to immediately get started on your plan. Write down your thoughts and key ideas as you decide if your business concept is viable, and adjust it as circumstances change. You can also use this template as a basis to build a more detailed and elaborate plan.

One-Page Business Plan for a Service Business Template

One Page Business Plan For A Service Business Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for a Service Business Template

Excel | Word | PDF

This business plan template is designed specifically for businesses that provide a service. The one-page plan provides space to list the essential information about your strategy, including the service you offer, the problem you are solving for customers, your mission and vision statements, target audience, staffing requirements, key objectives, and much more. This template also includes a timeline at the bottom for you to add key milestones.

One-Page Business Plan for a Product Business Template

One Page Business Plan For A Product Business Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for a Product Business Template

Use this one-page template to develop a strategic roadmap for your organization’s product offerings. This template provides space for you to include a business overview, a description of your target market, your competitive advantage, a list of marketing channels and materials you plan to utilize, as well as your pricing strategy, distribution channels, and success metrics. You can also use the visual timeline of milestones at the bottom to enter key dates and events.

One-Page Business Plan for Real Estate Agents Template

One Page Business Plan For Real Estate Agents Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for Real Estate Agents Template

This one-page business plan template is created for real estate agents to set objectives and put together an action plan. Enter your overarching goal at the top of the template, and establish three high-level activities you need to complete to achieve the goal. The template also includes a strategic action plan that breaks down each high-level activity into tasks and deadlines, with an accompanying visual timeline to ensure you stay on track.

One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization Template

One Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organizations Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for Nonprofit Organization Template

This one-page business plan is designed for a nonprofit organization, with space to detail your mission, vision, and purpose statements, as well as who you serve, the problem(s) you solve, and programs and resources you offer. Additionally, the template includes space to detail your financial plan, marketing activities, costs, and more.

One-Page Business Plan for Startup Template

One Page Business Plan For Start Up Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for Startup Template

This one-page business plan template is intended for an entrepreneur or a small startup business to document a plan as they determine if an idea is feasible. This template provides space to describe the problem and solution, the product or service, the target customer, existing alternatives, the unique value proposition, a marketing and sales plan, success metrics, and other information. You’ll also find room to detail sources of funding and how the funds will be used.

One-Page Business Plan for Small Business Template

One Page Business Plan For Small Business Template

Download One-Page Business Plan for Small Business

Use this one-page small business plan template to outline the essential aspects of your business strategy. Provide details on your organization’s vision, mission, product or service offering, and management team. Then identify the target audience, market size, competitor offerings, and your competitive advantage. This plan also includes room to detail your marketing and sales strategy, key objectives, and financial plan.

One-Page Lean Business Plan Template

One Page Lean Business Plan Template

Download One-Page Lean Business Plan Template

This one-page template uses a Lean approach to develop your business plan. Use this customizable template to detail the crucial elements of your strategy, including a brief business and industry overview, your product or service offering, options from your competitors, and your competitive advantage. Plus, this template includes room to detail your marketing plan, success metrics, financial plan, and a visual timeline of milestones.

One-Page Business Planning Template with Timeline

Simple Business Planning Template with Timeline

Download One-Page Business Planning Template with Timeline

Excel | Smartsheet

Use this business planning template to organize and schedule key activities for your business. Fill in the cells according to the due dates, and color-code the cells by phase, owner, or category to provide a visual timeline of progress.

One-Page Business Plan Example

One Page Business Plan Example

This one-page business plan covers all the essential elements and offers a visually appealing presentation. Information for each aspect of the plan is concise, with details about the business mission, management team, product offerings, key marketing activities, competitors, and financial projections. This plan also provides links to additional resources so that stakeholders can easily find information to support the specifics of the plan.

How to Write a One-Page Business Plan (with Sample Outline)

A one-page business plan takes a standard business plan and extracts the fundamental aspects, then condenses the essential information down to one page. To determine the key elements to emphasize in your one-page plan, consider the type of business you operate, as well as the financial (and other resources) needs of your business.

To streamline your business plan into a one-page document, follow the steps below.

  • Create a simple outline for your plan using bullet points. Below, you’ll find an example of an outline for a one-page business plan. You can add or remove sections according to the needs of your business. 
  • Business mission
  • Problem you are solving
  • Funds needed (if applicable)
  • Product or service positioning statement
  • Unique value proposition
  • Target customers
  • Market size
  • SWOT analysis
  • Direct competitors
  • Existing alternatives
  • Competitive advantage
  • Key marketing strategy (e.g., channel or method that will yield the best results)
  • Key sales strategy
  • Specialized equipment or facilities
  • Staffing requirements (e.g., key personnel, skills, and training needs)
  • Distribution method
  • Sales projection
  • Profit and loss projection 
  • Gather all your findings on your business and industry.

Compile all the current information you have gleaned from market research, interviews, surveys, and various teams in your business (e.g., the marketing and finance teams). Comb through each document and extract the information that is fundamental to your business’s operation and relevant to the bullet points on your outline.

  • Write two to three brief sentences for each main bullet point.

Once you create your outline and gather information, write two to three sentences for each main bullet point that expands on and summarizes the sub-bullet points for that section. For example, the plan summary section could say the following:

Donny’s Food Truck will offer a variety of fresh food at an affordable price in a convenient location. Increased traffic in the Hungry Town area, combined with severely limited dining options, provides an opportunity to offer customers a quick, nutritious meal at a competitive price. A food truck with the necessary equipment has already been acquired, so we are seeking $200,000 to cover wages, emergency repairs, and licenses needed to fund our first year of operations.

  • Ensure you are able to support all the information provided in your plan.

Since a one-page plan omits many of the details provided in a traditional business plan, be sure you have market research and other supporting documentation on hand to show stakeholders in case they have questions as they review your plan. In addition, make sure you thoroughly understand the supporting information and know how to restate it in your own words before you disburse the plan. 

  • Ensure your plan answers all the vital questions .

At a minimum, an effective one-page business plan should answer the following questions:

  • What product or service do we offer?
  • Who will use the product or service?
  • What problem does our offering solve?
  • How will the product or service get to our customers?
  • What alternatives do our customers use, and why are we superior?
  • What is our unique value proposition?
  • What strengths and opportunities can we use to our advantage?
  • What resources do we need to get up and running?
  • What will our sales look like for the first few years?
  • When do we expect to be profitable?

In addition to the steps provided above, you can save time and get started on your plan by downloading one of the templates provided on this page. You can also check out “ Free Executive Summary Templates ,” which can serve the same purpose as a one-page business plan.

Benefits of a One-Page Business Plan

Organizations and stakeholders can unite behind a strategic direction when they have a business plan in place. Developing a traditional business plan can be a daunting task, so many entrepreneurs, small startups, graphic designers, freelancers, and consultants find a one-page business plan a less intimidating place to start. 

Creating a one-page business plan benefits your organization in the following ways:

  • Push you to prioritize and focus on key ideas.
  • Enable your audience to quickly scan and grasp the core concepts of your plan.
  • Allow you to easily share and pitch your business idea to prospective investors and stakeholders (e.g., email attachment, single piece of paper).
  • Accelerate business setup, especially businesses that don’t need a loan or investment to get going.
  • Provide a solid starting point to expand upon at a later time.
  • Enable you to document your thoughts and ideas to see if you have a feasible plan.

Tips for Creating a One-Page Business Plan

Now that you know how to create a one-page plan and the benefits in doing so, here are some tips to get you started:

  • Set a time limit (up to one hour) to focus and work on your plan.
  • Use a one-page business plan template (you can choose from the options above), or refer to the sample outline provided on this page.
  • Ensure your plan details only the core aspects that are fundamental to running and operating your business. 
  • Remember that this is a living document — continue to revisit and adjust it as strategies and objectives change.
  • Expand on your plan as your business size and needs grow. 

When the time comes that you need more space to lay out your goals and strategies, choose from our variety of free simple business plan templates . You can learn how to write a successful simple business plan here . 

Visit this free non-profit business plan template roundup  or download a  fill-in-the-blank business plan template  to make things easy. If you are looking for a business plan template by file type, visit our pages dedicated specifically to  Microsoft Excel ,  Microsoft Word , and  Adobe PDF  business plan templates. Read our articles offering  startup business plan templates  or  free 30-60-90-day business plan templates  to find more tailored options.

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Lean Business Plan Template & How-To Guide

Written by Dave Lavinsky

lean business plans

On this page:

Key benefits of lean startup business planning, can you use a lean plan to raise funding, key elements of a lean business plan.

  • Lean Planning Process
  • Putting The Lean Plan Into Action

Review Your Results & Revise Your Plan

Lean business plan faqs, other helpful business plan articles & templates.

Historically, business owners have devoted months to constructing a detailed plan to establish strategy, executive, and financial numbers for their business. Although a strategic plan is often created, these entrepreneurs often miss a big piece: gathering feedback from potential customers.

Without collecting data and insight from target customers, the detailed business plan becomes a document of assumptions and guesses rather than a proven success blueprint.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

Lean business planning allows you to more quickly and accurately develop your business plan based on actual customer feedback and interactions.

lean business plan template vs. traditional business plan

The lean startup business model is supported by a one-page business plan that does not require extensive financial forecasting or long-term market research and development plans. While the traditional business plan details every aspect of your company’s operations, the lean business plan focuses on key factors that present immediate opportunities for new companies to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. This approach allows you to maintain company focus on your core mission and avoid adding unnecessary information that can weigh down your final document.

The lean startup movement has encouraged entrepreneurs to shorten their plans down from hundreds of pages to a one-page business plan or less – essentially eliminating the need for small businesses to create traditional plans at all. Rather than spending time creating lengthy reports, owners can simply list their core values, mission statement, market analysis, marketing strategies, and projected financial statements – all on one page.

Some companies even document their entire value proposition on a single sheet of paper which serves as both the foundation for further market research and development to improve its product or service offering. By having this type of information readily available to share with investors or clients, your company will appear more professional and prepared without taking up too much time creating unnecessary documentation.

Developing a lean business plan is a critical step in launching or growing your business. However, it’s important to note that if you’re seeking VC funding , bank funding, or angel investors , a traditional business plan is required. Such a plan includes additional research, strategy, and financial forecasts to give investors and lenders the information they need to determine whether they will receive an adequate ROI (return on investment) if they provide funding to you.

Below are nine key elements of a lean business plan example:

Business overview

Describe what the business does.

Value propositions

Detail the value your business brings to the market and the industry.

Key partnerships

List the key partners, including suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, vendors, or software firms, with whom your business will work.

Key activities

List the key activities your business will perform to gain a competitive advantage, grow market share, and fuel profits.

Key resources

List the resources that your business has at its disposal to create maximum value. This could include human capital (your own experience or that of your core team), intellectual property, patents, funding, etc.

Customer relationships

Describe how your customers will interact with your business. Will you have personal or automated channels of communication available? Chart out the end-to-end customer experience journey and how you intend on building customer relationships.

Customer segments and channels

Specify your target audience, what requirements of theirs you cater to, how you reach out to them, and, most importantly, the steps you are taking to generate a customer experience that will result in long-term loyalty.

Cost structure

Define your key costs and variable costs, and how they represent a competitive advantage if applicable. A lean startup business plan (versus a lean business plan for an existing company), needs to also include key startup costs you anticipate in launching your company.

Revenue streams

Describe how your business generates money. What are your revenue streams or sources, for example, selling advertising space on your app or publication, membership fees, direct sales, etc? List all your revenue sources in this section, starting with the source that delivers the largest revenue.

Download Your Free Lean Business Plan Template

Lean Business Planning Process

lean business planning process

To create your lean business plan, follow these 4 steps:

Create the Plan

Your lean business plan will start with you, your business idea, and one sheet of paper. Yes, one sheet is all you will need.

Business Strategy

You will first begin by explaining your business strategy. This is simply a summary of what you are planning to do, who your customers are, and who your competitors are.

Identify the problem you are trying to solve along with your solution and potential alternative solutions. Then, describe your target customers. Focus on defining and describing the audience you expect to serve, who they are, where they live, etc. Lastly, explain who your competitors are. Describe what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

Easy enough, that is all you need for your plan. With lean business planning, you simply create a business strategy that focuses on the essence and function of your business: what you’re doing and who it’s for.

Course of Action

The next piece of your lean business plan is laying out an outline of your course of action. This section will illustrate how you’re going to make your strategy happen. Here, you will focus on sales, marketing, your team members, and any potential key partners or future relationships in the business world.

Sales Strategy

It is important to first begin creating your course of action by establishing just what your sales strategy is. Will you be selling in a physical store or online? Or both? Consider whether or not your product will be sold in stores owned by other companies, and who these companies would be.

Marketing Strategy

Next up is creating your marketing strategy. Think about how you will effectively and attractively reach your potential customers. Here, consider the following:

  • Target market
  • Online presence
  • Advertising
  • Public relations
  • Special promotions

Team Members

The success of your course of action will be dependent on the team members who execute it. If you need to build a team, think about who the key people are that you will need to hire. What are their qualifications and characteristics? If you already have an existing business, highlight the key members that help run your company and accomplish strategy and success.

Partners and Business Resources

Begin to think of the other businesses that you might want to work with. Most likely there are other companies that you will have to work with to make your strategy work. Brainstorm all key resources, business partners, distributors, and key suppliers that you will need to have relationships with.

After constructing your Course of Action, it’s time to create your schedule. Since lean business planning is centered around efficiency, designing an organized schedule is key.

For startups:

If you’re starting a new business, you should begin with getting to know your customers. For you to grow a viable business, you must understand your customers’ views, wants, and needs. Your goal here will be to ensure that you’ve developed a strategic, organized strategy. A startup’s schedule will often include sending out surveys, interviewing customers, and researching locations.

For established businesses:

For most businesses that have been around, your schedule should be focused on achieving the business goals you have identified. Your schedule should have specific actions with names, dates, and even times. The schedule you create should hold your business and its employees accountable for their work and progress.

The final part of scheduling is to make time to regularly review your Lean Business Plan. As your business progresses, so will your Lean Business Plan. Setting a regular review time is critical to get your business moving in the right direction and your team members on board.

Forecast and Budget

Even if you have the best business idea in the world, if the numbers aren’t there, it won’t work out. The final section of your Lean Business Plan should depict a business model that forecasts and budgets for the future.

Here, all you have to do is create basic bottom-up sales forecasts and a basic budget for expenses. Do not try to sugarcoat here, these numbers should be as practical as possible. With this, you will be able to identify just what will and won’t work for your business.

By taking on this pragmatic sense, you may begin to feel like your business will not be able to succeed unless you are flooding with customers or getting daily news coverage. You may need to alter your business model here and adjust your pricing and expenses to ensure that you can turn a profit. Also, keep in mind any funding options for large-scale marketing and PR campaigns. Keep a realistic view, but also be sure to acknowledge offers that may be available to help you out.

Putting The Lean Business Plan Into Action

After you have completed your lean business plan, it’s time to put it into action. Your main goal here should be to get a deeper understanding of your customers. Is your product solving their problem? Are they willing to pay for it? Do they want something else?

Reaching out to your customers early on will help you get a grasp on their wants and needs to make the necessary alterations to your Lean Business Plan for ultimate success. It will also provide you with some insight as to what products you may want to produce in the future.

analyze results and create a new lean plan

As earlier mentioned, your lean plan should be reviewed regularly to discern just what is working and what isn’t. Compare your results with your lean plan. Are sales growing according to plan? Does the plan need to be changed?

For startups who have little to no metrics to track, review your customer interviews, surveys, or any other information that you have gathered about the industry. Here, you can begin to continually refine your plan and strategy if necessary.

If you are an established business, review your recent results with those from the past. Take note of your key metrics as well as foot traffic in stores, website visits, and any other critical units of measure for your business success.

After analyzing your results, it’s time to revise your plan. Remember that your Lean Business Plan is a process rather than a finalized document, and it is made for continuous improvements. Don’t be afraid to make any necessary changes to aid in your business’s success.

Lean business planning might just be the key to your company’s ultimate success. This simple method of business planning has helped many startups and existing businesses advance and flourish such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon. By focusing on reviewing, revising, and business management, lean planning allows you to test out different strategies to find the best one to create a successful business.

How to Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

What is a lean business plan?

A lean business plan is a compact, single-page document typically for internal use. Lean planning is a short-term business plan strategy for making small changes and measuring the results to improve the efficiency of the business. This compares to the formal business plan which is typically very detailed, includes 10 key components , and can be up to 15-25 pages in length.

What is the purpose of a lean business plan?

The lean business plan is primarily for internal use, so it doesn’t have to be a fancy document. The purpose of this plan is for you to document the changes you’ve made to your business so that you can analyze their effectiveness in improving business operations, marketing, and/or sales over a short period.

How long is a lean business plan?

The lean business plan is typically a one-page document to describe your business strategy including your goals, targeted audience, your business model, and how your sales and marketing strategies work to support your business goals. 

How do you create a lean business plan?

Refer to our article on ‘ Lean Business Plan: How-To Guide & Template ’ for the 4 steps in creating a lean business plan or a lean startup business plan template . You can also download our free lean plan template to help you get started. 

Business Plan Template & Guide for Small Businesses

How to make a lean business model canvas

one page lean business plan

Imagine that you have an idea for a new product or business. Yet, as enthusiastic as you are about the potential for this nugget of inspiration, you’re also plagued by this question: Will it work? Is it actually a viable idea?

A lean business model canvas is a one-page business plan that helps you break down your product or business model, question and test your assumptions, and determine if your idea actually has legs.

Lean business model canvas explained: What is a lean canvas?

You might also hear a lean business model canvas referred to as a variety of other, similar terms like a lean business canvas, lean business plan, or even simply a lean canvas.

This tool was created by Ash Maurya and is an adaptation of the original business model canvas by Alex Osterwalder .

You can think of a lean business model canvas as a straightforward business plan that skips the fluff and gets to the most important elements you need to identify or evaluate (primarily, the problem you’re solving).

When you have an idea for a product or business, you’ll use a lean business model canvas template to fill in the various sections (more on those in a minute) and validate your idea.

The lean canvas is most frequently used by lean startups, which use a lean startup methodology to deliver products to customers faster and determine whether or not the business model itself is viable. In short, lean startups and lean canvases are all about moving fast, testing, and iterating.

Lean canvas example

One of the best ways to understand a lean business model canvas is to see one. So, let’s set up a lean canvas as an example.

Perhaps you have an idea for a business: You want to create an app or a website that’s essentially a database of parks and playgrounds, which parents can search and filter using location, features (splash pad, baby swings, etc.), and more.

You want to dig into your idea even further using a lean business model canvas. Here’s a simple peek at what that could look like after jotting your initial notes down:

one page lean business plan

Lean canvas vs. business model canvas

There’s a lean business model canvas and then simply a business model canvas . The two terms are often confused, as they have a lot in common — and the lean canvas is an adaptation of the business model canvas.

However, the biggest difference is that a business model canvas is focused on a specific product while a lean canvas focuses on a specific problem.

This means that the business model canvas has a few blocks that you won’t see on a lean canvas. These are:

  • Key partners (lean canvas replaced with problem)
  • Key activities (lean canvas replaced with solution)
  • Key resources (lean canvas replaced with key metrics)
  • Customer relationships (lean canvas replaced with unfair advantage)

That’s the gist, but here’s a chart that digs even more into the difference between a business model canvas and a lean canvas:

one page lean business plan

What is included in a lean canvas?

Now that you have a better grip on what exactly a lean canvas is let’s break it down even further. The typical lean business model canvas has nine elements or quadrants. These are:

  • Problem: A brief description of the top three problems you’re addressing.
  • Solution: The proposed fix for the problem you’ve identified.
  • Unique value proposition: Why your solution is different and what will make people buy.
  • Unfair advantage: Something you have that can’t be easily copied or bought.
  • Customer segments: Who your target customers or users are and if they can be further segmented.
  • Key metrics: The important numbers that will indicate how your business is doing.
  • Channels: The free and paid channels you’ll use to reach your customers.
  • Cost structure: All of your fixed and variable costs.
  • Revenue streams: How your business model will earn income.

However, our lean canvas template here at Miro dives even deeper with the addition of a few more elements, including:

  • Existing alternatives: How these problems are currently solved today.
  • High-level concept: A simple X for Y analogy (e.g., “Zillow for playgrounds”).
  • Early adopters: Characteristics of your ideal customers who will jump right on the bandwagon.

How to make a lean canvas in Miro

A lean canvas can provide a lot of clarity about a business model or a product idea. Ready to create one with your own team? Getting started is easy.

  • Grab our lean business model canvas template and create a new Miro board . You can put as many canvases on one board as you need.
  • Define the product or business idea you’re working on, and then fill in the blocks with different types of content. You don’t just have to use text — you can also use pictures, videos, and more.
  • Invite your team and/or advisors to the board so you can brainstorm , collect feedback, and collaborate in real-time.
  • Come back to the board regularly to make necessary changes, add new information, and discuss progress.

And that’s it! Once you’ve created your own lean business model canvas, you can move forward with a product or business idea with more strategy — and a lot more confidence too.

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Free One-Page Business Plan Template Download

one page lean business plan

Download our free one-page business plan template.

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. That’s why we created this template for a one-page business plan—a business plan that you can write on a single page.

Building a one-page business plan has a lot of benefits:

  • It’s fast: Documenting your business strategy shouldn’t take hours or days. Use our one page] plan format to develop an initial business plan in less than 30 minutes.
  • It’s easy: Unlike a traditional business, there’s not a lot to write or any complex formatting. Anyone can document their business strategy using the one-page business plan.
  • It’s shareable: Getting feedback on a detailed business plan can be a challenge. On the other hand, sharing a one-page plan is easy and you’ll get immediate feedback from business partners and advisors.
  • It’s impressive: Getting potential investors to read a detailed business plan can be a challenge. But, a one-page plan is something that every investor has time to read.

How to complete the one-page  business plan template

You’ll start with your business strategy – this is what you’re going to do and what your goals are. You’ll document the following:

  • Identity: This is a short summary of what you do.
  • Problem: Describe the problem that your business solves.
  • Solution: Describe how your business solves the problem.
  • Target Market: Who are your customers? Try to be as specific as possible.
  • Competition: How do customers solve their problem today? Are there alternatives?

Next, you’ll go on to describe your business tactics. While strategy describes “what” you’re going to do, tactics describe “how” you’re going to do it.

  • Sales: How will you sell your solution to your customers?
  • Marketing: Describe your key marketing activities.
  • Team: Potentially the most important part of the plan is who is going to help you implement the plan.
  • Partners & Resources: What else do you need to turn your plan into a business?

Your business model is how your business will make money. The first time you work on a business plan, you can just describe how you make money and what your key expenses are. Eventually, you’ll want to develop a complete financial plan.

  • Revenue: Describe the key ways that you’ll make money.
  • Expenses: List your primary expenses. You don’t need to go into a lot of detail with a one-page plan.

Finally, you’ll want to develop a list of your key achievements.

  • Milestones: These are the key achievements that you hope to accomplish. Be specific.

This is just a quick summary of how to build your one-page business plan. You can get additional detail in our guide to growth planning.

Download a free digital version of the one-page business plan template:

Lean Canvas: How To Create a Business Plan that People Will Actually Read

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Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth… – Mike Tyson

Which, let’s face it, happens to most start-ups and entrepreneurs. Around 75% in fact.

You have the best idea. You spend days, weeks, and months perfecting a 40-page business plan filled with five-year forecasts, 18-month roadmaps, and in-depth marketing strategies. You confidently pitch it to stakeholders and investors.

Then you get punched in the mouth.

Potential investors go quiet or “ haven’t had time to read it ” and you’re left with an expensive, wasted deliverable and a chunk of time that you’ll never get back. Worse still, your product isn’t any nearer launching and you haven’t secured any buy-in or investment.

What. A. Waste. Of. Time.

Traditional business plans are of little use to start-ups, and of no real interest to investors.

But what’s the alternative?

A one-page business plan inspired by Eric Ries ’s Lean Start-Up methodology and specifically designed for emerging entrepreneurs: The Lean Canvas.

The Lean Canvas is a living framework that allows you to quickly capture your idea or concept, thoroughly validate it, and then continuously share, improve, and most importantly move on it.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking:

How can a one-page Lean Canvas possibly replace a 40-page business plan?

How can i tell the entire story of my business on one-page, is a lean canvas really enough to help me secure investment or buy-in.

I have the answers to all these questions and more in this Process Street post.

Ready to dodge some punches?

Creating a detailed business plan (complete with comprehensive forecasts, roadmaps, and strategies) and pitching it to investors has always been the first step new businesses and entrepreneurs take to secure buy-in or investment, right?

Why business plans don’t work for start-ups

Lean Canvas

During the early stages of an idea or a business, all you really have is a strong belief, a clear vision, and a lot of untested assumptions: You believe there’s a market for it. You think your pricing will generate $X in revenue, and you hope your product roadmap will look a certain way.

But you don’t really know. How can you? You haven’t tested the concept.

Of course, your business model might be based on similar businesses, products, or concepts, which allow you to hypothesize the future. But you can’t provide any concrete proof or evidence that your idea is going to work.

Which is surely the sole purpose of a business plan?

Plus, a business plan typically takes ages to write as it requires lots of detailed, accurate information. And, it becomes obsolete incredibly quickly, as and when you encounter the various operational and marketing challenges that inevitably arise.

So, instead of being a clear, factually accurate, representative proposition, a start-up’s business plan tends to be a wishy-washy, out-of-date, speculative document.

And, what do investors, Angels, and stakeholders hate more than anything…? Exactly.

The alternative to speculative, inaccurate, & obsolete business plans

Start-ups face a vicious circle: You can’t prove your concept without investment, but you can’t get investment without proof.

The original concept of a business plan was to break this circle and give investors the information they needed to justify a decision on whether to fund the idea or not.

But as we’ve already established, not only is a start-up’s business plan incredibly time-consuming to create, it’s difficult to digest and full of guesses rather than reassuring facts. As a result, all that hard work can often get bypassed by investors.

The answer to this dilemma is the Lean Canvas. The Lean Canvas is an actionable, entrepreneur-focused, one-page business plan.

Inspired by Alex Osterwalder ’s Business Model Canvas and the principles behind the Lean Start-Up movement and eradication of waste , Ash Maurya developed the Lean Canvas framework specifically for start-ups.

He felt that spending time creating a business plan that was often inaccurate, obsolete, and ignored was unproductive and a wasteful.

“ Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value. ” – James Womack , Leanstack , Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup

So, he developed the Lean Canvas; a one-page, easy-to-digest document that:

lean canvas

As you can see, the Lean Canvas is a set of nine blocks:

  • Value proposition
  • Unfair advantage
  • Key metrics

Each block presents clear, concise, and accurate information in a digestible format. It takes less time to complete, it’s easy to keep up-to-date, it gives investors the information they need, and it paints a clear picture of the business or idea on one page (instead of 40).

What’s not to like?

OK, you get it: It’s a waste of time creating a semi-fictional business plan that won’t get read. But, seriously ? How can you convey how fantastic your idea is on one, single page?

To answer this, we’ll need to look at each of the nine components that make up the one-page Lean Canvas framework.

Lean Canvas component #1: Customers 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

The first block to fill out is all about your customers. As you might do with a business plan, you need to determine who your user base is and understand what makes them tick.

lean canvas

Go deep and build up a customer profile for each group of customers you’re targeting. Get under their skin and get to know them as people:

  • Who is your intended audience?
  • What type of person are they?
  • What are their likes, dislikes, and pain points?
  • What’s their average day like?
  • What makes them happy?
  • What frustrates them?

One thing you must do during this exercise is define who the early adopters of your product are likely to be.

Identifying this group of people is essential because you can use them to validate your ideas.

Ask them questions, send them feedback surveys, and get them to trial your product. Collect these valuable insights and use them to iterate your Lean Canvas, determine the direction you take your product in, and justify your ideas.

Real customer opinions and feedback are valuable proof points that investors will trust.

Lean Canvas component #2: Problem 🧠

The next step you need to take should be in the shoes of your customer. Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes so you can identify the problems they might face with (and also without) your product.

Conduct interviews, carry out tests, or send out surveys to help you uncover the real issues they’re likely to face or are already facing.

Interact with your product yourself, or ask an unrelated third party to give it a try. Consider the experience from your customer’s point of view and objectively identify what works and what doesn’t.

Take this back to your Lean Canvas and tweak your idea accordingly. Use it as evidence to prove the concept you’re pitching.

Lean Canvas component #3: Solution ❗

Next, you need to describe what your product is going to do. What will it solve? What’s the ultimate vision?

You might feel that your product solves several problems and is the answer to everything. But, remember, this needs to be clear and concise.

So, play around with each solution to see what sticks. Assess your features and capabilities, carry out research, collect feedback, and brainstorm with your team so you can narrow it down to one or two solid solutions that are grounded in evidence.

Lean Canvas component #4: Channels 📣

How will your customers find your product? How will they come into contact with you or your product?

List every single channel or touchpoint that you could use to get your product in front of your audience.

Lean Canvas

You might want to use a mixture of paid channels, like Facebook ads or trade fairs, and free channels like SEO or blog posts. Create a content strategy to help you decide where best to center your efforts and show investors that you’re able to provide the best experience to your customers at every step of their journey.

Lean Canvas component #5: Value proposition ⚡

Write out a punchy statement that explains the core value of your product.

Think: Why would your target customer care about it? What will it do for them? What problem does it solve? Why is it a better option than the competition?

Sell the end-benefit not the solution, and keep it short, catchy, and powerfully persuasive (eg. the film ‘Alien’ isn’t a film about aliens, it’s “ Jaws in Space ”).

Lean Canvas

Three words of warning though:

  • Don’t confuse a value proposition with a tacky slogan. For instance, M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand…” is a slogan, not a value proposition.
  • Don’t write a sentence that’s all hype and no substance. For example, “The best product EVER made” is pure hype. There’s nothing to back it up and investors will see straight through it.
  • Don’t use meaningless buzzwords or jargon. You might think that phrases like “value-added interactions” make you sound like a prestigious expert, but they don’t. They make you sound like a pretentious airhead.

This block is one of the most important ones to get right. Your value proposition is how investors will see you and your product, and how they will describe you to other partners and investors.

Lean Canvas component #6: Unfair advantage 🥇

Whether you know it or not, you have an unfair advantage over your competitors. All you have to do is find out what it is!

What makes you stand out? What puts you streets ahead of your competitors? What do you have that others can’t replicate or acquire?

It might be your internal team; it might be in-depth knowledge or inside information; or it could be your unique position within a community.

It’s there somewhere. Dig it out and put it on display.

Lean Canvas component #7: Revenue 💰

This is where you’ll need to identify the sources of income that will keep you and your business afloat.

Create a simple pricing model and test it out on your early adopters. Does it work for them and for you?

You might charge a subscription fee; you might generate income through advertising on your platform; or maybe you’ll get customers to pay for their usage. Maybe it’s a combination of all three!

Just remember to keep it as simple as possible, test it out, and keep iterating until it’s perfect.

Again, testing it out on early adopters backs up your concept.

Lean Canvas component #8: Costs 💸

I probably don’t need to tell you that over 90% of start-ups fail because they don’t consider the proper costs of launching and running their business.

So, list all of your expenses.

Consider everything, from customer acquisition and retention costs, to distribution and office overheads. And to make sure you don’t miss any key costs, work through each of the nine blocks in your Lean Canvas and consider the costs that each might bring.

Lean Canvas component #9: Key metrics 📈

To be able to prove the success of your product, you’ll need to set clear, easy to measure metrics.

Outline what you plan to track and why.

lean canvas

Identify the indicators that will demonstrate how well your company is doing. For instance, you may choose to measure the number of users, downloads, or social followers you get; or you may focus on retention figures, brand interactions, or costs, etc.

Fill in this section of your Lean Canvas with the metrics that are most critical to the problem you’re trying to solve with your product.

Now you’ve seen what goes into a Lean Canvas, can you see how it’s possible to tell the whole story of your business on one page?

Key things to remember when creating your Lean Canvas

The trick to creating an effective Lean Canvas that fits onto one page is to:

  • Fill in all 9 blocks in the above order and work your way through each one logically.
  • Fill each block with concise notes and link-out to images, documents, and other related information.
  • Remember it’s a fluid, working document that’s not set in stone.

To test the Lean Canvas out before you share it with investors, go through each step and relay the story to yourself:

We will help [customers] solve [problem] by providing them with our [solution] . They will know about us through [channels] and they will be convinced to join us because [value proposition] and because we [unfair advantage] . We will charge them by [revenue] which will cover our [costs] . We will measure our performance by tracking [key metrics] .

It should all flow nicely, like a story where everything is linked. If it doesn’t, it needs more work before you show it to investors.

But wait a minute. Don’t investors expect to see a business plan? Will they take a one-page Lean Canvas seriously?

Why the Lean Canvas works for start-ups

The Lean Canvas is centered around validation and justification. It’s about working the idea out, asking for feedback, and using that feedback to iterate your plan until your idea becomes a valid one.

Your Lean Canvas then becomes living proof that your concept will work. Investors will value proof of concept 10X more than 40 pages of empty promises and unfounded statements.

Not only that, but it’ll take you hours, not months to put together. So, if you get punched in the mouth again, it’s no biggie. Just go back and rework it based on investor feedback.

And it’s quick and easy to update; it moves as you move, allows you to pivot, and it means that you can get your product out to market quickly. These are all reliable indicators for VCs, Angels, and investors that a start-up can take off.

“ It lets you focus on building your business faster, by capturing your idea, collecting feedback, and iterating on it dynamically. ” – Infolio , How to Create a Lean Canvas

To prove the Lean Canvas concept even further, let’s take a look at it in action.

The Lean Canvas in action

Below are two hypothetical Lean Canvas examples from a couple of familiar companies who, although it’s difficult to believe, were start-ups themselves once…!

Lean canvas

In summary, Google’s Lean Canvas story (if the Lean Canvas existed back in 1998!) might have gone a little like this:

We will help all web users to find what they’re searching for easily by providing them with technology that allows them to search and find relevant content . They will know about us through other users and they will be convinced to join us because they’ll be able to find what they’re looking for quickly (unlike with competitors) and because we have an innovative combined citation-ranking system . We will make money through investment and advertising revenue which will cover our hosting and development costs . We will measure our performance by tracking the number of search requests and the percentage of users who end their search on the first page .

Lean Canvas

And, Facebook’s Lean Canvas might have gone like this back in 2004:

We will help all college students to communciate with their peers online by creating an online communication platform that will allow them to connect with their friends, share photos, and chat . They will know about us through referrals from other students and they will be convinced to join us because it’s a student orientated communication platform and because we have invented a new type of website: A social network with social features! We will make money through investment and advertising revenue which will cover our hosting, development, and payroll costs . We will measure our performance by tracking the number of daily, weekly, and monthly active users .

To conclude…

Despite the obvious benefits of the Lean Canvas, it has to be said that:

“A one-page document of this kind may not satisfy every potential investor at every financing stage. But many investors will consider a document like this to be more than adequate. ” – BSchools , Can a Lean Canvas Replace a Traditional Business Plan?

I think we can all agree that the moral of this story is: don’t waste months agonizing over a hefty business plan that no one is likely to read.

Instead, create a Lean Canvas. Tell the story of your business with key information that’s up-to-date and backed by research, testing, and customer proof. Get the ball rolling in one afternoon, with one page.

Think of it this way, which would you rather do:

“ Spend 6 months pitching investors so you can refine a story based on an untested product? Or, spend time pitching customers so you can tell a credible story based on a tested product? ” – Ash Maurya , Leanstack , Bootstrapping + Lean Startup = Low-burn Startup

I’d rather roll with the punches with a Lean Canvas. You?

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Amanda Greenwood

Amanda is a content writer for Process Street. Her main mission in life is to write content that makes business processes fun, interesting, and easy to understand. Her background is in marketing and project management, so she has a wealth of experience to draw from, which adds a touch of reality and a whole heap of depth to the content she writes.

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How to Write a One-Page Business Plan

Single piece of paper with a lightbulb. Represents writing down your full business idea on a single page.

Noah Parsons

5 min. read

Updated January 30, 2024

What’s the most challenging part of writing a business plan? Getting started. That’s why you should create a one-page plan as a starting point.

The one-page business plan is simple to create, easy to update, and built for adaptation. It includes all of the essential components of a traditional plan but is far briefer and more focused.

Think of it like you’re tweeting about your business. You have a limited number of characters to work with and are intentionally making it easy to digest. If you need additional support, try downloading our free one-page plan template .

  • What is a one-page business plan?

The one-page business plan is a simplified version of traditional operational plans that focuses on the core aspects of your business. While it may be a shorter business plan, it still follows the structure of a standard business plan  and serves as a beefed-up pitch document.

There’s really not a lot of difference between a single-page business plan and a good executive summary. In fact, as you create a more detailed plan you may even be able to use it as your executive summary .

  • What to include in your one-page plan

Here are the eight necessary sections to include when developing your one-page business plan.

Try and keep each section limited to 1-2 sentences or 3-4 bullet points to ensure that you stay within one page. It’s always easier to add more later rather than cutting back from lengthy sections.

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The problem

A description of the problem or need your customers have and any relevant data that supports your claim.

The solution

Your product or service and how it solves the problem.

Business model

How you will make money—including the costs of production and selling, and the price that customers will pay.

What’s your biggest business challenge right now?

Target market.

Who is your customer and how many of them are there? Define your ideal customer by starting with a broad audience and narrowing it down. This provides investors with a clear picture of your thought process and understanding of the greater consumer market.

Competitive advantage

What makes you different from the competition? Explain how this will lead to greater success, customer loyalty, etc.

Management team

The management structure of your business, including currently filled roles, ideal candidates, and any management gaps.

Financial summary

Key financial metrics include your profit and loss, cash flow, balance sheet, and sales forecast. This section may be the most difficult part to condense, so try and focus on visualization and standard business ratios to get the point across. You can always share broader financial information if requested.

Funding required

Have what funding total you need front and center to clearly display what you are asking from investors.

Why you should start with a one-page plan

There are plenty of good reasons to write a business plan . There are even more reasons why your first step should be writing a one-page plan.

1. It’s faster

Instead of slogging away for hours, days, or even weeks tackling a formal business plan—the one-page format helps you get your ideas down much faster. It removes the complex formatting,

2. A great format for feedback

Need quick feedback from business partners, colleagues, potential customers, or your spouse? Provide them with a one-page plan instead of a lengthy in-depth version for better results.

The one-page plan is more likely to be read and reviewed. And since all of your business information is available at a glance, you’ll receive far more valuable and timely feedback.

3. Easy to update

Entrepreneurs never get things right the first time. You’ll constantly be learning and receiving feedback—requiring you to iterate and revise your business concept. Instead of updating a large document every time, you can do it in minutes with a one-page plan.

4. Direct and to-the-point

Learning to communicate your ideas clearly and directly is critical. You need to be sure that anyone can really understand the essence of your business. Delivering your entire business concept on a single page is a great way to practice this, as it forces you to be succinct.

5. Works as an idea validation tool

Initially, your business is just a set of assumptions that you need to validate. Do your potential customers have the problem you assume they have? Do they like your solution and are they willing to pay for it? What marketing and sales tactics will work?

As you validate these assumptions, you leave them in your plan. But, assumptions that end up being wrong will quickly fall off the page.

6. Becomes an outline for your detailed plan

By “detailed” we don’t mean “long.” If you do need to create a detailed business plan document for investors or business partners, you can use your one-page plan as your core outline. You will just expand and provide more details for each section.

7. No one really reads long business plans

A common problem with traditional business plans is that they are simply too long and overly complex. Even when investors ask for a detailed document, chances are that they won’t actually read every word. They may read certain sections, but often just want to see if you’ve thought through the details of your business, how it will operate, and how it will grow.

8. Useful for any business stage

A one-page plan is useful for business owners that are mulling over ideas, just starting, actively managing, or looking to grow a business. It can help validate a business idea, work as an internal strategy document, or as a flexible management tool that can be adapted over time.

Resources to help write your one-page plan

Check out our guide for quickly writing a one-page plan and download our free one-page plan template to kickstart the writing process.

How to write your one-page plan in under an hour

Still feeling a bit overwhelmed about creating a business plan? Check out this step-by-step guide to write a useful one-page business plan in as little as 30 minutes.

one page lean business plan

One-page business plan template

Download a free one-page business plan template to make the plan writing process simple and easy.

Download Template

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Content Author: Noah Parsons

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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Table of Contents

  • Why start with a one-page plan

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How To Compile A Lean Canvas, The Business Plan In One Page

lean canvas

Have a business idea? Take the first step of your Lean entrepreneurship journey by compiling a Lean Canvas.

To compile a Lean Canvas is the first thing to do to evaluate a business idea and to identify the riskiest assumptions to be tested. A Lean Canvas is also the perfect companion along the journey from initial idea to Product-Market fit .

It’s extremely useful because the whole concept behind a Lean Canvas is to briefly and concisely explain a business idea to a person who does not know anything about what the company is doing and why. It just takes a few minutes to create the first draft and it’s so powerful that the simple act of preparing it will help anyone with a business idea to get more clarity on their thoughts.

You can download and use our Lean Canvas here . You can either print it, or copy and paste it into a Powerpoint or Google Slides deck to edit it.

Three Key Rules to Compile the Perfect Lean Canvas

Although the Lean Canvas has been designed to be simple and straightforward, it might present some challenges for first-timers. There are three key rules to keep in mind:

– write sentences that are specific and concise . Don’t just write “ time ” as a problem, but, for example, “ the process of finding the right supplier is complex and requires too much time ” . Keep sentences simple, straight to the point, short (maximum 10 words each) and meaningful. Make full use of verbs and adjectives.

– after you have prepared a draft, go through each step , telling this story to yourself :  we will help these people (customer segments) to solve (problem) by providing them (solution). They will know about us through (channels) and they will be convinced to join us because (value proposition) and because we already (unfair advantage). We will charge them by (revenue) and we believe this will cover our (costs). We will measure our performance by tracking (key metrics) . It should all flow and make sense like it is a story where everything is linked. If it doesn’t, the Lean Canvas needs more work.

– prepare a Lean Canvas for each customer segment of your business idea . This is because each customer segment may have different problems, solutions, channels, revenue, costs, etc. So if you are considering a business idea that is a marketplace, compile one Lean Canvas for the demand side, and one for the supply side. Each of them will have different problems, and so your solution will change accordingly For the same reason, if you are considering a business idea where user do not pay for the service they use (e.g. advertising funded businesses), compile a Lean Canvas for the users and one for the customers who pay for the service/product.

A Lean Canvas Example: Uber London

To get an idea of what we are talking about, let’s see an example of how a Lean Canvas would look like for a well-known company : Uber in London .

With Uber being a marketplace, its job is to let demand (passengers) and supply (drivers) meet.

We have then two different customer segments, passengers and drivers, and so two different canvases need to be compiled.

This is the first one, for Uber passengers.

lean canvas

A simplified version of Uber London’s Lean Canvas for Passengers

And this is the second, for Uber drivers.

lean canvas

A simplified version of Uber London’s Lean Canvas for Drivers

You can see how the  sentences are concise and to the point , and the entire canvas seems to flow when you read it starting from the customer segment like it’s all linked.

Let’s go through the story the Lean Canvas for Uber passengers is telling : Uber helps young internet savvy and young adults Londoners and tourists (customer segments) to make it less difficult to get a cab instantly, to feel less concerned about safety and car conditions and not to pay a high fare through cash (problems) by providing them an app that tracks their location and guarantees a fast pick up, shows the driver’s name, rating, car plate and car model in advance and allows them to pay a reasonable price directly and automatically from the app (solution). They will know about Uber through PR, referrals and outdoor adverts (channels) and they will be convinced to join us because we allow Londoners to get from A to B in the comfortable, safe and reasonably priced ride by hailing a car through an app in 1 click (value proposition) and because we already have 40k drivers in London and a 84% brand awareness among adults (unfair advantage). We will charge them by cashing in 75% of a fare based on route and idle time (revenue) and we believe this will cover our IT infrastructure development, marketing, PR, legal and drivers recruitment/management costs (costs). We will measure our performance by tracking how many customers install our app, how many create an account, how many journeys they book, how much revenue per month they generate and how many friends they invite to join (key metrics).

This is how it should be.

Moreover, you might have noticed that most of the elements of the two canvases are different . This is because each customer segment of the marketplace is different, and so are their problems, the solutions that Uber is offering to them, the value proposition and the channels that they use to acquire them, etc. To put it simply, drivers want to make money flexibly and independently by driving a car, while passengers want an easy way to get a cab that is cheap and safe. How could they be in the same Lean Canvas?

This is super important, so in case it’s not clear enough, we suggest reviewing the two examples again before proceeding further.

How does Intrapreneurial talent build innovation propositions to drive higher Return On Innovation?

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Step By Step Guide to Compile a Lean Canvas

Now that we have a clear idea in mind of what a good Lean Canvas looks like, let’s see step by step how to compile a meaningful one, using the Uber passenger Lean Canvas as an example.

The steps are in sequential order   because whatever is coming first is building up for the next . So make sure to follow the process.

lean canvas

The best way to describe the problems is in terms of the jobs customers need to do, what they are ultimately trying to achieve and what is the pain or the frustration they currently feel. Possibly with a concise sentence.

Please make sure that you write problems in a way that anyone completely unaware of what the business is about is being able to understand. So avoid technical terms or single words like “ time “ , or “ price “ , as these will be very hard to understand for external people and are not really explaining what is the frustration.

In the example any Uber user – especially in London – can easily relate to the problems listed. You can see they are mostly related to three main areas: it’s a struggle to get a cab, there are safety and trust concerns and then cost/convenience to pay.

Please also see how they have been described with short and specific sentences, no more than 17 words in length and very much to the point.

The most important thing here is that problems needs to read like a problem. So for example, writing “ find a cab ” does not read like a problem and writing it in this way is not going to help. Try “ It’s difficult to find a cab when you need it ” instead.

Existing Alternatives

How can these problems be solved today? These are the current competitors in your future business. Customers may be solving the problems through a single service, or through a combination of them, or even through basic and primitive techniques, and for some reasons, all these services are failing them. By listing competitors, you will be able to compile a competitive analysis (see how to here)  and differentiate your value proposition later in the process.

The interesting thing about writing down competitors is that you have another angle to look at the customer problems. How are existing alternative failing them? Use this analysis to write down additional problems above.

Customer Segments

lean canvas

Who do you think is suffering because of the problems you are going to solve? – Do these people have specific job titles or roles? – Do they work in specific industries? – Do they have particular demographics/salary range?

In case of a marketplace or multi-sided platforms, you will need to create two lean canvasses, one for the supply, another for the demand.

The same applies in case you are undecided on which customer segment is most attractive for your business; you will have to compile a lean canvas for each one.

The segments listed in the example are the majority of Uber users in the City.

An important point here is that Customers needs to have the problems TODAY. Not in an hypothetical future, where perhaps you will educate customers about a problem they don’t currently have. That’s not going to work.

Early Adopters

Who do you think feels those problems the most? Do they have specific job titles or roles? Are they working for specific companies/sectors?

This is about who feels the problems the most and is inefficiently already trying to solve them in a way that you believe you can solve better through technology.

Identifying early adopters is extremely important because these are the ones that are going to be your first customers and the first version of the business is going to be crafted around them.

Moreover, since they are more in need than others of something solving their problems, they will forgive imperfections or flaws of the early releases.  Identifying and conquering the early adopter’s segment is the most important thing to do when launching a new business. You can recognise them among all other customer segments because they have four features. Find out more about what are these features and how to identify early adopters .

In Uber example, they  famously started in London  targeting the high end of the market and by providing a service that, back in 2012, was “ everyone’s private driver ” offering luxury car trips to professionals with a salary much above the average.

lean canvas

Each problem should be matched by a solution.

So for example, looking at Uber: – It’s difficult to find a cab when you need it and minicabs need to be booked in advance -> the solution is a guaranteed pick up from a car through an app tracking your location

– You never know who is driving the minicab, and cars are often old and not in decent conditions -> the solution is that you can see who the driver is and his rating, the license plate and the car model in advance from the app

– Black cabs are expensive and they mostly don’t accept cards -> the solution is that you pay a reasonable price directly from the app, automatically.

As you can see, it’s very clear what we are talking about: it’s a mobile app that allows people to book a cab, see who the driver is in advance and pay a fairly priced trip automatically. You mum would understand it.

Unique Value Proposition

lean canvas

Writing a good value proposition is not easy, it might take years of experience to learn how to craft a powerful and meaningful one. It usually combines: – the target segment – the key problem – the key benefit your customers are going to get after having used the service/product – the special and unique way you will deliver it All in a single statement, possibly less than 200 characters long.

A good template that we often use is “ We help  (who?)  achieve  (what benefit?)  by doing  (the special and unique way the new business/new product is doing it) ”.

In the Uber example, it sounds like: we allow (who?) Londoners to (what benefit?) get from A to B in comfortable, safe and reasonably priced ride by (the unique way the business is doing it) hailing a car through an app in 1 click.

High-Level Concept

How would you briefly describe what you do when you meet someone at a networking event? The high-level concept is a single and very short statement that describes your business idea. For example YouTube = Flickr for videos.

This is the so-called “ elevator pitch ”, and it’s important because you will use it everywhere: when explaining what you do at events, when the press wants to communicate what you do, etc. Your future team members, investors, recruiters and customers will use it when talking about your company as well.

If it is too long it means that you don’t have enough focus yet , and you will need to work until it feels right, concise and catchy.

lean canvas

How are you going to acquire your customers? Once you have a product designed to solve customers problems in a unique way, how are customers going to know about that?

Are you going to use Social media? Paid Online advertising? Google adWords? PR? Cold calls? Partnerships?

Most successful startups have 2 or 3 marketing channels that work best for them . The effort at this stage is to list all possible channels so that you can later validate whether they can really make the difference or not.

Unfair Advantage

lean canvas

What makes you special? This a tricky one, the unfair advantage is NOT the competitive advantage that you believe you will have once you have launched the business. Instead, it has to be  something that you already have , and cannot be copied or bought, and would require a considerable amount of time for anyone else to build.

An unfair advantage makes you different from anyone else willing to launch the same exact business . Ask yourself: why do I believe to have more chances to be successful than anyone else?

For example, it might be a long time experience in the industry, credibility in a particular area or skill, access to a broad network of industry contacts, having filed patents or owning IP, having launched a similar business in the past, having access to a strong community or list of potential customers, being part of a prestigious University, having won awards, being part of the cohort of an incubator… All these things will make your life much easier, but also may support you to acquire customers!

In the Uber London example, today they would be more successful than anyone else willing to do the same because they already have 40k drivers working for them. Moreover, Uber has incredible brand awareness.

As you can see from the example, you’ve got to be specific here. How many years of experience in the industry do you already have? Which industry exactly and which role? If you can leverage an existing community, how many active members there are?

It’s ok if it’s empty.

lean canvas

How will you charge your customers for solving their problems? Is the new business going to be a freemium service, a free service funded by advertising, are customers going to pay a one-off fee to use it or are they going to subscribe?

Try to list here the top three ways you will charge your customers. It’s ok not to put numbers at a very early stage, just how you are planning to charge them or get money from your product.

lean canvas

But at least you should list the ones you can think of.

At the end of the  business idea validation process  you will have clarity about these two last steps, and you will be able to calculate how many paying customers you will need to cover the fixed costs.

Key Metrics

lean canvas

How are you going to measure your business performance? A  good framework is a funnel called AARRR : Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral.

Which are the customers’ actions that you are going to track to define the steps above and monitor your business performance?

In the Uber example: Passengers download the app first (Acquisition), then they may create an account (Activation), they may book a few journeys (Retention), they would generate revenue for the business by paying for those journeys (Revenue) and finally they may send a referral code to their friends to invite them to join (Referral).

More Lean Canvas examples from Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Youtube and Google are available here .

Main sources for the Uber Lean canvases: – Uber’s first pitch deck   – YouGov for brand awareness – The Telegraph for profiles of drivers and passengers in London – The Guardian for early adopters of the service in London – Countless late-night chats with Uber drivers

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Lean Business Planning

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Lean Business Planning

What’s a Lean Business Plan?

Lean business plan is as Simple 1-2-3-4

Lean business planning starts with a lean business plan. The lean plan contains four essentials every business needs, and nothing else. It’s a streamlined core plan for running the business, not a document or detailed plan, full of descriptions, to be presented to investors or lenders. It’s to optimize management. Here’s what the lean business plan includes.

The principles apply to every business plan. Fight the fallacy of the formal plan. Start lean. Make it formal only when needed . Tweet

1. Strategy

set your strategy

Who you are, what you do, and for whom you do it. Ideally, the smaller your business, the more focused. Maybe you keep it in your head, always — and lots of us do that — but maybe you write it down. Simple bullet points. Just reminders.

  • Planning outside of strategy is a waste of time.
  • I like this framework : the problem you solve; your solution; who you are; and the market you try to reach.
  • But don’t sweat any strategic framework too much. Strategy is focus. It’s as much what you’re not doing, whom you’re not reaching, as what you are doing and whom you reach.

one page lean business plan

Strategy without tactics is just puffery. Keep your strategy in mind — your focus, what you are and aren’t doing, for whom — as you develop specific action plans filled with tactics that make strategy matter. This is all about execution.

  • Marketing tactics : Target market, differentiators, positioning, messaging, pricing, channels, online presence, engagement, content, sales structure, and all the old-fashioned marketing mix stuff like advertising, public relations, special promotions, and so forth.
  • Offering (product or service) tactics : launch dates, feature sets, packaging, product lines and options, apps, menu items, Stock Keeping Units (SKUs), services, website, technology, vendors, delivery options, and so forth.
  • Financial (and admin and infrastructure) tactics : Funding and financing, hiring and recruiting, training, policy, and so forth.

And don’t think of all this as a document. At least, not yet. Early on, it’s a matter of form following function; you keep it in bullet points, maybe orderly sections, but none of these plans are independent of all the others.

Do think about strategic alignment. What you do with your tactics should flow from your strategy.

And what this means, specifically, is that you think all these factors through, and set down some plans, in writing but not fancy text, just bullets, so you can get back to them at least once a month to see how you’re doing. It might even be a bit like the classic business plan, covering topics like pricing and distribution — except that you do it for yourself. Keep it just big enough to run the business.

3. Forecasts of Sales, Costs, Expenses, and Cash

You can’t optimize management without managing the money. You need to forecast your basic business numbers because without the forecasts, you can’t track results and catch problems or capitalize on pleasant surprises.

one page lean business plan

Don’t worry too much about forecasting; just do it. If you can run a business, you can do a basic forecast of sales and costs. It’s not about being accurate; it’s about laying out realistic assumptions. Of course you’ll be wrong, but with good assumptions you can track how you were wrong, in what direction, and make regular corrections.

And you can’t plan a business without considering cash flow. Although for some simple businesses, cash flow is a matter of staying profitable, keeping sales above costs and expenses; for most businesses, it’s much more complicated because you don’t get paid exactly when you make the sale, and you have to buy things ahead of time. Being profitable doesn’t guarantee having money in the bank.

4. Execution: Assumptions, Milestones, Metrics, and Schedule

one page lean business plan

Tactics without concrete specifics are just wasted effort. None of what you have in tactics means anything without dates, deadlines, and specific task assignments. Here are the essentials:

  • Review schedule: This is absolutely essential. This is the real world, in which we’re all very busy. If you don’t schedule your monthly review in advance — and then follow up and do it — it’s not likely to happen. I always did it the third Thursday of the month, and you do it whenever — but make sure that “whenever” is a real date.
  • List of assumptions : You should always list assumptions because that’s the first thing you look at when it’s time to revise. You set the plan running, then track results, and when results are different from the plan (and they always are), you look at assumptions first to see whether they have changed. If so, then revise the plan. If they haven’t changed, maybe you still revise the plan, but you look first whether you executed correctly.
  • Milestones : What’s supposed to happen, when, and who is responsible? It’s a simple list to do, but it’s the core of execution. Tailor it to fit your needs, so it’s either reminders for yourself, in its simplest form; or commitments from the team, plus budgets, start dates, end dates. This is for real management accountability. This is so you can track progress and deal with standstills.
  • Metrics : These are performance metrics, the other side of milestones, also for real management accountability. Of course the most important are sales, costs, and expenses, with the details of who is responsible for which lines or revenue or spending. But most businesses have many other useful performance metrics, like web traffic, conversions, foot traffic, sales per square foot, sales per employee, tweets, followers, minutes per call, presentations, leads, lines of code (ugh), contacts made, likes, retweets. Tailor this for your business.

Run, Review, Revise.

If you’re like me and most businesses, you start with a lean plan and then get going. Track the plan results, do your reviews, and revise often. Your first plan is done. Now execute.

PRRR cycle business planning process

You may have heard of the  lean startup  or  lean manufacturing . It’s a set of ideas that started about 70 years ago, revolving around  PDCA :  plan-do-check-adjust . The idea came up first related to the auto manufacturer Toyota, as lean manufacturing; that goes back 70 years. It was also called “the Toyota way.” It was adopted later by by a collection of experts and authors, most notably Eric Ries and Steve Blank with their work on  The Lean Startup . It’s a process of continuing improvement in steps, or cycles, each one involving plan, action, checking results, and revising the plan to start again.

That term “lean,” and the idea of continuous process, applies perfectly to business planning. It’s a shame that so many people think of a business plan as a document, the formal business plan; but good planning is a streamlined simple plan in a process that could be called PDCA, which I prefer to call PRRR:  plan-run-review-revise .

Unless you have a business plan event

If you’re a business facing a business plan event , then your lean business plan is still most of what you need. Just add an executive summary and, if needed, market information, pitch deck, and whatever else is required.

This is important: form follows function. So of course you want a plan, no matter who you are or how big or how new your company is. However, that doesn’t mean everybody needs to have the full formal business plan with all the supporting information.

For example, you might be running or growing or starting your own one-person business. You feel very comfortable about knowing your customers and your market, and you have a strategy. Why are you writing all this down, formalizing it, making a big project that you don’t really need?  No good reason. Planning is about the decisions it causes,  not about showing off your knowledge.

You do what the business needs demand —  no more, no less.

Lean Business Planning Core Concept

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Lean Business Planning: The Modern approach to Business Plan Writing

The Lean Canvas Template

Free Lean Canvas Template

Ayush Jalan

  • December 12, 2023

10 Min Read

one page lean business plan

Planning is essential for any business to attain success and sustain itself in the market. Traditionally, the goal was to formulate a lean business plan that lasts and works in the long run. However, this conventional way of creating a business plan isn’t flexible and doesn’t provide much room for improvement over time.

In an ever-changing business environment, you need a plan that can adapt to your changing needs and not hold you back with its rigidity. This is true especially when immediate actions are needed.

To facilitate the convenience to make modifications, a new method of planning has surfaced. This is called a lean business plan. This simple yet effective method of planning a business reduces the hassle of dealing with complicated documents—all while increasing efficiency and productivity.

What is Lean Business Planning?

A lean business plan is essentially a one-page business plan for companies to kickstart their businesses. Contrary to traditional business plans which are often bulky and complex documents, a lean business plan is a simple, reader-friendly, and easy-to-make document.

It is a streamlined core plan that acts as a basis for a more elaborate one.

If you want to skip the trouble of creating a plan from scratch, a lean business plan template can help you save a couple of hours. If done right, a lean business plan can guide you to reach your goals, keep track of your progress, and manage cash flow .

Why Choose Lean Business Planning?

A lean business plan is similar to creating a map with steps laid out to run your business. It is favorable compared to a traditional plan because:

Benefits of Lean Business

It’s faster:

It lets you stay up-to-date:, it’s concise:.

traditional business plan vs lean business plan

Steps to Create a Lean Business Plan

Steps to Create a Lean Business Plan

Now that we have the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ out of the way, let’s take a look at the ‘how’. Here are the 5 key steps to creating the perfect lean business plan for your company:

  • Lay the foundation for your business plan
  • Put your ideas to test
  • Review your results
  • Revise your plan
  • Set to launch

For your reference, we’ve created a simple one-page business plan for a barbershop business:

barber shop lean business plan

We have used a lean canvas to fit your plan on one page.

Step 1: Lay the foundation for your business plan

The first step is perhaps the most important one. It includes jotting down everything that your business is and does. Here, you summarize who you are, what you do, and how you do it. The plan can also include your target customer base, your goals, your team, and how you schedule tasks.

Core elements of Lean

The foundational aspects of your business plan include:

  • Strategy: Define the actions you will take to achieve your long-term and short-term goals
  • Tactics: Describe how you use the resources available to implement your actions
  • Execution: Specify how you will implement them
  • Business model: Explain how you will generate sales and profits

1. Strategy

A strategy is the brain of your business. It encompasses the core identity of your business and the steps you take to run it. Here, you write your plans of action in simple and precise statements. This includes:

  • Business identity: Here, you need to describe who you are and how you want your customers to identify you. This can include your business philosophy, company history, and mission and vision statement .
  • Problem: Specify the problem that your customers are facing. Try to be as specific as possible with the claims you make. It is vital to understand that a business’s success depends on its reliability to solve its customers’ problems.
  • Solution: Mention the solution to the problems you are tackling with your product. It’s important to note that your ultimate offering to the customer is not the product itself, but the benefit that it gives.
  • Market: Your brand identity determines which market you operate in and who your target audience is. To get a clear idea of who your ideal customer is, you must understand their values and priorities. To do so, it is advisable to create a solid customer profile first before you think about allocating resources to marketing.
  • Competition: It is necessary to keep a close eye on your competitors. In this step, you list down your top competitors, their USPs, their market share, and most importantly, how you are different than them.

Tactics are the key to implementing your strategies. They’re primarily all your plans and marketing techniques to steer your business toward growth.

  • Sales channels: Simply making a great product isn’t enough. You need to make sure that it’s actually reaching your customers. For this, you need robust sales channels. This can include walk-in stores, online retail outlets, and even both. You may also list down whether you want to work with distributors or go solo.
  • Marketing activities: Marketing is non-negotiable for any business. After all, what is seen is sold. This is where you will list down your marketing strategies to draw customers in and inform them about your product and persuade them to buy.
  • Partners and resources: If you have business partners that manage or finance the business, mention them in this step. You can also add any key resources that you use for running the business.
  • Team: Mention the key team members in this step and their respective roles. If you don’t have a team yet, you can write down the primary roles crucial for your business and later recruit relevant talents.

3. Execution

Strategies and tactics are wasted efforts without well-defined execution. Everything you have learned in the previous sections will not convert into growth unless you have a systematic assigning of tasks and deadlines.

  • Schedule: It is essential to keep a timeline of all the events taking place in your business, along with a roadmap of all future activities. Review your schedule regularly to keep track of what’s working and what’s not. Making changes ensures that you don’t deviate from your goals.
  • Assumptions: Assumptions are needed so you have some ground to make decisions. Without them, your team will have a hard time figuring out new strategies. Listing the assumptions you’ve made about your business ensures that everyone is on the same page.
  • Milestones: Milestones are the achievements you aim to make with your business plan. They act as indicators that a plan is working. On paper, they might look like just to-do lists with deadlines, but they help track your progress and tackle standstills.
  • Metric: There are several metrics through which businesses measure their success. Some of the fundamental metrics are sales, costs, expenses, and more. You can tailor this to your company and write how you want to judge your business’s performance.

4. Business model

A business model is a description of how your business will make money. The clearer this description is, the better. A sloppy business model is a recipe for wasted resources, and time, and can lead to liquidation.

  • Forecast sales: Forecasting your sales means making educated guesses about your sales performance. It need not be 100% accurate. Here, you write how your business will create sales in the future. As hard as it may sound to play the guessing game, forecasting is important to compare expected sales to actual sales.
  • Budget expenses: Estimating your future expenses and costs is essential to good management. Budgeting and regularly reviewing it helps you understand where you need to cut costs or increase investments to reach your milestones.
  • Cash flow: Cash flow refers to the net inflow and outflow of cash in your business. Keeping track of it helps you foresee when you might run into a cash deficit or a cash surplus. You want to stay away from extremes. This assists you to manage your sales and expenses accordingly to maintain a good ratio.

Step 2: Put your ideas to test

After having your strategies made, milestones set, schedules in place, and a tactical plan to get your business up and running, it is time to test their utility. This helps reduce risks, gain insight, and avoid inefficient use of resources.

In this step, you verify the integrity of your business methodologies via extensive research. One of the best ways to do so is by surveying your target customers directly. Record their responses and compare them with your assumptions.

  • Is the problem you are solving synonymous with the problem your target customers are facing?
  • Does the solution you provide align with their expectations?
  • Is there a solution you can provide that your customers don’t yet know they want?
  • Are the sales channels you decided apt for your potential customers?
  • Are your marketing techniques persuasive enough?

Asking all the above questions will give you a detailed view of what should be revised and what needs to stick.

Step 3: Review your results

The next step is to examine your results. After having put your ideas to test, you must have received some significant outcomes of your decisions. This is your data. You will use this data to figure out what went wrong with the last plan and come to conclusions.

You can review your results by using the same measuring metrics that we talked about earlier. It is important to choose reliable metrics that suit well with your business model. Opting for metrics incompatible with your business can give inaccurate results—making it harder to evaluate your performance.

Step 4: Revise your plan

One of the best things about a lean business plan is that it’s not set in stone. In other words, it’s a flexible plan and is open to continuous refinements as you go along with your business activities. Considering everything you have learned so far, this step is where you revise your lean business plan.

It includes making changes to your assumptions, sales channels, marketing techniques, schedules, budgets, and even your target customers as your business continues to evolve over time. The more mistakes you detect and revisions you make, the more reliable your lean business plan becomes.

Step 5: Set your business to launch

Now that you have a complete lean business plan in hand, one that is tested and refined, all you need to do is set your business in motion. Keep in mind to come back, revise, and keep updating your business plan as and when required. Usually, for most businesses, a lean business plan is all you need to get started.

However, sometimes a more detailed business plan is more suitable for large-scale businesses. This could include specific steps and instructions for your team to undertake complex operations and perhaps even comments for your investors. In case that’s your requirement, this business plan checklist might help you stay on track.

Creating a business plan is often a difficult and tedious task, but it doesn’t have to be. With the above-mentioned steps and guidelines, you can create a lean business plan that’s right for your company. This compact, tailored, streamlined, targeted, and easy-to-revise document is sure to get your business up and running in no time.

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About the Author

one page lean business plan

Ayush is a writer with an academic background in business and marketing. Being a tech-enthusiast, he likes to keep a sharp eye on the latest tech gadgets and innovations. When he's not working, you can find him writing poetry, gaming, playing the ukulele, catching up with friends, and indulging in creative philosophies.

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Write a Lean Business Plan with this Template

Aug 30, 2022 by Abdul Momin

People often say that to succeed, businesses must have a business plan . However, this statement has slightly changed over the years.

It is said that to succeed, businesses must have a lean business plan . So you guys must be thinking, what the difference between these two is?

Today we will discuss how the lean business model differs from the traditional business model and what the lean business model is in general.

To operate a business, it is essential to construct a business model first. A business model provides a plan to run the business by identifying the customer base, sources of revenue, sources of financing, and the product that is to be offered.

Businesses make business plans to get direction. A business plan helps in making the business strategy and prioritizing tasks. Therefore, businesses must develop a business plan to operate in an organized manner.

The traditional business plans were used to cover all the details about a business, due to which they used to be 45-50 pages long. However, as time passed, businesses needed to make shorter and more precise business plans.

There were specific reasons why the need for shorter business plans was felt. One of the reasons was the argument that people don’t read lengthy business plans, due to which their purpose is not fulfilled.

Moreover, it was considered that short and precise business plans were more efficient and productive since businesses require less time to implement them, and it is easy to understand.

To overcome the shortcomings of a traditional business plan, the lean business model was introduced. The term “lean startup” was coined by Eric Ries, an entrepreneur, a decade ago. However, Henry Ford was among the first entrepreneurs who practically used lean business plans in the 20th century.

The success of implementing a lean business plan can be estimated from the fact that in recent times, many successful businesses such as Zappos , Buffer, and Dropbox adopted lean business plans to provide direction to their businesses.

A lean business plan is a shorter and more precise version of the traditional business plan, which consists of small steps prescribed to the management to make a business successful.

The lean business plan includes the business’s strategy, the tactics to implement the strategy, the schedule for monthly reviews, and the forecast and budgeting of the business.

Let’s proceed further to get more insight into the lean business plan and see its significance in the modern business era.

How to Write a Lean Business Plan

A lean business plan is similar to the traditional business plan as they both provide direction to the business. However, a lean business plan consists of only one page since only vital points are written in the form of bullets.

The usage of lean business plans is increasing in the business sector as it is considered more efficient and effective. In this section, we will discuss how to write a lean business plan.

1. Business Strategy

Similar to the traditional business plan, one of the main components of the lean business plan is the provision of a business strategy. Although a business strategy summarises your plans, it also identifies your customers and competitors.

The business strategy part of the lean business plan identifies the problem which your product will solve. It then tells how your product will solve that problem. For example, suppose there’s a lack of homemade food available in your town, and you plan to work on that. In that case, your business strategy will identify the problem and provide a solution for it.

Business strategy also describes the details of the product’s targeted audience and potential business competitors. For example, it tells what gender and age group your product will target. Moreover, it also makes the business aware of the competitors in the market.

2. Business Tactics

The lean business plan also identifies the tactics used to execute the business strategy. Another significant component of the lean business plan is developing business tactics. The business tactics provide a pathway to implement the business strategy.

This section of the lean business plan narrows down how the business strategy should be implemented. For example, it highlights what the marketing, sales, and HR strategy should be to make the business grow effectively.

3. Schedule

Every lean business plan must contain the schedule part. The schedule section ensures that all the employees’ business strategies, tactics, and work are revisited. Since a lean business plan is all about efficiency, designing a good schedule leads to an effective business plan.

With the help of a schedule, the goals and milestones set by the business can be reviewed to see where the business is standing in reality. Moreover, indicators and statistics help in analyzing the performance of the business.

However, the type of schedule varies for startups and established businesses. The schedule of a startup will analyze the consumer’s demands and market trends . To do that, the startup will send out questionnaires and surveys to get all this information.

On the other hand, for a well-established business, the focus of the schedule is to analyze the goals to be achieved. Moreover, the workers’ performances are analyzed after a set interval time. All this is done to analyze whether the business is moving in the right direction.

4. Forecast and Budgeting

Finally, the lean business plan should contain forecasts and budgeting statistics. No matter how good a business plan is, as long as you have not sorted out the cash flows and calculated the expected revenues, your business plan can’t succeed .

Forecasting and budgeting help to convert the business plan into a reality by estimating sales and expenses. The business model is restructured if the expected revenues are insufficient to meet the expenses or generate good profit.

In the next section, we will look at an example of the lean business plan template. So let’s move ahead and see what the template looks like.

Lean Business Plan Template

The above template shows how the lean business plan can precisely present a business plan on one page. Although it contains the entire business plan, it is very precise and easy to understand.

Difference Between a Traditional Business Plan and a Lean Business Plan 

Both the traditional business plan and the lean business plan provide a business plan to the management. Working on this plan, a business can succeed since a set pathway and direction are provided in the plan.

For decades the traditional business plan has been used to set the direction of the business. However, in the past few years, the lean business plan has been adopted by businesses all over the globe. This section will discuss the difference between a traditional and a lean business plan.

1. Size of the Document

Although there are many differences between the traditional and lean business plans. However, One of the visible differences between the two is the size. The traditional business plan consists of nearly 45-50 pages or more, whereas the lean business plan fits on one page.

2. Detail Presented

The traditional and lean business plans cover a business plan’s main aspects. However, they differ when it comes to the details which are present in the business plan. The traditional business plan is known for the details it covers. It explains every component of the business plan in detail. This provides clarity to the reader.

Whereas the lean business plan is famous for having pointers that give a general idea to the reader without explaining anything in detail. This saves time for the reader and makes it easy to understand.

3. Time Required to Construct

The traditional business plan and lean business plan also vary when it comes to the time needed to construct the business plan. The traditional business plan requires more time to construct since much research is needed before constructing it.

On the other hand, the lean business plan requires less time since no detailed analysis is required to construct it.

Advantages of Lean Business Plan

Until now, we discussed how to construct a lean business plan and the difference between a traditional and a lean business plan. However, in this section, we will look at what are the reasons that businesses have decided to adopt the lean business plan instead of the traditional one.

1. Quick Access to Market

As we discussed earlier, the lean business plan is famous for being less time-consuming as it doesn’t involve many details. Moreover, it requires less time to make a lean business plan than the traditional one.

All these factors help the business to introduce its product in the market early. Therefore, the lean business plan is extremely efficient and beneficial in highly competitive or time-sensitive markets.

2. Less Time and Money Spent

Since the lean business plan doesn’t contain much detail, no detailed analysis is done. Hence, less time and money is spent on constructing the lean business plan. For any business, especially for startups, this factor holds great significance.

Due to this trait of the lean business plan, even if the business crashes, not much time and money is wasted in constructing the business plan.

3. Attracts Investors

Every business is looking to catch investments to ensure the smooth running of the business. As a result, businesses that have lean business plans often attract investors compared to businesses with traditional business plans.

The reason why a lean business plan attracts more investors is that investors are busy people who have more money and less time. Therefore, any investor would read a one-page lean business plan but not be interested in reading a 50-page business plan.

Lean Business Plan: Final Word

At the end of this article, let’s summarise whatever we have discussed.

In this article, we gave you guys an insight into what a lean business plan is. We shed light on a traditional business plan and how a lean business plan differs from the traditional business plan.

Moreover, the components of the lean business plan were also highlighted. The lean business plan consists of business strategy, business tactics, schedule, forecasting, and budgeting.

Furthermore, to make you guys better understand what a lean business plan is, a template of the lean business plan was made available to the readers.

The differences between traditional and lean business plans are highlighted in this article. It was established that the lean business plan is more precise, less time-consuming, and less detailed.

In the end, some advantages of the lean business plan were discussed. For example, a lean business plan attracts more investors. Moreover, constructing a lean business plan is less costly and time-consuming. We hope that you’ll enjoy this article and gain awareness about the lean business plan.

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  • One page business plan [2024]

One Page Business Plan [2024]

  • How to Write a Business Plan (2023)

What is a one page business plan?

A one page business plan is a simple business planning tool that outlines operational business goals, strategies to achieve those goals, and financial projections.

one page lean business plan

Frequently Asked Questions on How to Write a Business Plan

How do i write a business plan.

To write a great business plan, you need to finalize your business idea, research your target market, determine whether you need a traditional business plan or a lean business plan, document your business, build a strategic marketing and sales plan, identity your target audience, and fill in the other relevant details. This definitive step-by-step guide on how to write a business plan will help you to get started with great insights, free templates for each stage of your business plan, and an actionable step-by-step process.

What are the three main purposes of a business plan?

A business plan identifies, describes, and analyzes a business opportunity by examining the technical, economic, and financial feasibility for a business. The business plan can help you anticipate important issues and possible challenges before you start your business . Studies show that entrepreneurs who take the time to write a business plan are 2.5 times more likely to follow through and get their business off the ground.

What is a simple business plan

A simple business plan is a short, written document that describes in detail how a business will achieve its goals. Typically, a simple business plan is no more than two to three pages in length.

How can I start my own business with no money?

Here’s a video with 5 tips on how you can bootstrap your new business , even if you don’t have money to start it right away.

How can I start my own small business?

The difference between a business owner succeeding or failing is the foundation you build when you first start your business. That’s because you should prepare thoroughly before starting a business. And you should know how to adapt to changing situations – as often happens when you run your own business. Here's a complete guide on how to start your business and grow it into a sustainable and profitable business.

Can I start a business with 500 dollars?

Most small businesses can be started and operated without a big team. Other than salaries, the biggest expense for many new businesses is the marketing budget. But there are ways you can stretch that budget. For example, here are 21 ways to market your small business on a shoestring budget .

What are the most successful small businesses?

According to the most recent analysis by Sageworks, accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping, and financial planning where the most profitable types of small businesses, returning an average profit margin of 18.4%. Real estate leasing, legal services, outpatient clinics, property managers, and appraisers, dental practices, offices of real estate agents and brokers, other health care practitioners, management, scientific and technical consulting services, and warehousing and storage rounded out the top 10 industries.

What is the best business for beginners?

There is not a single path to entrepreneurship. Some start a company in high school, or even earlier. Others start something in college and sometimes drop out of college to pursue their dream. And others start in their 40s or 50s. Each person has a unique path. Here are some great ideas for beginners: home cleaning, blogging, photography, freelancing, child-care services, and running errands. Each entrepreneur, whether a beginner or an experienced business owner, starts with an idea and then executes that idea.

But, coming up with a viable, profitable business idea can be tough. Here’s a guide to brainstorming and evaluating business ideas .

What are the easiest businesses to start?

There are many businesses that are relatively easy to start. These include event planning, gardening and lanscape services, painting, yoga or other exercise instruction, local tour guides, tutoring, and many others.

What is a good business to start in 2022?

With the global pandemic that started in 2020, people have been forced to get creative when starting businesses. Many look to start businesses that can be operated online. These include online courses and coaching, graphic design, web development, instagram influencer, affiliate marketing, and many others.

What business can I do from home?

There are many businesses you can run from your own home. These include affiliate businesses, selling on Ebay or Etsy, baking, freelance writing, freelancer design, freelance coding, helping businesses as a social media influencer, and many more.

One-page business plan: what is it and how to write one?

written example of a one page business plan

A business plan is a highly important document you’ll need throughout your business lifecycle. It provides valuable information about your business’s financial and strategic objectives.

A one-page business plan is similar to a traditional business plan, but is more focused and concise. 

In this guide, we’ll focus on understanding what a one-page business plan is and what it’s not. Reading this guide will help you create the document all on your own. 

You’ll also be able to figure out when you should use a one-page business plan, what information should be included in the document, and how it can benefit you. 

So, let’s get started. 

In this guide:

What is a one-page business plan?

What are the benefits of writing a one-page business plan, when should you use a one-page business plan, when should you not use a one-page business plan, one-page business plan template, one-page business plan example, what tool can you use to write a one-page business plan, 4 tips for writing a one-page business plan.

  • The bottom line

A one-page business plan is a document that summarizes your business key objectives and financials for the years to come. 

It usually includes key financial metrics such as revenues, growth, measures of profitability and cash flow generation. 

In addition, it also includes strategic information such as short and long-term goals, product or service details, market analysis, and key points of your go to market strategy. 

Most people often confuse a one-page business plan with terms like lean business plan or executive summary. So, let’s look at some differences between these terms to gain a better understanding.

What’s the difference between a one-page business plan and an executive summary?

There isn’t much difference between these two. However, you need to know they are separate documents. 

A one-page business plan is a standalone concise document that provides financial and strategic information about your business. 

On the other hand, an executive summary is a section that is included in a traditional comprehensive business plan. The aim of an executive summary is to grab the reader’s attention. You can consider it a warm-up for the rest of the document. 

What’s the difference between a one-page business plan and a lean business plan?

A lean business plan is another term for a one-page business plan. It was coined by industry professionals when the lean startup movement was gaining in popularity in the 2010s. 

The lean startup movement is centered around a methodology for product development based on rapid iteration using customer feedback. 

Following its rise in popularity, people tried to replicate the movement’s fame in other areas of business and started calling everything lean: lean business plan, lean marketing, lean canvas, etc. 

Need a convincing business plan?

The Business Plan Shop makes it easy to create a financial forecast to assess the potential profitability of your projects, and write a business plan that’ll wow investors.

The Business Plan Shop's Business Plan Software

A one-page business plan comes with a catch. By now, you’ve probably determined a one-page business plan can be thought of as a summary of a fully-fledged business plan. 

The catch here is that you can’t really create a summary without having done the work you would do to create the entire document. 

So even if the output fits on one page, you still need to think about the actions you plan to implement and ensure these actions have been allocated a realistic level of human and financial resources in your financial forecast 

In that sense, the benefits of a one-page business plan are somewhat limited. 

However, this doesn't mean such benefits should be overlooked at any cost. Some of the benefits of a one-page business plan include: 

Getting a quick and clear overview of the business

A one-page business page includes valuable financial and strategic details about the business. 

This means the document can be used to gain a quick and clear understanding of business operations, funding, and expected profitability. 

This can be a useful tool to have when you need to onboard a new strategic advisor or key hire. 

Streamlining communication of operations within the business 

One of the CEO’s main responsibilities is to communicate and align stakeholders on the vision and direction of the business. 

A one-page business plan can be used as an internal document to streamline strategic communication and make sure everyone is clear on the business’ objectives and direction of travel. 

Making effective strategic decisions about business operations

Business decisions are effective when they align with the company’s goals and objectives. 

It’s easy to arrive at chaos when decision-making is decentralized. For example, if your head of sales goes after the wrong type of customers without realizing it. 

Referring to the one-page business plan before making important decisions can be a good way to ensure the plan gets delivered.

The one-page business plan can be used as a sanity check before making important decisions to ensure actions align with what is in the plan.

So far, you’ve learned what a one-page business plan is, what it’s not, and how you can benefit from one. Now, let’s look at when you can or should use a one-page business plan. 

A one-page business plan is often similar to other documents, such as an executive summary. Due to this, most people tend to think that it can be used for similar purposes. However, that might not be true. 

Let’s have a look at when a one-page business plan can be used. 

As a teaser to the complete business plan 

A one-page business plan contains comprehensive and concise information about the business’s strategies, operations, and financials. 

Therefore, it can be used as a teaser sent to potential investors or business partners to gauge interest before sending them a fully fledged business plan. 

As an internal cheat sheet for the business

Your one-page business plan is not limited to external use. It contains information about the business operations and financial objectives. 

Therefore, it can be used as a cheat sheet to ensure that daily business activities are aligned with such goals. 

As an update to an existing business plan 

Business goals, resources, and funding tend to change regularly and updating them in a full-fledged business plan can be a time-consuming task. 

These changes can be made to a one-page business plan which then serves as an updated version of the original document.

You’ve probably determined that a one-page business plan is a flexible document with noteworthy benefits and can be used in multiple scenarios. However, you need to know that this document should not be used all the time. 

A one-page business plan contains key highlights of a business’s strategic or financial details. However, It should not be used in cases where the reader may need to understand the context behind the information mentioned in the document. 

Let’s have a look at some of these cases.

Securing finances for the business

The financial information included in a one-page business plan is just an overview of the strategic actions and estimations made in the original document. 

Someone looking to invest in your business (or lend funds) will need to gain a clear understanding of your business, its market and competition, and the rationale behind your go to market strategy, and the way you run the business operations. 

They will also need to understand how all of this translates into financial assumptions, and therefore, need more details than what is included in a one-page business plan. 

Therefore, a one-page business plan shouldn’t be used to secure finances. 

entrepreneur writing a one page business plan on his laptop

Assessing the viability of the business idea 

The potential viability of the business depends on various factors such as funding, resource allocation, and market environment. 

A one-page business plan contains an overview of each. However, detailed information about these factors are needed to see if a business can be successful. 

Therefore, a one-page business plan is not suitable in such cases either. 

A one-page business plan is divided into three sections. Each of these sections contains valuable information about the business. Such information can be used internally to make business decisions or externally, serving as a teaser to the complete plan. 

Let’s look at the one-page business plan template below for a better understanding of what information should be included in each of these sections: 

1. Business overview

This section aims to provide brief yet comprehensive details about the business. It helps the reader gain a better understanding of the business as a whole. 

In this section, you should include the following:

  • A presentation of what the company does. 
  • The legal structure of the company. 
  • Number of shareholders the company has.
  • The location(s) from which the business operates.
  • Brief details about the management team and operations. 

2. Market overview 

This section of the document provides information used to determine if there is a viable market for the company’s products and services. 

When writing this section, you should include the following: 

  • Customer and competitor overview.
  • Use case for the company’s products and services. 
  • Positioning details. 
  • Market size.
  • Summary of the go to market strategy.

3. Financial highlights 

This section includes information about your business's current and forecasted financials. 

Some key financial insights you can add in this section include:

  • Expected revenue growth.
  • Profitability of the business. 
  • Cashflow details.
  • Cash position and funding requirements

By now, you’ve learned what information should be included in each section of the one-page business plan. Now, let’s walk through an example showing what the document will generally look like once completed. 

In this example, we’ll create a one-page business plan for a restaurant. 

Business overview

Established in December 2015, Example Company Ltd is a restaurant that provides packaged and dine-in meals at affordable prices. 

Example Company Ltd is located at 1234 Some Street, Basingstoke. The restaurant is owned and operated by William C and Olivia C and has 7 employees.

William C is the majority shareholder, having 65% equity, he is in charge of its logistics and marketing operations. Olivia C, having 35% equity in the restaurant, oversees human resources and product quality. 

The restaurant also employs two chefs, two cashiers, one waiter/cleaner, and two delivery personnel. Both William and Olivia C have worked in the restaurant industry prior to this venture and have a combined experience of 16 years. 

The restaurant currently offers individual and combo meals to walk-in customers. The restaurant also gets frequent online orders and has been a proud partner of several local events. 

Market overview 

The restaurant was founded upon the realization that residents of Some Street and other nearby areas are searching for quality meals at affordable prices. 

The restaurant is being positioned as the all-in-one solution for quality food at affordable prices. 

Other restaurants in the locality are either cheap fast food that don’t provide the same quality of food, or upmarket independent restaurants which don’t provide meals at comparative prices.  

Following the success of the first establishment, the management team is now focussing on expanding the business into a chain of restaurants across the county. 

Our current objectives are to open three new restaurants over the next five years.

Financial highlights 

The restaurant is expected to generate revenues of £500,000 and an operating profit of £85,000 in the current financial year. 

Growth is expected to remain close to inflation in the coming years. The net operating cash flow during this time period is also expected to remain positive. 

Management is currently trying to secure financing of £450,000 to open the second franchise. Discussions with local investors and banking partners are at an early stage. 

Need inspiration for your business plan?

The Business Plan Shop has dozens of business plan templates that you can use to get a clear idea of what a complete business plan looks like.

The Business Plan Shop's Business Plan Templates

When it comes to creating a one-page business plan, options for the tools you can use are limited. 

There are basically two viable options: use Word or Excel or professional business planning software. 

Let’s look at some pros and cons of both these methods. 

Pros & cons of writing a one-page business plan with Word and Excel

Using Word and Excel to create a one-page business plan might work. 

Some of the pros of the approach include: 

  • It is a cheap solution you have access to. 
  • You’re probably familiar with the software controls. 

But that’s about it. Some of the cons of this approach include: 

  • You need to have the accounting skills to create a financial forecast from scratch. 
  • It’s time consuming even just to create a one-page business plan.
  • Lack of instructions and examples. 

Overall using Excel for business planning is an old-fashioned approach that takes time, requires expert-level capabilities, and is often error-prone. 

Using this approach means you must do all the work manually without access to instructions or examples. 

Benefits of creating a one-page business plan with an online tool

Creating a one-page business plan is much more simple and effective when you’re using our online business plan software :

  • You are guided through the writing process by detailed instructions and examples for each part of the plan 
  • You can be inspired by already written business plan templates 
  • You can easily make your financial forecast by letting the software take care of the financial calculations for you, without error
  • You get a professional document, formatted and ready to be sent to your bank
  • You can easily update your financial forecast and track it against actual financial performance to see where the business stands

If you're interested in using this type of solution, you can try our software for free by signing up here . 

Creating a one-page business plan might seem simple at first, but it’s something that may get tricky as you go. 

So, before you begin creating your one-page business plan, look at some tips that will certainly come in handy. 

Use bullets to improve the readability of the document

When you’re writing your one-page business plan, make sure to use bullet points. This’ll allow you to present information in an easily consumable manner. It will also help the reader understand your business and will improve readability.

Leave room for changes to be made at a later date

You must make sure not to cram your one-page business plan with too much information. As your business grows, you will need to add things to this document. So make sure you leave enough space for that.

Use an online software for your one-page business plan

Writing a one-page business plan can get a bit tricky, especially if it’s your first time. In such cases, it’s better to use an online software. 

Using The Business Plan Shop’s business plan software will allow you to have access to instructions, examples, and precise financial calculations. 

Leverage templates to create your one-page business plan 

If you’re creating the document for the first time, you might have trouble structuring it. In such cases, it's better to use an online template. We have dozens of business plan templates you can adapt to create an effective one-page business plan. 

The bottom line 

A one-page business plan can be a useful document for both internal and external uses. It provides valuable information about the business, market, customers, and company’s financial position. 

It can be used as a guide to allocate resources and make strategic decisions or as a prelude or update to the complete business plan. Using an online software is the most effective way to create a one-page business plan.

Also on The Business Plan Shop

  • What is a business plan and how to create one?
  • How to do a market analysis for a business plan

Know someone who needs a one-page business plan? Share this guide with them!

Guillaume Le Brouster

Founder & CEO at The Business Plan Shop Ltd

Guillaume Le Brouster is a seasoned entrepreneur and financier.

Guillaume has been an entrepreneur for more than a decade and has first-hand experience of starting, running, and growing a successful business.

Prior to being a business owner, Guillaume worked in investment banking and private equity, where he spent most of his time creating complex financial forecasts, writing business plans, and analysing financial statements to make financing and investment decisions.

Guillaume holds a Master's Degree in Finance from ESCP Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management from Paris Dauphine University.

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The Trump fraud trial verdict goes well beyond ordering the ex-president to pay $355 million. Here's what the ruling means.

  • Trump, his eldest sons, and the Trump Organization must repay $364 million from a decade of fraud.
  • Friday's verdict also bars Trump from running a New York business for three years.
  • Judge Arthur Engoron wrote that Trump's frauds "leap off the page and shock the conscience."

Insider Today

In a scathing verdict that punishes a decade of deceit, the judge in Donald Trump's New York civil-fraud case on Friday slammed the GOP frontrunner, his two eldest sons, and his company with a nearly $364 million cash penalty.

"The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience," the verdict by the New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron , who has presided over the case for more than three years, said.

While Trump is personally on the hook for almost $355 million of that penalty, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump must pay $4 million each, and the former Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg must pay $1 million.

But the verdict hits way beyond just Trump's wallet. It targets his real-estate and golf-resort empire, the Trump Organization, in two ways that Trump has pushed against for years.

First, the verdict wrests control of the company further from the former president and his two eldest sons, leaving major company decisions to a yet-named "independent director of compliance" who'll operate under Trump's court-appointed monitor's continuing watch .

Second, it sets a three-year ban on Trump running the Trump Organization or any other business in the city and state where he made his name — and where he first seized a national spotlight as a brash real-estate mogul. For Trump, it's the commercial equivalent of being run out of town on a rail.

Significantly — and this is a big silver lining for Trump — the verdict reverses the most unfriendly elements of the judge's pre-trial " corporate death penalty " judgment from September.

He no longer has to surrender all of the Trump Organization's New York operating licenses, and the verdict does not mention the forced sale of any Trump properties.

The verdict caps a five-year effort by the office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James .

On Friday afternoon, James issued a statement celebrating the verdict.

She said that Trump has engaged in fraud for years to enrich his own family and company.

Now, he and his codefendants will have to pay more than $450 million, including interest.

"While he may have authored the 'Art of the Deal,' our case revealed that his business was based on the art of the steal," she said.

Trump is expected to immediately appeal, likely putting these and other punishments from the 92-page verdict on ice well past the November election.

But in the coming weeks, Trump will still have to spend millions on a surety bond — a bond guaranteeing performance of a contract or obligation — to guarantee he can pay whatever dollar figure, plus interest, an appellate court ultimately upholds.

Interest also applies to the penalties, potentially adding millions more to his ultimate verdict price tag.

"When confronted at trial with the statements, defendants' fact and expert witnesses simply denied reality, and defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences," Engoron wrote Friday.

The verdict holds Trump civilly liable, based on Engoron's three-month Manhattan bench trial, for leading a conspiracy to commit business and insurance fraud with help from his two eldest sons and a pair of long-standing Trump Organization executives.

"Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological," Engoron wrote.

"They are accused only of inflating asset values to make more money," the verdict said.

"The documents prove this over and over again. This is a venial sin, not a mortal sin," he added. "Defendants did not commit murder or arson. They did not rob a bank at gunpoint. Donald Trump is not Bernard Madoff. Yet, defendants are incapable of admitting the error of their ways."

In a statement, a Trump Organization spokesperson decried the verdict as a "gross miscarriage of justice."

"Every member of the New York business community, no matter the industry, should be gravely concerned with this gross overreach and brazen attempt by the Attorney General to exert limitless power where no private or public harm has been established," the spokesperson said in the statement. "If allowed to stand, this ruling will only further expedite the continuing exodus of companies from New York."

Read Friday's verdict here .

"Today, justice has been served. This is a tremendous victory for this state, this nation, and for everyone who believes that we all must play by the same rules — even former presidents," James said in her statement Friday. 

" When powerful people cheat to get better loans, it comes at the expense of honest and hardworking people," James continued. "Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage to buy a home, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people .

Some lesser penalties

The verdict also bans Trump and the Trump Organization from borrowing from New York banks or purchasing real estate in the state for three years. James had asked for a five-year ban on such buying and borrowing in her lawsuit.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are banned from running a New York business for two years. James had asked for five-year bans for the brothers.

And it bans the two former executives, the ex-CFO Weisselberg and the former Trump Organization controller Jeff McConney, from controlling another New York company's finances.

one page lean business plan

Watch: Trump fights back as fraud trial begins

one page lean business plan

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  1. One page business plan

    Get A Professional Business Plan W/ Our Easy Builder. Erase Errors, Save & Print In Mins! Business Planning Made Easy. Create A Winning Business Plan In Half The Time - Start Now!

  2. Free One-Page Business Plan Templates

    The one-page plan provides space to list the essential information about your strategy, including the service you offer, the problem you are solving for customers, your mission and vision statements, target audience, staffing requirements, key objectives, and much more.

  3. Lean Business Plan Template & How-To Guide

    The lean startup movement has encouraged entrepreneurs to shorten their plans down from hundreds of pages to a one-page business plan or less - essentially eliminating the need for small businesses to create traditional plans at all.

  4. A Guide to the Lean Business Plan (With Template and Example)

    Lean business plans allow you to develop the core aspects of your business strategy on one page. It allows you to refine what you want to do, who you're doing it for and what competition you may face.

  5. Fundamentals of Lean Planning Explained

    Lean planning Business planning Types of business plans Fundamentals of Lean Planning Explained Noah Parsons 12 min. read Updated November 27, 2023 Download Now: Free 1-Page Business Plan Template Let's face facts: Writing a traditional business plan is a hassle. A traditional business plan takes too long to write.

  6. Lean Canvas

    Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions. It is adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and optimized for Lean Startups. It replaces elaborate business plans with a single page business model. Fast. Compared to writing a business plan which ...

  7. Free Lean Business Plan Template

    Download this template to quickly create a Lean Business Plan for your business and document your business model on a single page. Developed as an alternative to the Business Model Canvas, our Lean Business Plan Template makes it easy to sketch out a one-page business plan and quickly test out new ideas.

  8. LEANSTACK Is Lean Canvas

    Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumptions using 9 basic building blocks. It is adapted from Alex Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas and optimized for the Lean Startup methodology with a big emphasis on finding customer problems worth solving.

  9. Your guide to the Lean Business Model Canvas

    A lean business model canvas is a one-page business plan that helps you break down your product or business model, question and test your assumptions, and determine if your idea actually has legs. ... lean business plan, or even simply a lean canvas. This tool was created by Ash Maurya and is an adaptation of the original business model canvas ...

  10. Lean Business Plan: How to Write Guide with Templates

    PandaDoc can help you do more with your business plan by offering advanced layout, formatting, and collaboration tools. Grab a free business plan template from the template library and see the PandaDoc editor in action by signing up for a free 14-day trial. Originally published Oct 17, 2017, updated Jun 21, 2022.

  11. How To Create a Lean Business Plan (2024)

    List your company's key points: name, business model, product/service, USP. Identify the target market and financial highlights. Use bullet points to organize these details in a concise manner. Write a draft of your executive summary, ensuring it's compelling and brief.

  12. Free One-Page Business Plan Template Download

    Build your one-page business plan with LivePlan. Work online. Collaborate with your team on your plan. Simple, but powerful financial forecasting tools. Performance tracking. And much more! Learn more about LivePlan. Use a simple business plan format that you can fit on a single page. Download a free lean business plan template to finish your ...

  13. Lean Canvas: How To Create a Business Plan that People Will Actually

    A one-page business plan inspired by Eric Ries's Lean Start-Up methodology and specifically designed for emerging entrepreneurs: The Lean Canvas. The Lean Canvas is a living framework that allows you to quickly capture your idea or concept, thoroughly validate it, and then continuously share, improve, and most importantly move on it.

  14. How to Write a One-Page Business Plan [2024 Guide]

    The one-page business plan is a simplified version of traditional operational plans that focuses on the core aspects of your business. While it may be a shorter business plan, it still follows the structure of a standard business plan and serves as a beefed-up pitch document.

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  16. How To Compile A Lean Canvas, The Business Plan In One Page

    How To Compile A Lean Canvas, The Business Plan In One Page | Studio Zao Have a business idea? Take the first step of your Lean entrepreneurship journey by compiling a Lean Canvas. To compile a Lean Canvas is the first thing to do to evaluate a business idea and to identify the riskiest assumptions to be tested.

  17. What's a lean business plan. Simpler and easier than you think

    What's a Lean Business Plan? 2 Replies Lean business planning starts with a lean business plan. The lean plan contains four essentials every business needs, and nothing else. It's a streamlined core plan for running the business, not a document or detailed plan, full of descriptions, to be presented to investors or lenders.

  18. Lean Business Planning: The Modern, Simple & Powerful approach

    A lean business plan is essentially a one-page business plan for companies to kickstart their businesses. Contrary to traditional business plans which are often bulky and complex documents, a lean business plan is a simple, reader-friendly, and easy-to-make document. It is a streamlined core plan that acts as a basis for a more elaborate one.

  19. Write your business plan

    Executive summary Briefly tell your reader what your company is and why it will be successful. Include your mission statement, your product or service, and basic information about your company's leadership team, employees, and location. You should also include financial information and high-level growth plans if you plan to ask for financing.

  20. One Page Lean Business Plan

    Preparing a one-page lean business plan By Bplans Business plan template is courtesy of Bplans. Bplans is owned and operated by Pal Alto Software, as a free resource to help entrepreneurs start and run better businesses.

  21. Write a Lean Business Plan with this Template

    The traditional business plan consists of nearly 45-50 pages or more, whereas the lean business plan fits on one page. 2. Detail Presented. The traditional and lean business plans cover a business plan's main aspects. However, they differ when it comes to the details which are present in the business plan. The traditional business plan is ...

  22. One Page Business Plan [2024]

    One Page Business Plan [2024] Most entrepreneurs and business owners don't need a 50 or 100 page business plan. A shorter plan will do. In fact, there are numerous one page business plan templates and frameworks that can get you started. This guide and the free resources below can help you write your one page business plan (or a traditional ...

  23. One-page business plan: what is it and how to write one?

    The bottom line What is a one-page business plan? A one-page business plan is a document that summarizes your business key objectives and financials for the years to come. It usually includes key financial metrics such as revenues, growth, measures of profitability and cash flow generation.

  24. Business Plan: What It Is + How to Write One

    The traditional business plan is a long document that explores each component in depth. You can build a traditional business plan to secure funding from lenders or investors. The lean start-up business plan focuses on the key elements of a business's development and is shorter than the traditional format.

  25. Some lesser penalties

    In a scathing verdict that punishes a decade of deceit, the judge in Donald Trump's New York civil-fraud case on Friday slammed the GOP frontrunner, his two eldest sons, and his company with a ...