Startup business plan template you can write before day one
The same eleven chapters every plan needs, plus what to put in the financials and the team section when you have nothing to report yet. No email required.
- How to forecast when you have no sales history
- What goes in the team section with no track record behind it
- Word, Google Docs or PDF, whichever you work in
Word
Google DocsThirty-one pages: the eleven chapters, a prompt under every heading, and financial tables running Year 1 to Year 3. The guidance assumes you are forecasting from assumptions rather than from accounts.
Five things to have in front of you
First plans rarely stall on the writing. They stall because every third paragraph needs a number you have not looked up yet. Collect these first and the draft goes quickly.
Your own numbers
What you intend to charge, what each sale costs you to deliver, and what you need to earn personally each month. Three figures, and the whole financial plan is built on them.
Three competitors, properly looked at
Names, prices, what customers praise them for and what the reviews complain about. Thirty minutes of actually reading beats any amount of describing the market in general terms.
Real quotes, not estimates
Rent, equipment, insurance, your main supplier. A plan built on guessed costs falls apart the first time someone checks one of them, and lenders do check.
Whatever proof you already have
A signed lease, pre-orders, a waitlist, a pilot customer, a finished prototype. These go in the plan as evidence, and they are worth more than any projection.
A deadline you did not choose
A lender's cut-off, a lease decision, a launch date. Plans written without one tend to stay at eighty percent finished for months.
Five things a startup plan has to do differently
The structure is the same as any business plan. What changes is what goes in it when you have no trading history to point at.
Your projections are assumptions, so show them
An established business forecasts from last year's numbers. You do not have last year. Write down what you are assuming (price, units sold per month, how fast that grows) and put those figures where a lender can see them. A reviewer who disagrees with your assumption can still follow your arithmetic. One who cannot find it assumes you guessed.
Your team is the track record
With no revenue history, the question becomes whether you specifically can do this. Say what each founder has actually done before and why it is relevant. Six years running someone else's kitchen counts for more here than any projection on the page.
Milestones replace trading history
Instead of past performance, show what you have already done: a signed lease, a supplier quote, a waitlist, fifty pre-orders, a finished prototype. Evidence that you are further along than an idea is worth more than another chart.
The funding ask has to be specific
How much, what it buys, and when you need it. A breakdown of equipment, deposits, stock and the months of runway it covers beats a single round number every time.
Say how you know anyone wants this
Survey results, interviews, a competitor doing well in the next town, a pilot that sold out. Market size alone is not evidence of demand for your version of it.
Everything else follows the standard eleven chapters. See what is in the full template.
No numbers to start from? Upmetrics builds the forecast with you.
Five startup costs to get into the plan
The financial section is where most first plans are weakest, usually because a cost that felt obvious never got written down. Work through these five before you forecast anything.
Registration, licences and insurance
Company formation, any trade licence your activity needs, public liability cover, and professional indemnity if you advise anyone. Small individually, and almost always underestimated in total.
Premises
The deposit plus the first few months of rent, business rates, a fit-out budget, and utilities connected before you open. Landlords usually want several months up front from a business with no trading history.
Equipment and software
Everything you cannot operate without on day one. Split it into what you buy outright and what you lease, because the two land very differently in cash flow.
Opening stock or materials
Enough to trade properly rather than the minimum order. Running out in week two costs more than the extra stock would have.
Working capital
Money to cover the gap between paying suppliers and being paid by customers, plus your own living costs until the business can pay you.
This is the one most first plans leave out, and it is usually what causes a profitable business to run out of money.
Want the longer read on the numbers side? How to write the financial section of a startup business plan goes further than this page has room for.
Not quite the right one?
Same template underneath. What changes is the guidance around it, and which sections do the work.
- Small business plan templateAlready trading, writing from your own accounts rather than guesses.
- Simple business plan templateSix chapters instead of eleven, and which four you can safely cut.
- One page business plan templateThe whole business on a single sheet, with a worked example.
- 5 year business plan templateYear one monthly, years two to five annual, for a longer horizon.
- Nonprofit business plan templatePrograms, funding mix, governance and the impact section funders score.
Or go back to the full business plan template.
Your first plan should not be your hardest document
Answer the prompts, and the projections, cash flow and balance sheet build themselves as you go.
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