Concept
The one-page business plan
The one-page business plan is a plan short enough to see whole. Chris Guillebeau's version in The $100 Startup comes down to five questions: what you sell, who buys it, what it costs them, how they find out about it, and how you get paid. Its job is to show which line is still blank.
Guillebeau's template has a few more prompts, but these five carry most of the weight. Rework's authors would add that any plan written before there is a customer is a guess, which is why a page is enough. The one page is not for a bank or an investor; it is a tool for the owner. Filling it in reveals the gap: most first-time owners can write the first line and the third and stare at the fourth, how customers find out, which is where the next week's work is. The page is rewritten as the business learns, and once customers arrive, its lines are filled in with real numbers instead of guesses.
A real-life example
A translator's five lines: legal documents under twenty pages in 48 hours; small law firms and exporters in Istanbul; a fixed fee per document; found through ten former clients and their referrals; paid in advance by transfer. The fourth line took a week to fill in; the others took an hour.
How to use it
- 1Write the five lines in one sitting; leave blank what you do not know.
- 2The blank line is this week's work.
- 3Rewrite the page whenever a customer teaches you something.