Dec 1, 2008
Today we handed in our application for stic.ca, a business plan competition. We of course wrote about Heddge.com and its overall greatness :P. For the first stage of the competition business plans are restricted to 3 pages, so they are more like executive summaries + brief parts about market/competition, technology and competitive advantages.
Writing the initial plan was actually very difficult at all, we wrote the 3 pages in a couple hours. Our next step was to show it to people, especially ones who did not know anything about finance, to get their thoughts. They had no idea what the idea was, uh oh. And they said they didn’t feel it was a great idea (ie. we didn’t explain the problem well enough), so back to the editing board we went.
Heddge.com is a fairly complex idea for those who do not have experience/knowledge in the tech and/or finance industries. So to write something that explains our idea in a such a simple way that anyone could understand it was difficult. Your idea has to be explained in the first hundred words, which was very hard to do. We eventually managed to not only educate the reader about industry basics but also highlight the problem and how were solving it (to be fair we went over 100 words, but we kept it as short as we could).
I recall reading that writing a business plan is good because it makes sure all team members are on the same page and understand the vision, blah blah blah etc. I did not not get this experience at all, but what we did get was well worth it. Instead I learned how to explain the idea in the simplest terms so that it could be explained to anyone and could be explained quickly and easily. I had always feared doing an elevator pitch before with Heddge, because I had no idea how to fit everything into 30 seconds. The business plan forced us to think in absolute simplest terms and then project our idea with those terms. I think we ended up doing a good job and I personally cannot wait to get started on the next phase of the competition.
P.S. I also remembered how helpful it is to have other people help you out and edit things. More eyes make catching errors a lot easier. So thanks to everyone who help out, you rock!
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