4 Word Business Plan Slide

I recently came across a start-up in the ‘video communication’ space. In twelve months just past, going from idea through prototype, beta release and $100 a year subscription launch whilst securing $100m funding and a possible $400m valuation.

It helps that the founder could text a major Californian VC for a demo having made money for them before, natch.

Still, the output can look slick. With worthy world-changing goals, if a little San Fran. Nowadays I tend towards the micro rather than macro ends of such scale. Of the many pr pieces around just now though, one item that caught my Sales ear was a pitch slide. Part of the investor deck used.

The 4-word business plan.

It showed a four-year business plan using just four words. Each one representing the nascent firm’s focus for that particular year. Here’s what was described;

Yr1 Start
Yr2 Product
Yr3 Reach (aka Scale)
Yr4 Profit

Elaboration flows from each in turn.

Intriguingly, if you do swap in the alt year-three label, the initials spell SPSP. There might well be something in that.

As well as a readily usable format for our own ‘business plan’ selling, there feels like a decent placing onto many a sales initiative.

Think about what happens when you begin work on a virgin territory or selling a brand new product.

You must ‘start’ somewhere.

Finding those with the problem that you can uniquely resolve.

Then you must ensure the ‘product’ fits. And works its wonders.

Once proven, you need to ‘scale’ this up. So you can make quota.

Before being able to make the ‘profit’ which not only exceeds this target, but also in a manner that becomes sustainable and repeatable into the next accounting periods.