A business plan could fail for one of many reasons ranging from lack of information such as not conducting or including any primary research, the executive summary is unclear, or being heavily dependent on intellectual property as the only means to retain customers. Also a business plan should not be too long (over 25 pages) and must be able to keep the investors interested. Most importantly, the business plan should show that you have a full understanding of the market you are about to enter. Your market analysis section of the business plan must show research based on primary and secondary sources. In a article published by John Boitnott, “Brutal Lessons From 4 Failed Startups”, he gives a list of companies that had great potential for profit, but ended up failing. One of those companies were “Pay By Touch” whose goal was accomplish exactly as the name stated and to me that seemed like a really great idea. Unfortunately the founder did not conduct a thorough market investigation. Pay by touch was something that people could live without due to the fact that they were already used to credit/debit cards. There was no need for pay by touch and the founder ended up creating a “solution to a non-existent problem”. Without proper planning and information on the target market, your business plan will surely fail before ever taking off.
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235028
I agree with you that without a focus on your target market, your business tends to fail.
But don’t you think the way you “market” the product or service counts more and more?
For example, you have a company like Starbucks, that sells coffee. Something that restaurants and cafés were already providing and that people mostly drank at home when the business was in its beginning stage.
Do you think investors, when reading the business plan of the company at the beginning, jumped right off in? Look at how successful the company is today.
I agree the importance you give to the market analysis, I think its one of the most relevant issues from research at the plan, i didn´t mention it at my post but is good to highlight it.
I like how you tightly connect previous chapters’ contents to this question. And you made some good points. Regarding the length, I think your focus on keeping the investors interested is very correct, but you can check the database that offers sample business plan and think again about the length constrain.