Tristan Pollock

Bizplan - Modern business planning for startups

Bizplan provides a step-by-step business builder to break down major projects into manageable pieces to help you plan your pitch, set goals, and track your progress from a single interface.

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Alex Chudik
Hey, thanks for posting us! I'm on the Marketing team for Bizplan and Startups.co and am really excited to share our platform with this community. Let me know if you have any questions, and for 50% off your first month, you can use the code BP50. Cheers!
Kevin Leneway
@alexchudik Wow, this looks fantastic. I didn't get a chance to try the product, but from a marketing perspective you guys nailed it. Great domain name, beautiful home page, and clear description of the product. Congrats to you and your team, really nicely done.
Margaret McGraw
@alexchudik darn, I didn't see the 50% off code before I signed up today, but I'll use it for next month. So far I'm impressed and it's making my job of putting together a pitch for a new venture easier! Thanks
Kate Yanov
@alexchudik I just saw a paid FB ad mentioning the lifetime subscription. How do we still get this deal?
Eugene Kruglov
Is that just Knowlium but with different landing page? All screenshots look very much the same.
Ted
@tahorg indeed, checked their page, very much the same, the graphs, the "Revenue Forecaster" is completely the same
Chris Davis
@tahorg White-labeled maybe?
Eugene Kruglov
@imchrisdavis I honestly don't know. But the fact pricing is absolutely identical made me thought they are same products.
Wil Schroter
@tahorg @imchrisdavis We worked with the Knowlium team on this because we loved the Knowlium product. Knowlium, however, is still its own product/company/brand.
Chris Davis
@wilschroter Thanks for chiming in, Wil. I can dig it - it's certainly a great addition to your ecosystem.
Rahul Ramchand
That beautiful feeling when you find the perfect product you weren't looking for. Bless you, sir.
Rahul Ramchand
No trial period? :(
Wil Schroter
@alexchudik @rahulr047 @startups ^^ what Alex said - we're happy to help you out.
Wil Schroter
Hey folks if you want to dig in play around just shoot me an email - wil@startups.co - and I'll be happy to set you up with an account!
Wil Schroter
@nellieliina @startups Would be great to catch up anyway Nelli
KerryBodle
@wilschroter sounds great. I think a sandbox area would be great. At least enough to discover it's value.
Klajdi Turlla
@wilschroter @startups That's awesome. Would love to give this a try for developing business plans for products as well
Alex Gash
@wilschroter This is an amazing idea!!!! I am in the process of writing a business plan at the moment. All that currently exists are templates and there is nothing on the market that can actually help with writing the BizPlan. Would be great to try it out, email has been sent.
Tristan Pollock
Fantastic modular approach to business planning. My favorite feature is the automatic financial projections ;)
Shalin TJ
@wilschroter Would love to know why you decided upon monthly pricing? Very often, business plans are required initially and then for months you don't look at them.. Compare that with something like Business Model Canvas or may be Javelin Board.. where may be the need is relatively more frequent for the first couple of months of a startup.
Wil Schroter
@shalinjain27 This is a great question. We're not set on monthly pricing, we just started there. We also would like to explore how we can offer the product for free but we have to get a little more data on how folks are using it before we do that. Given the mission of Startups.co to help founders start companies, we are looking for different ways to minimize the barrier to entry to getting started. So we're thinking critically about how pricing works.
KerryBodle
@wilschroter you could offer a one time free session that allows the customer to complete a biz plan. Then maybe charge per revision. I know my biz plan changed quite a bit as the model played out. Once the initial work is completed, it would be an easy sell for me.
Collin Davis
@wilschroter free trial would get you through core steps then paid plan could unlock additional features (e.g. Printing). Monthly or Unlimited (one-time) pricing could be beneficial? Great product! Can't wait to try it.
Wil Schroter
@lumbadoja we'd really like to figure out how to make the product as free as possible.
Brandon Boynton

I was initially very excited to use Bizplan. As a founder, I would much rather be working on tasks that directly impact the success of the business, not accounting. However, when I started using this platform, it seems to be very poorly designed. It's very buggy.

The very first page broke and I had to manually change an HTTP request to get by. Finally it asked me to upgrade to premium, even though I was already a premium user. I started to enter some financial data and it kept failing to save, or closing out on me.

Beyond the bugs, the design of the platform is sub-par. It's not overly easy to navigate and could certainly be described as confusing.

All-in-all, I would not recommend BizPlan to my greatest competitor/enemy. Avoid this product at all costs.

Pros:

It looks nice

Cons:

Very buggy and not a lot of functionality

Steve Habegger

This tool has been critical in us organizing our thoughts and business plan - helps us rethink and convey our plan.

Pros:

easy, framework for planning, organized

Cons:

better history,editng and commenting needed

Lawrence McCord

BP was quick to offer additional support when we ran into some issues. I was impressed with how they wanted 100% customer satisfaction. Two thumbs up.

Pros:

It covers everything you need to write your BP - BONUS: It's fantastic for startups of all kinds.

Cons:

Adding new users was a bit tricky, but support was there and finally helped us get it figured out.

Andrew McAvinchey

This product saved my life on more than one occasion

Pros:

Good outlines to follow to create a plan super fast, intuitive interface for financials, nice export and branding functions

Cons:

PDF exports are difficult to edit= bad pagination breaks can’t be fixed and there is no way to review the design and layout of pages

Chris Irakoze

Its a great helpful tool for creating a business plan template. The financial sections portion is very useful

Pros:

financial projections.

Cons:

formatting. sometimes is a bit off

Roberto Cornejo Reindl

I honestly think that it is well worth it and for startups should be more than enough

Pros:

I has a lot of functionalities like selling and purchasing on credit and Inventory. The design and graphics look awesome.

Cons:

It acts funny sometimes and you cannot separate the sales terms by each client.

Anton Kotenko

nice product, especially for those who dont like or have no experience to run complicated excel ss. can run pretty much every major business forecast which is necessary. track plan\fact, and "what if". a bit raw, but is really useful if you would like quickly check your assumption or about to make some capital investment etc.

Pros:

good product which lets you forecast your activity in right order, without using sophisticated excel ss

Cons:

internal navigation in terms of moving articles around should be improved

Jason Aarstad

I would give it a 9 on ease of use. But probably more like a 5 or 6 on consistency/glitchiness. I had quite a few small issues making certain features work....and then they would work great the next day.

As long as the tools functioned as intended, I really like the software. I was able to work smoothly with it, and more importantly its laid out in a way that is logical in terms of order of thought/planning of a business plan. I.e. I did not feel like my thought process was hindered by the workflow. It was good for ideation in how we are planning to do things with our new Roastery.

There is some good info on each feature in the software, but you need to at least be fairly familiar with the financial layout of your business in order to build this out. Great way for a non finance person to build out a pretty fully featured plan without missing too many things.

I am liking the software in general. Looking forward to playing with it more.

I'd recommend it for the entry level price for sure.

Pros:

Simple and Fast ideation of a fairly comprehensive business plan. Customer Service is stellar. Their chat feature is an instant real person.

Cons:

Some bugs being worked out, but they're working on it.

Gus Navarro
Interesting idea. Shame there is no trial period :(
P00pe

One of the best and most flexible tools out there to write biz plans, especially for novices. The tool has also been continually improved. Initially I experienced reliability issues around saving plans as you're writing but those problems seem to have been fixed.

Pros:

Ease of use, streamlines the process of writing business plans, makes it easy to output to PDF, includes relevant sections for financials

Cons:

Make it easier to consume data from more platforms; tool is flexible enough to get around it

Morgan Paige

I'd rate the product at an 8 thus far; nice and simple to populate.

Pros:

Appreciate the comments at the beginning of each section to help set the focus.

Cons:

We had trouble (and it was likely user error) getting the document over to a potential investor.

Thomas Secher

We have used Bizplan since 2016 for several businesses and its we have enjoyed to have all data about our business plans on one handy platform and the reports generated have been appreciated by stakeholders. Please do understand that you need to present different information to different stakeholders though - such functionality would be highly appreciated in future releases.

Pros:

Super comfortable to have all details at one place where all our users can work

Cons:

Still no business plan templates and a bit dated way of doing business planing

Anshal Anand
Looks interesting, also the modular approach and completion tracking with great visuals are amazing. I wish there was a trial to check it out though.
Bram Kanstein (@bramk)
Awesome, as always, from @wilschroter & co!
Wil Schroter
@bramk Thanks man!