--- title: Business Planning description: Business planning is the process of defining a company's goals, strategies, and operational steps. Learners will understand how to write a comprehensive business plan, conduct market research, and project financial performance for investors. category: business-entrepreneurship subcategory: entrepreneurship difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/business-planning --- # Business Planning Business planning is the process of defining a company's goals, strategies, and operational steps. Learners will understand how to write a comprehensive business plan, conduct market research, and project financial performance for investors. ## Available Resources 1 Videos • 1 Books • 2 Courses • 4 Websites ## Videos ### 1. Lecture 1 - How to Start a Startup (Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz) Opening lecture of Stanford's CS183B course, in which Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz cover why to start a company, choosing an idea and market, building a product people want, and assembling an early team. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://youtube.com/watch?v=CBYhVcO4WgI **Tags:** startups, y-combinator, founders, entrepreneurship, leadership ## Courses ### 1. How to Build a Startup **Author:** Steve Blank Free Udacity course taught by Steve Blank on customer development. Covers the business model canvas, customer segments, value propositions, channels, and revenue models. Learners can turn a startup idea into testable hypotheses and validate them through customer interviews before scaling. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245 **Tags:** customer-development, lean-startup, business-model-canvas, customer-discovery, startups ### 2. Entrepreneurship: Building a Business Plan University of Maryland course on applying the Business Model Canvas inside an established company. Across four modules you scope a corporate opportunity, run customer discovery interviews, and produce a validated canvas covering value, channels, and cost structure. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.coursera.org/learn/corporate-entrepreneurs-business-model **Tags:** courses, business-entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship ## Websites ### 1. SBA.gov The Small Business Administration's guide to writing a business plan, contrasting traditional and lean startup formats with a worked example. Covers each required section, from market analysis to financial projections, and what lenders expect to see. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan **Tags:** business-plan, small-business, startup, sba, financial-projections ### 2. SCORE.org A fill-in-the-blank business plan template from SCORE, the nonprofit SBA partner that provides free mentoring. Working through it produces a complete startup plan covering market analysis, operations, management, and multi-year financial projections. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.score.org/resource/template/business-plan-template-startup-business **Tags:** business-plan, template, startup, small-business, mentoring ### 3. strategyzer.com Strategyzer provides tools and training for designing, testing, and scaling business models, featuring the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas along with templates, case studies, and practical guides. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://strategyzer.com **Tags:** websites, business-entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship ### 4. leanstartup.co Lean Startup Co. is the official hub for the Lean Startup methodology, providing guidance on validated learning, rapid experiments, and customer development. The site offers articles, case studies, books, training programs, and events to help entrepreneurs and teams apply lean principles to build successful products and businesses. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://leanstartup.co **Tags:** websites, business-entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship ## Books ### 1. Business Model Generation **Author:** Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur The book that introduced the Business Model Canvas, a nine-block map of how a company creates and captures value. Visual, worksheet-heavy format walks through patterns, design techniques, and strategy for reinventing a business model. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470876417?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, business-entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/business-planning