Bankers, investors, grant committees, and experienced advisors read business plans differently than founders write them. Founders write to showcase the idea. Readers scan for the five questions that decide everything — and most plans, including beautifully formatted forty-page ones, leave at least two unanswered. Here they are, in the order a sceptical reader asks them.
1. Who exactly pays, and what do they do today?
Not a market. A person. "SMEs in the hospitality sector" answers nothing; "the owner-operator of a 30-seat restaurant who currently tracks stock in a spreadsheet on Sunday nights" answers everything, because it implies the pain, the alternative, and the sales conversation.
The second half of the question is the part founders skip: what do they do today? Every real problem already has a solution in place — a spreadsheet, an employee, a workaround, or deliberate neglect. Your plan must name it, because that incumbent behaviour, not your listed competitors, is what you're actually displacing. A plan that claims "no competition" tells the reader you haven't looked.
2. Why does the money work — per unit?
Before any reader believes your year-three revenue, they want one unit to make sense: one customer, one order, one job. What does it cost to win them, what margin do they generate, how long until they've paid back their acquisition cost?
A plan that says "we'll reach €500k revenue in year two" invites scepticism. A plan that says "each customer costs ~€150 to acquire, generates €21/month in margin, and pays back in 7 months — here's how that compounds" invites questions, which is what you want. Readers trust founders who reason from the unit up, because it's the founders reasoning from the headline down who run out of cash.
3. Why you, and why now?
Two separate questions sharing a section. Why you: what do you know, who do you know, or what have you done that makes you the credible builder of this — eleven years in the industry, a technical skill, an audience, a channel? It doesn't need to be spectacular; it needs to be specific.
Why now: what changed? A regulation, a technology, a behaviour shift, a gap a competitor's exit just opened. If nothing changed, the reader's silent question is "why hasn't someone already done this?" — and "nobody thought of it" is almost never the right answer.
4. What happens in the first 90 days?
The long-term vision earns the meeting; the short-term plan earns the money. Readers look for the founder who knows what Monday looks like: the first ten customer conversations, the pilot pricing, the milestone that triggers the next spend, the criteria for the go/no-go decision.
Vague plans say "we will execute a multi-channel marketing strategy." Credible plans say "I will contact 30 local cafés with this script, targeting 5 paid pilots at €200." The second founder might fail — but the reader can see how they'll find out fast, and fundability is mostly about how quickly you convert money into learning.
5. What kills this — and what's your answer?
The weakest section of most plans is the risk section, usually because it's written as a formality: three generic risks, three reassurances. Experienced readers invert it. They want evidence you've run the premortem honestly: if this venture is dead in 18 months, what was the most likely cause?
Naming the real risks — the channel that might not convert, the seasonality, the single point of failure — doesn't weaken a plan. It signals the founder who'll see trouble coming. Pair each named risk with either a mitigation or an explicit kill criterion ("if fewer than 4 of 10 pilots convert, we stop"). Kill criteria are oddly persuasive: they tell the reader your optimism has limits, which makes the rest of your optimism believable.
The test before you send it
Read your plan as the sceptic: can you find, within two minutes each, who pays, why a unit makes money, why you, what happens in 90 days, and what kills it? If yes, the plan will survive contact with serious readers — whatever its length, format, or font. If no, no executive summary polish will save it. Answer the five questions first; decorate later.