If you’re an entrepreneur who is looking to get funding for your startup, you’ve gotta have a business plan. In addition to helping you to organize your thoughts and make plans for the future, a business plan is often a requirement for getting a business loan from a bank (and helpful if you’re looking for loans from your friends and family as well.) That being said, plenty of people don’t have the time, inclination, or skill to try and write up a biz plan from scratch. If you’re looking for biz planning help, an app called 5Min Business Plan wants to help you out.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

5Min Business Plan is an iPhone app that lets you build a business plan quickly on your mobile device, with a minimal amount of typing.

Pros

• Share plans on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter
• App Store page boasts that 5Min Business Plan lets you do “90% Less Typing than traditional Business Planning methods”
• Includes links to start-up planning and resource materials
• Just answer the questionnaire, and the app does all the “heavy lifting” for you
• Able to hit “back” at any time and change the answer to a question without starting the whole thing over

Cons

• Final product is just a one-page plan. This may not be adequate for some ventures. The full product creates a 40-page business plan (though this takes longer)
• Interface is a little jumbled and hard to read in places

Discussion

5Min Business Plan is a really interesting idea. Basically, you fill out a few basic questions…and the app generates (and emails) your plan to you. From there, you can share it with friends and potential investors.

You will be asked what your company does (products, services, or both), your number 1 objective for the company going forward (grow customer base, launch a new product, etc), and how long you’ve been in business. In addition to the multiple choice questions, there are questions that require more of an essay response, such as “Describe a key task you will undertake in the next 6 months to help [YOUR COMPANY NAME HERE] achieve your key strategic objective.”

If would be nice if you could get a live preview of the document as you were working, the better to tidy up your word choice and make your document looked polished at the end of it all. As it is, you get your first preview of your work so far at around the 57% completion mark.

It might take you a bit longer than 5 minutes to complete the survey, but there are a lot of helpful hints and explanations along the way that make the process quite a pleasant one.

When you are done with your plan, you can delete it, publish to the web within 48 hours, or opt for the $6.95 “stealth option,” which allows you to get a confidential text email of your plan within 30 minutes (this keeps your plan secret and off the web!)

Conclusion and download link

I’m not sure exactly when someone would use this app. Perhaps a very busy person with a very simple business model? I would think that most people would want a longer, fuller business plan, and be willing to spend more than 5 minutes working on it. I could, however, see this being a great teaching tool for high school or college students.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 1.0

Supported OS: Requires iOS 4.3 or later.

Download size: 5.4

5Min Business Plan on Apple App Store