So you have a product and you want to do something with it. Maybe you actually want to start a company anyway, or maybe going commercial is the only effective way to get the product out there for people to use. Eventually you are going to have to face the inevitable and prepare something resembling a business plan.

For me making the business plan was something I entered into with great dislike. I hired a string of people to do as much of it for me as humanly possible. I regarded it as a useless document ... after all Google didn't have a business plan for years (maybe) and don't lots of companies get by just fine without one?

The real purpose of a business plan is to get a bunch of people on the same page about what you're trying to do and how you're going to do it. It's all about communication. Understanding a business in fullness is not either easy or quick and you're not going to do it in a one hour meeting with someone new. You might not even have a complete agreement or understanding with your own partners. The business plan forces you to write it all down in a semi-formal document and so it forces you to think clearly and communicate clearly all of the business ideas running around inside your skull.

This is good for two reasons. One, because you might discover holes and fill them in (I know I did). And two, because the next time you meet a potential partner, or investor, you can leave them with a copy of the business plan and feel confident that they will be able to read it and understand what your business is all about.

Now in my opinion, 99.9% of the "sample" business plans out there are crap. In fact I've even read "real" business plans and thought some of them were crap too. My biggest problem was finding a good reference against which to benchmark my plan. Finally I found a good source though.

It's MIT 15.975: The Nuts and Bolts of Business Plans and everything is available online . Rock on, OpenCourseWare!

The key document here is the Virtual Ink business plan . This is not a sample or example. This is a real business plan for a real business that is still alive today .

There's loads of good things about this business plan. You should try to emulate these:

• it's mercifully short: 24 pages!
• it was the first-runner up in MIT's 50K (1997)
• it's well written
• it uses a clear and consistent layout and order that you can copy

So basically this company has given you almost unheard-of access to their successful plan and if you're like me you'll use all their ideas of structure in your own. It's good stuff. There's also loads of supporting material on the course pages. Read all of it.

Now let's talk briefly about Financial projections . Another scary gotta-have-it. I'll talk some other day about the Dance of the Numbers but meanwhile, grab the financial template Excel file because it's set up to make things easy for you, and then read the appropriate session five slides .

Here's some more good advice from one of the MIT people on business subject (not necessarily business plans) Articles by Joseph G. Hadzima, Jr. ... pure gold every one.

In my own mind, there will someday be a day when you don't have to keep your business plan in a locked box like a jealously guarded secret. But until that day comes, thank MIT for providing such valuable resources to us all, and thank me for digging them up on the web ;-)

I'm thinking of writing a book called "A technologist's guide to business". Or something along those lines. The idea is that business is a tough nut to crack for a software engineer or computer scientists or hardware engineer. It operates on different principles. What are those principles and how can you connect what you already know with what you need to know.

A few weeks ago I had a meeting with Tim Jackson (of Tech Capital Partners fame) and he had some really good advice for me. I pushed back in the meeting because it wasn't exactly what I had expected and it was new to me. But the next day, I was convinced he was right, so I started executing the idea. And it's been very successful.

Unfortunately I can't tell you what the advice was. It's very frustrating but I feel I can't tell you because one of the "rules" I've discovered on my own is that you don't expose your mistakes or lack of knowledge to competitors and/or potential customers .

So I feel comfortable telling you that Tim gave me the advice, because Tim was brought in through the accelerator and he provided excellent advice. And I think it would be great if Tim would become an advisor to Semacode, because he was able to analyse — and we were able to communicate together — so quickly and to the point. And I left not only with a strategy but also a very solid understanding of how to pursue it.

In software development, I've always seen openness about lack of knowledge and mistakes as a benefit, in fact, a necessity ... even when talking to the ultimate end users. And I think that is an effective way to go about interacting with co-workers, colleagues in other companies. The same points go with people management (in my opinion).

So I have to admit that I did "screw up" a large number of times by being overly honest with potential customers, customers, strategic partners etc. In business, uncertainty and doubt are seen as a weakness to be exploited . Sad but true.

Who writes these rules? I've been looking for "The Book" of business and I haven't found it. I think it doesn't exist. Business is not a science. Business is not an engineering. Business isn't even a social science.

Harvard is easily the most prominent business school in the world. I've studied Harvard's MBA program and the Harvard Business Review magazine and they're totally case study oriented. You're not learning models. You're learning by exposure. In other words, business isn't an art or a science, it's a culture .

I'm convinced that what you learn at business school is unwritten cultural rules of the business society. How to act and behave. What is expected and understood. For example, something I learned from Tim is "CEOs only talk to CEOs". It's not a hard and fast rule but it's very important.

Some people are born into business families. Those people tend to learn the culture of business as they grow up. For the rest of us, we need to learn what these rules are in order to be effective business people. (Just like to need to learn French to make it in France).

Maybe someday there will be a Book but until then I'm going to stick to my effective strategy for learning a new culture. Find the most highly qualified guides and get them to walk me through it.