At The Startup Garage, we understand that every business is different. That’s why we have 4 different account services options: Do-it-Yourself, Startup, Seed Round, and Series A.

You totally can! We offer accounting services for startup founders that feel overwhelmed or simply don’t have the time anymore because they’re busy with other aspects of the business.

If you currently have an accountant that you’re working with, then they could certainly take on accounting for your business as well. However, it’s recommended to hire a startup accounting expert because of the niche expertise needed. While your accountant may be excellent at business accounting, it’s a lot more involved when a business is in the initial funding stages and you’ll appreciate having someone that has experience handling just that.

The one thing that both strong advocates and business plan cynics find themselves in agreement on is that if you need to fund your business by raising money, then your only option is to create a formal pitch deck complete with financials and projections or a professionally done business plan.

Internally designed business plans that you use for operational planning and to find clear goals for your business are not necessarily required, but can be very beneficial for your business down the road. While not required, all experts in the branding and business plan fields agree that it’s highly recommended to have documents that support your business and provide some guidance to an internal team. This doesn’t have to be anything too fancy. Something as simple as a folder on your computer with summaries, market research, and financial documents is great to have as a reference while your business develops.

At The Startup Garage, we specialize in advising entrepreneurs on how to create these documents with the goal of raising capital.

There are many benefits to having a professionally developed business plan whether your goal is raising capital or having internal business documentation to guide your business decisions. One of the biggest benefits you receive is that you get to take an unbiased, critical look at your business and its strategy during the business plan writing process. You’ll be able to quickly identify any potential or current issues with your business structure and fix those issues before they become major problems that hinder the success of your business. The process also helps you to identify a business model, competitive advantages, target markets, benchmarks, etc.

When it comes to writing a business plan, your choice boils down to one of three major options: you write the business plan yourself without anyone’s help, you hire a cheap, discount business writer to write the business plan for you, or you hire a professional business plan advisor to walk you through the business plan writing process and help you with any issues you come across.

For those that would prefer to write the business plan themselves without external help, it’s going to be crucial for you to gather as much information as possible before you get started. This initial phase is likely to take several hundreds of hours just so that you’re properly prepared for the actual writing phase. While some businesses have had success with a self-written business plan, unless you have years of experience creating one, you’re likely going to struggle to create a coherent business plan that accurately describes your business and successfully raises capital. You’re probably better off spending time picking the right members for your team, researching your customer base, and further developing your product or services offerings.

For those that would like to hire a budget business plan writer or service to handle the writing for them, there are tons of options available. While a budget business plan writer or service can be much cheaper than a professional, you’re likely to spend just as much or more on rewrites and additional services that are not part of the initial writing package. Business plans are not done until they’ve gone through several drafts and a significant amount of time and discount business plan writers and services simply do not have that amount of time or resources. You’ll end up paying twice or triple the amount you initially thought it would cost you. Your business plan needs to be able to change as your vision of the company changes and this option doesn’t allow for that.

The last option is to hire a professional business plan consultant. A professional business plan consultant won’t write the business plan for you because they’re not the one that’s going to be presenting it to potential investors. What a business plan consultant can do is work with you step by step as you go through the business plan writing process. The consultant will help you look critically at your business and the strategy surrounding it to identify pitfalls and work through them. Most importantly, the relationship with your business plan consultant is ongoing. They’ll be there for you whenever you have questions and it won’t cost you more if you need to change some things about your business along the way. Not only are you getting a superior final business plan compared to a budget writing service, but you’re also getting an advisor who has achieved success in the past and knows what that entails.

When you’re deciding who you want to hire as your business plan consultant or writer, it’s important to screen your options carefully, much like you would a candidate for a job at your company. Because you’ll be spending such a significant amount of time with the person or team you end up choosing, it’s crucial that you get along with them and also are willing to have some tough conversations about your business.

One thing you should consider carefully and fully understand is that there are going to be many disagreements that you’ll have with your business plan consultant. This is a necessary part of the business planning process because you don’t want someone who is just going to agree with you all the time. A business plan consultant that disagrees with you is sincerely trying to help you see your business from a more unbiased viewpoint. This is to help you find potential problems or pitfalls with your business plan before they become bigger issues in the future.

The last thing you have to understand is that your business plan consultant can help you create a successful business plan, but they cannot raise the money for you. Because this is your business, you’re the one who will ultimately have present to investors so it’s important that you’re prepared for that. Don’t worry though, your business plan consultant will make sure you’re completely ready before you reach that phase.

Business plans are used by investors to identify if the business is feasible and to gauge if it’s a sounds investment opportunity for them. Specifically, investors are looking to see if an opportunity exists within your target market, if your product or service is actually viable, if your company has a significant competitive advantage over competitors, your team, your model, and how good of an investment opportunity your business represents.

The Startup Garage business plan consulting service includes a three week long revisions and editing process that’s meant to find any small issues that slipped through during the initial writing process. We use the three week revision time to brainstorm potential future problems and prevent them before they happen. Once the three week editing process is complete, we’re still available to help with any issues that may come up and answer any questions at no additional cost. Any updates or business plan edits after the three week period are charged at an hourly rate.

No one can absolutely guarantee that a business plan will be successful at raising capital, but your first step towards success is to create a professionally designed and written business plan. The next steps include finding the right team, fine tune your business strategies, and work on your product offering. While we can help with these aspects, we don’t have control over everything. We can’t control who’s in your investor network, how well you’ll be able to answer questions asked by investors, and how personable you are.

Our team is what makes us standout from the competition. The Startup Garage business plan consulting team have years upon years of experience and expertise and take personal pride in every project. We work closely with you from start to finish because we believe that we’re only successful if you are.