What is a business plan? How is it different from an executive summary?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: A business plan summarizes a proposed business venture, communicates the company's goals, highlights how management intends to achieve those goals, and shows how customers will benefit from the company's goods or services. An effective business plan should include your mission and objectives, company overview, management, target market, marketing strategy, design and development plans, operations plan, start-up schedule, major risk factors, and financial projections and requirements.
An executive summary is a concise version of the business plan. Investor Guy Kawasaki advises entrepreneurs to create an executive summary of their business plan to use when presenting their ideas to investors for the first time. Entrepreneurs often have as little as 20 minutes to make these pitches, so a compelling presentation backed up by an executive summary, no longer than 20 pages, is ideal. The most important part of the entire package is "the grab," a compelling one-or two-sentence statement that gets an investor's attention. If an investor is intrigued, he or she can then read the executive summary to get a better sense of the opportunity and then review the full business plan before making a decision to provide funds.