Attracting capital : The business plan from the investors' perspective

For entrepreneurs it can be difficult to attract investors. The business plan is a well-known document for that purpose, and is used widely by entrepreneurs and companies. With this in mind, several questions arise. What information in a business plan is important? Do the criteria for information in a business plan differ between banks, venture capital companies, and business angels? What is the perception of a business plan to these investors? These are questions future entrepreneurs have to deal with before taking action and start searching for investors. This thesis investigates the investors’ perspective on the issue of entrepreneurship and business planning.The purpose of this thesis is to broaden the understanding of the business plan as a mean to attract capital for new ventures. It further aims to investigate the relevance of the business plan and the optimal composition of information, according to the investors. A qualitative method has been used in this thesis. Empirical findings have been captured from interviews with relevant actors in the investing market, and thereafter been analyzed with existing theories. The overall conclusion in this thesis is that there is a very broad view of the business plan as a concept. There are different aspects of the business plans roles as a formal mean to attract capital. Obvious differences between how the three different investors evaluate a business plan have been found as well as that the investors find other things than the business plan to be important in a decision. The investors do not look solely on the business plan and then make the decision whether to invest or not. The third conclusion is that all three investors enter a company with different roles, affecting the business’ activities in different ways. Finally, the business plan as a document is never as formal as the theory states. It is surprisingly different from the theory which claims that formality is an important issue in this kind of documents