Some small businesses can thrive for years without committing a strategic plan to paper.
But others find that mapping out a course can be useful not just for attracting investors, but also for measuring progress and adjusting a company's direction. It never occurred to Ron Schmelzer that his new company needed a business plan. We modeled it after a real-world mall, with anchor stores and smaller merchants, and in our first six months we grew from six tenants to 90. That's when Schmelzer decided it was time to write a business plan, to give the company a new focus. VirtuFlex's business plan, initially drafted in January of 1996, was originally intended to help the company raise money from venture capitalists.