TL;DR
Your business plan is the document the endorsing body reads cover to cover. It needs to make the Innovation, Viability, and Scalability case explicitly — not leave the reader to infer them. Eight sections, in this order: executive summary, problem, market, product, innovation case, team, commercial model, 3-year plan. Write it for someone with a finance + tech background who has not heard of you.
The structure assessors expect
- 1. Executive summary (1 page): what the business does, who it's for, what makes it innovative, where it is now, what the 3-year plan is. If this page doesn't make the case, the rest of the document doesn't matter.
- 2. The problem (1-2 pages): who has this problem, how serious is it, what does it cost them today, why hasn't it been solved already. Use specific customer evidence.
- 3. The market (1-2 pages): total addressable market with sourced numbers, who the existing players are, where the gap is. Be honest about competition.
- 4. Product / service (2-3 pages): what you've built or are building, how it works, what state it's in (MVP / beta / live), screenshots or diagrams.
- 5. Innovation case (1-2 pages): this is the section assessors flag if missing. Make it explicit: "Our business is innovative because…" with bullet points.
- 6. Team (1 page): who's involved, why each person is right for their role, how the gaps will be filled.
- 7. Commercial model (1-2 pages): how you make money, pricing, unit economics, route to break-even.
- 8. 3-year plan (2 pages): quarter-by-quarter for year 1, half-yearly for year 2-3. Milestones, hires, revenue targets, funding rounds, contact-point alignment.
What assessors read carefully vs. skim
Counts as evidence
- Innovation case — they read every line, looking for the structural difference
- Team section — quick credibility check on each person named
- Commercial model — they want realistic, not optimistic
- 3-year plan — they check whether milestones are concrete ("hire CFO in Q3 year 2") or vague ("build team")
- Customer evidence — quotes, signed LOIs, paid pilots all read carefully
Does not count
- Generic market sizing ("$10bn market" with no sourcing)
- Boilerplate problem statements that could apply to any startup
- Hockey-stick financial projections without justification
- Vague "strategic partnerships" without naming partners
- Pages of competitive analysis listing every adjacent company
Length matters less than you think
Strong applications are typically 25-40 pages. Beyond 50 pages and the assessor's attention drops; below 15 and you haven't done the work. Quality of evidence beats quantity of words.
The Innovation Case section — write it explicitly
Most rejected plans bury the innovation argument inside the product section where assessors don't expect it. The fix is to write a dedicated "Why this is innovative" section, structured as:
- What we do differently: 2-3 sentences on the core structural difference.
- Why competitors can't easily replicate: IP, data moat, team specialism, capital advantage, network effects.
- Evidence that it's new to the UK: our research shows no UK competitor doing X.
- Why now: what changed in market / technology / regulation that makes this possible.