In our ongoing effort to put the best foot forward and think deeply about our business, we have decided to rewrite our business plan. We recognize that we will have to improve the organization of our plan if we are to be successful in raising future rounds of funding. Additionally, since our first meeting with a group of test teachers, our plan has evolved.

In order to organize properly we have turned to Brad Feld. Brad writes an amazing blog about venture capital, that is both an interesting read and an invaluable resource to entrepreneurs. There is one particular post that we have gone back to in an effort to address the important questions that a company should seek to answer in their business plan.

Using this post as a guide, we have begun to recompose our original business plan and during this process we (or at this point, I) have been challenged by the question of customer acquisition costs. Because we are building a tool that relies upon word of mouth, PR, product advocacy to grow the PlansForUs user base we figure that customer acquisition costs will be determined by the human resources expended marketing through word of mouth, PR, and product development. The problem is, we are unclear as to what the formula looks like for computing valid customer acquistion cost assumptions. If you happen to have any thoughts on how we might put a value on our customer acquisition efforts or have read something, please leave a comment or send me a link in del.icio.us (username: tylerfonda).

Anyway, thought I would share some of the thinking from the business formation end. We are working hard to launch PlansForUs and hope to have something for our teachers to work with near the end of April. Till then, we will continue to write and share this process with you.

Speak to you soon.

by Tyler, CEO