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How to Write a Great Business Plan

Every seasoned investor knows that detailed financial projections for a new company are an act of imagination. Nevertheless, most business plans pour far too much ink on the numbers—and far too little on the information that really matters. Why?

In an article in the Harvard Business Review , HBS Professor William Sahlman suggests that a great business plan is one that focuses on a series of questions. These questions relate to the four factors critical to the success of every new venture: the people, the opportunity, the context, and the possibilities for both risk and reward.

The questions about people revolve around three issues: What do they know? Whom do they know? and How well are they known? As for opportunity, the plan should focus on two questions: Is the market for the venture's product or service large or rapidly growing (or preferably both)? and Is the industry structurally attractive?

Then, in addition to demonstrating an understanding of the context in which their venture will operate, entrepreneurs should make clear how they will respond when that context inevitably changes. Finally, the plan should look unflinchingly at the risks the new venture faces, giving would-be backers a realistic idea of what magnitude of reward they can expect and when they can expect it.

A great business plan is not easy to compose, Sahlman acknowledges, largely because most entrepreneurs are wild-eyed optimists. But one that asks the right questions is a powerful tool. A better deal, not to mention a better shot at success, awaits entrepreneurs who use it.

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How to Write a Great Business Plan (Harvard Business Review Classics) Paperback – March 1, 2008

• The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources
• The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast
• The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate
• Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond
• Print length 72 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date March 1, 2008
• Dimensions 4.32 x 0.22 x 6.53 inches
• ISBN-10 1422121429
• ISBN-13 978-1422121429
• See all details

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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press (March 1, 2008)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 72 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1422121429
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1422121429
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.26 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.32 x 0.22 x 6.53 inches
• #120 in Business Writing Skills (Books)
• #421 in Systems & Planning
• #1,302 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

About the author

William andrews sahlman.

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How to create a business plan.

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Business plans have long been a critical document for new businesses. Are they still relevant? If so, what best practices and data can help you create a winning document that will help your business get the funding you need and ensure your venture lasts?

Before digging into the best way to craft a business plan to help you crush it, and spending hours or numerous dollars on commissioning one, do you even need one?

A decade ago anyone you approached with a business idea without a plan would have laughed and shooed you away. Even your friends and family, or the most aggressive angel investors. Things have changed.

As I describe in my book, The Art of Startup Fundraising , a business plan is still a must for some scenarios and some reasons. Yet, some may also think that pitch decks and clever presentations may displace them. Every entrepreneur and startup company needs a plan. Before deciding exactly what that looks like and how to create it, there are some critical questions to answer and factors to understand.

What’s a Business Plan for?

Just because it is the status quo should never be a line in the vocabulary of a startup founder today. Traditional business plans can be big beasts of a project that suck time, money and mojo at a vital moment. Don’t do it unless you know why and what you are trying to achieve with it.

In fact, Silicon Valley angel investor, VC and founder of 500 Startups, David McClure says “don’t write a business plans.” We’ll show you what he does want to see if you hope to get a funding check from him in a moment. Yet, the point is that most aspiring business owners aren’t even trying to match up their goals with what they think they are supposed to be doing.

You should have a plan in order to get yourself organized and to ensure you have some type of viable commercial potential. You have focus and hopefully aren’t going to run out of money or starve before you get going. If that’s all you need, and you don’t plan to raise money, apply for loans and don’t intend on bringing in partners, then you certainly don’t need a 25lb manuscript. Keep it simple. In fact, Brian Chesky (founder of Airbnb) is famous for his one-page business plan for global domination.

If you are planning to go to a local bank for a business loan, or are approaching your sphere of influence for backing who you know is accustomed to seeing legit business plans, then you know you probably need to create something that they understand in a format they are comfortable with.

If your purpose is to raise funding, and your startup isn’t going to go anywhere without, then make sure anything you take time out to create is going to relate in today’s fundraising environment.

Business Plans vs. Pitch Decks

Business plans and pitch decks are two different things. They have a lot of crossover factors. Yet, one is for presenting and specifically for getting funding from angels and VCs. The other is more organizational an internal in nature.

If you want to get funded by David McClure, then he says he wants to see “a functional product that people are using. We look for functional prototypes and customer development and most importantly, scalability. Can you scale customer acquisition cheaply and measurably?”

In contrast with old school business plans McClure recommends:

• 12 month expense projections
• Marketing plans
• Customer acquisition costs
• Customer value
• Results of testing (i.e. a dashboard of KPIs)
• Proof of consistent improvement
• Knowing your burn rate, and never falling below 6 months of cash

Most of this you can cram into a pitch deck, at least with a good appendix.

Not long ago I covered the pitch deck template that was created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel ( see it here ) where the most critical slides are highlighted. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M ( see it here )

Business Plans vs. Executive Summaries

An executive summary is a different document again. It is a smart tool and essential one to have as a cover for your business plan. This is especially true for those considering funding that involves commercial real estate or a SBA loan.

This is a brief 1-3 page document that sums up your business and plan, and gives viewers enough info to decide whether they want to see any more data or not. Like a pitch deck, it it’s good enough it can be sufficient to get lenders and investors to choose to work with you, and work through the details in the process.

Best Practices for Building a Brilliant Business Plan

What makes a great business plan?

Format, substance, and key data that viewers expect are all important. So is the time you spend on it, and when you do it.

When to Create a Business Plan

The big problem with business plans is that entrepreneurs often get bogged down in them. Getting lost in rehashing and dragging out a business plan for a year or more can cost your startup the optimal moment to get to market and the best funding opportunities. Too many founders have also tried to cram the equivalent of a business plan into a pitch deck, only to find it is a hindrance to getting the results they want.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) says “the real key to succeeding in business is being flexible and responsive to opportunities. Entrepreneurs often have to pivot their business once it becomes clear that their original customer is not the right customer, or when it turns out that their product or service fits better in an alternate market. Because of these realities, business plans written at the start end up nothing more than a fable.”

Additional stats from HBR show that:

• The “most successful entrepreneurs were those that wrote their business plan between 6-12 months after deciding to start a business. Stating that this “increased the probability of venture viability success by 8%.”
• Chances of success rose by 12% for those that spent no longer than 3 months on their plan. With any longer proving futile.
• Startups chances of venture viability rose by 27% if the plan was created in the sweet spot when founders were talking to customers and preparing marketing.

According to Entrepreneur.com and Rule’s Book of Business Plans for Startups, founders should be considering these factors when creating their plan.

• How the business will be vested
• Main objectives
• Mission statement
• Keys to success
• Industry analysis
• Market analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Core strategies
• Organizational structure
• Key operations
• Projections and pro formas
• Break-even analysis
• Financial needs

Fortunately, crafting a business plan has become much simpler today. There are plenty of data sources to back up assumptions and to complete research. There are plenty of great freelancers available online who can help handle time intensive parts of the process like research and formatting and interactive pro-formas.

There are even templates you can plug in and print so you don’t waste time figuring out what to include.

SCORE offers fillable worksheets covering these key pages in your business plan for your startup business:

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Products and Services
• Marketing Plan
• Operational Plan
• Management & Organization
• Startup Expenses & Capitalization
• Financial Plan

The SBA (US Small Business Administration) offers templates for both traditional business plans and more modern lean startup business plans, with samples to view.

A business plan still plays a critical role in launching a profitable and sustainable venture today. New trends and the data show us that the best time to complete a robust plan may now come later in the journey than it used to. It is much more important to get started, test and secure funding first.

When it comes to business plan creation there are now more templates and streamlined formats that are being adjusted to meet today’s needs to accommodate faster moving, leaner startups. Just don‘t let this part of the process slow you down.

No matter how you do it, and who you’ll show your plan to, make sure to have someone with experience review it for you.

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How To Use The Harvard Resume Format (Example + Template)

3 key takeaways

• Harvard invented a classic and clean resume framework.
• This resume format focuses on sections like education, experience, leadership, and skills. Unlike a standard resume, it prioritizes education above experience.
• You can create a Harvard resume and tailor it to your job application with Teal's Resume Builder .

You’ve probably heard that the Harvard resume format is one of the best templates for recent graduates. After all, it was created and is continually recommended by Harvard recruiters and counselors.

The Harvard resume is clean and professional and highlights education over work experience. Considering the minimal work experience most recent graduates bring, it can be an excellent framework for building your resume. 

But how do you use it to create your resume ? Below, you'll learn how to use the Harvard University resume format, including examples.

Need help to landing interviews with your resume? Sign up for Teal to make a free resume in minutes.

Understanding the Harvard resume format

The Harvard Offices of Career Services, in conjunction with the Career and Academic Resource Center, created the Harvard resume format.

The aim was to help both Harvard students and graduates of other universities create resumes that highlight their education and land them jobs.

Because of its more significant focus on education, leadership, and activities over job experience, this resume format works best for those just entering the job market.

Here’s an overview of the format:

Let's examine each resume section and how they differ from traditional resumes.

Typically, the education section of a resume is at the bottom rather than the top. The Harvard-style resume flips this on its head, listing education just after the resume header.

It’s acceptable for job seekers without experience in the job market to put education details at the top of a resume. Education also tends to carry more weight if you apply for internships or master's programs.

If you’ve gained experience within your projected career path and it’s been a few years since you graduated, move your education details to the bottom of your resume.

Your work history and experiences should make up the bulk of your resume. But if you’re a recent graduate, you might not have as much to show, as you can see in the Harvard resume example.

This is where you see more similarities with the typical resume format. The Harvard resume template holds a standard of four bullet points for each position held. Each bullet point should only be one sentence long.

Follow these rules when formatting each bullet point:

• Beginning with your most recent position, describe your experience, skills, and resulting outcomes in bullet or paragraph form. 
• Begin each line with an action verb and include details to help the reader understand your accomplishments, skills, knowledge, abilities, or achievements. 
• Quantify where possible. 
• Do not use personal pronouns; each line should be a phrase rather than a complete sentence.

This advice is standard across the recruitment and resume writing industries, but it’s still pertinent. 

The leadership and activities section on a resume is acceptable to feature if you’re fresh out of college and the activities are relevant to the position. However, on most resumes, there is little room or need to feature this section. 

It can be a great way to highlight skills, certain responsibilities you’ve held, or outcomes you’ve achieved to supplement a lack of work history. Most potential employers don’t need this information unless those activities can supplement work experience.

The Harvard resume template does something unique with the skills section—breaking the skills down into four categories:

The technical and laboratory skills bullet points are the most nuanced. Technical skills should list any computer skills or coding languages you’ve learned, while the laboratory line asks you to list any specific tools or techniques you’ve used.

Resist the urge to explain every skill. In some cases, you may need to specify your proficiency. However, if you are fluent in languages, list each language you know. You can write them in one line separated by commas, like this: 

Teal’s AI-powered Resume Builder allows you to add all of your technical skills in one easy form and then select and de-select the skills you’d like to feature on your resume.

How you lay out your resume will greatly depend on how much experience you have in your field, your skills, and which university you attended (including your grades and accolades).

But the four sections in the Harvard resume format generally benefit any new grad or student resume.

How to create a Harvard resume using a resume template

When you don’t have much experience on your resume, highlighting your education is a safe bet.

The Harvard format gives you a good launch pad for emphasizing the benefits of your education. If you understand each section and tailor it to the position, you’re much more likely to stand out in a candidate pool.

Consider the position

Your final resume isn’t going to look like a perfect replica of the template. That’s because the position you’re applying for will call for different highlights on your resume. 

For instance, you might apply for a competitive internship that values GPA more heavily than other internships.  In some cases, GPA isn’t just a qualification for admittance. An organization might also have a minimum acceptable standard. Still, it might also be a metric for whether or not you maintain your internship. 

In such a case, you’ll need to feature your GPA on your resume and any other accolades within your education that might give you a competitive advantage.

Fill in the sections of the template

In the previous section, you saw the differences between traditional and Harvard resumes. Here, we’re breaking down how to fill out your resume with those differences in mind. 

Enter your contact information

Filling out the top of your resume is straightforward. Your resume header should contain contact details such as your name, address, and email. You don’t have to include your entire email. Your city and state are enough.

Add your education

If you’re keeping the Harvard format, your education section is at the top, just under your details. Again, this is beneficial if you’re applying to further educational programs, such as a master’s program, an internship, or an entry-level position.

The template offers three possible rows of information within the education section—college, study abroad, and your high school.

Unless the position specifically requests high school information or it's required to enter the program, including it on your resume is unnecessary. This also applies to your study abroad program. While it’s advantageous in an educational program application, it’s not often necessary for employment.

Add your work history

The work experience section of the Harvard resume includes slots for just two places of employment. This is because it’s essentially a student resume.

To fill out this section, start with the company name, position, and period you worked there. 

Add three to four bullet points under your organizational header. The typical job seeker might add their responsibilities within those roles, but this won’t help you stand out among other candidates. 

Instead, focus on outcomes you’ve produced, contributions you’ve made, and skills you’ve developed. Here’s what that advice looks like on the resume of an applicant who’s only held a few entry-level roles:

You might not have a lot of experience, and it’s unlikely you were able to have a massive impact on the company in an entry-level or internship position. But you likely gained hard and soft skills by working on something for some time. 

Notice the action verbs in two of the three lines in the above example? Words like increased, improved, and boosted are “active” words to quickly demonstrate that you’ve had impact in your role.

Leadership roles and activities

Leadership and activities are optional on a resume and should only be included if they directly relate to the responsibilities listed in the job description. 

If you add your leadership projects and activities, be sure to include any outcomes that came from those activities.

You don’t need to include all of this detail. One or two lines should be enough to showcase the project unless you’re compensating for lower work experience. 

Relevant skills and interests

Skills and interests are another optional section on your resume. While Harvard offers four opportunities to include such information, you could include one or two and eliminate the rest if they’re pertinent or might increase your chances of getting hired. 

For instance, language skills are in demand across most industries. They may also be a necessary qualification for some roles or may position you in a higher pay grade upon acceptance for a role. In such cases, adding that information to your resume is essential. 

Technical skills are vital for roles in software, IT, or engineering. Laboratory skills will matter if you’re applying for a role in a STEM profession, such as a geneticist or food scientist. 

Proofread for red flags and typos

Certain resume red flags automatically take you out of the candidate pool. These red flags include:

Spelling and grammar errors

• Irrelevant information
• A lack of results-oriented experience

While recruiters and hiring managers aren’t going to examine your resume with a fine-toothed comb, obvious spelling and grammar errors stand out. As does an abundance of those errors. Always check your work before sending it.

Harvard resume example

Here’s an example of the Harvard resume in action.

You see education at the top followed by professional experience and technical skills. The example also shows active and powerful language for the bullet points of each position held. It’s a clear and professional demonstration of this resume format. 

Harvard resume template

If you want to use the Harvard resume template recommended by Harvard recruiters, here’s a template of the sections they use:

Name Location Email address Phone number Education Study abroad Experience Job title 1/ Employer 1 (your most recent employer)(month/ year-month/year) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) Experience Job title 1/ Employer 1 (month/ year-month/year) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) (Action verb) (Accomplishment with quantification) Leadership and activities Skills and interests

Common mistakes to avoid when using the Harvard resume

Your resume should always highlight your most vital assets and qualifications. You'll be in great shape if you focus on outcomes and key skills. 

However, you want to avoid a few common mistakes if you hope to get shortlisted for the position. 

It’s easy to misspell a word here and there, but on a resume, it can be the difference between getting shortlisted or being cut from the candidate pool. 

There are a few ways to avoid the latter:

• Use a tool like Grammarly to catch misspellings and grammar mistakes.
• Run your resume through ChatGPT to catch mistakes.
• Employ an editor to provide more detailed and nuanced feedback.
• Use Teal’s resume builder to catch mistakes and optimize your inputs to highlight your strengths.

Missing contact information

This isn’t a huge misstep, but if you send in your application without contact information, a hiring manager won’t be able to reach you if they’re interested. 

Similarly, the position you’re applying for could be dependent on location. You might face instant rejection if you’re missing, or misspelled, your location. 

Using passive voice

Most job seekers make the mistake of using passive voice on their resume. But sentences like "sales targets were consistently met" will not grab anyone's attention.

Always use active voice on your resume. Active voice requires the use of “I” as a pronoun and the use of power words like “boosted” and “improved”. 

So instead of saying, "Sales targets were consistently met," you'd say, "Exceeded annual sales targets by an average of 15%...". The goal is always to get as specific as possible with your real achievements within a role.

Lack of personalization

Resume personalization isn’t about including information about the company or the hiring manager. It’s about thoroughly understanding the job description and tailoring your resume to match it within reason. 

Teal’s AI-powered Resume Builder analyzes job descriptions to identify the keywords and most important details to include in your resume. 

For more tips on creating an effective resume, check out this post on the best resume format .

How to create your Harvard resume with AI

Harvard has made it easy to follow their resume format by opening their template in Google Docs or Word. However, if you plan to tailor your resume to multiple job applications, using Teal’s AI Resume Builder might be beneficial. 

With Teal, you can add variations of responsibilities, activities, achievements, and more while selecting and deselecting certain details to adapt your resume to the job description. 

Maintaining the Harvard format in Teal is also easy. You can choose from a resume template library and customize your whatever template you choose to mimic Harvard’s.

Customize your achievements

Because you're likely creating a dozen tailored resumes to match various job descriptions, use Teal's AI achievement writer to help you create powerful descriptions. Once you've covered everything, select the achievements most relevant to the job listing.

Find the keywords for every job

Consider the keywords and complex asks of the company. Take a look at the responsibilities section of this job description for a marketing position:

From this job description, you can pull out a few important details:

• There’s a high emphasis on content strategy execution
• There is some level of strategy execution and account management
• You’ll need writing skills
• You’ll be working with freelancers

If you use Teal’s keyword matching tool, you can see which keywords are most important to include in your resume.

This will help you determine the most important keywords and relevant information to include on your resume.

Create an Ivy-level resume

Whether you use Harvard's resume template or the more traditional reverse-chronological order, make sure the final format is compatible with application tracker systems (ATS). Teal offers free and paid templates designed to satisfy ATS requirements and impress hiring managers. Sign up for Teal for free to build a better resume.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many pages should a resume to harvard be.

According to Harvard, the resume used for a Harvard application should be one to two pages. They stress the importance of not exceeding that page limit.

Is there a proper format for a college resume?

Most resumes will have the same structure: Personal contact information, professional summary, work experience, and education.

You might add skills, relevant coursework, community service efforts, and accomplishment statements to your resume if you lack work experience or have achievements directly related to the role. 

Beyond that, the look and feel of a resume may vary. This is demonstrated in Teal’s library of 100+ resume templates .

Is the Harvard College Bullet Point Resume Template ATS-friendly?

Yes. ATS software is capable of reading resumes in various formats, and the Harvard resume template is simple, easy to read, and classic. Difficulties should only arise with images or specialized formatting.

Sarah Colley

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