How to write a business plan that actually gets funding

A business plan that gets funded is not a long document full of market research. It is a clear, honest answer to five questions every lender or investor is asking when they read it.

The five questions your plan must answer

1. What is the business? Describe it in one sentence. If you can't, you don't understand it well enough yet.

2. Who is paying? Not "everyone" or "the general public". Specific: who exactly is your customer, why do they need this, and why will they choose you over alternatives?

3. How does it make money? Revenue model, pricing, margins. How many sales at what price to cover costs and be profitable? Show the numbers.

4. Can you actually deliver? Your experience, team, operational capacity. Lenders in Botswana back people as much as ideas.

5. What happens to the money? Exactly how the funding will be used, and what it will produce. "Working capital" is not an answer. A breakdown by category is.

The financial section is the whole game

For Botswana lenders — CEDA, LEA, NDB, commercial banks — the financials are read first. You need a projected income statement, cash flow forecast, and balance sheet for at least 3 years. They should be conservative and defensible, not optimistic.

Use the Business Plan Canvas on this page to draft your model before building the full document. It forces clarity on every section before you write a word.