Developing a Software Startup Business Roadmap: Stages, Tips, Structure

Every major market player is a startup at the start of the business journey. The key to successful business development and expansion is a quality roadmap. However, its creation process has a specific structure, content to include, and other distinguishing peculiarities. Let’s discuss how to create a tech startup business plan and learn more recommendations concerning the above-mentioned topic.

The Significance of a Project Plan for a Newly Established

So why is it important to build the right roadmap for the project?

• Engaging financial contributions into the project
• Outlining appropriate business development steps
• Projecting your financial flow

You should stick to the correct business plan structure to get these opportunities. Let’s move on to the content required to build a quality startup plan.

Introduction

Within the plan, the first section is called an executive summary. Its main aim is to acquaint readers with details such as a project description, target audience, employees, finances, and your niche market insights. It is also worth including the SWOT analysis:

• S- business strengths 
• W- existing weaknesses
• O- opportunities delivered by your startup
• T- influential outer threats  

Writing executive summary correctly

Let’s look at some tips on how to write an executive summary successfully:

• Create it as the final piece after compiling all the others for deeper analysis
• Look at the content from the reader’s point of view and include only the engaging parts to keep attention until the end of the plan 
• Make sure your executive summary is readable and well-organized
• Include only those plans and aspirations that you are truly capable of fulfilling

What should be included in the organization’s overview?

This section should talk about the process of business founding, headquarters’ placement, and other details that give a little more detail about both the project and the entire company.

Your entire team as well as all experts engaged in the project should not be left out either; within this section, you are welcome to talk about their skills, responsibilities, and allocation of duties. What’s more, it’s highly recommended to state the company’s owners as well as their technical cofounder equity. 

Apart from this, you should focus on the business goals of your company, as well as scaling and expansion approaches. Highlight the uniqueness of the idea and its value that makes the entire startup profitable.

Promotion Strategies 

Your plan should essentially include a significant section, such as a marketing roadmap. This part traditionally comprises the two following points:

• Analysis of the solution’s target customers 
• Competitors in the market, their threat level classification

Financial Flow

The financial processes of your tech startup are fundamental to building a successful business. Dedicate your financial plan to the following details:

• Balance sheet (representing the actual condition of finances)
• Spendings’ forecast
• Revenue prediction 
• Cash stream within the company (implying incoming and outgoing finances)
• Monetization model of your startup
• Forecasts of sales

Developing an excellent startup financial strategy

Here are some hints on building a perfect plan for your profit:

• Make your financial roadmap interconnected with the entire startup tech plan
• Prove the stated financial projections with comprehensive market analysis
• Benefit from readymade exemplification of existing financial roadmaps

Employees Presentation 

Describe your teammates in a section devoted to your staff. Firstly, state the heads that operate each department existing in your company. Next, describe every specialist in a nutshell. Describe their position, expertise, and duties.

Besides, point out the experts who are missing from the team. Describe their soft and hard skills, necessary knowledge, and specialization.

Extra Part to Comprise in a Software Project Roadmap:

You can include another additional section in your startup to provide investors and stakeholders with maximally detailed project disclosure. The following elements can be used for this purpose:

• Data visualization
• Patent information
• More of the company documentation

During the creation of this part, similar to all the others, make sure that the delivered content is concise and readable.

Tech Startup’s Creation with Templates

You can find a lot of existing startup plans online that can also be used to build a quality startup roadmap. However, remember that the most successful startup plan for your business needs is the one that is created from scratch. The most successful example of a business plan is delivered by Shopify, it is freely available online and can serve as an example of a quality roadmap.

Summarize

There are many examples of major market players that have gained global popularity through a structured, high quality and clear roadmap. Corporations like Netflix, Canva, WhatsApp, and Pinterest have successfully extended their businesses with the help of, now their digital products are applied all around the world. Therefore, an in-depth plan preparation is a key to the startup’s prosperity.

The qualitative roadmap for a newly-established software project can be developed only in cooperation with highly qualified IT specialists. A software development team with solid experience will help to attract investors quickly and drag the stakeholders’ attention to your startup.

Author

Yuliya Melnik is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It is a web and mobile app development company in Ukraine. She is passionate about innovative technologies that make the world a better place and loves creating content that evokes vivid emotions.