A Systematic Approach to Writing and Rating
Entrepreneurial Business Plans
KEVIN HINDLE AND BRENT MAINPRIZE

KEVIN HINDLE is a professor of entrepreneurship at the Australian
Graduate School of
Entrepreneurship,
Swinburne University of
Technology. Melbourne,
Australia.
khindle@swin.edu.au

BRENT MAINPRIZE is the core professor of entrepreneurship in the
Faculty of Management at
Royal Roads University in
British Columbia, Canada. brent.inainprize@royalroads.ca T

here is a small but growing b o d y of research that details many desirable attributes a n d qualities that, at a general level, any entrepreneurial business plan should contain. It is a reasonable proposition that this research, and any principles it may contain, can and should provide the basis for a systematic approach t o b o t h the writing and evaluation of entrepreneurial business plans. Despite this, the majority of entrepreneurial business plan writing and evaluation is unsystematic—if systematic is taken to mean
"based o n empirical evidence and developed theory." T h e vast majority of the a b u n d a n t literature on " h o w to write a successful business p l a n " is n o t research-based (Hindle [1997]).
T h e espoused criteria of its authors far o u t weigh the formal application of the k n o w n attributes of successful ventures (Hindle and
Mainprize [2002]). This article seeks to articulate a research-based system for assessing the c o n t e n t quality of e n t r e p r e n e u r i a l business plans (EBPs) from t h e p o i n t of v i e w of an investor (more specifically, a venture capitalist investor). As a natural corollary, its fmdings may also serve as a guide to writers of e n t r e preneurial business plans.
As the primary source of information for t h e investment screening decision, v e n t u r e capital firms rely almost exclusively