App Review: Problemio's Business Plan Tool
Houston is a great city for entrepreneurs. We have an amazing network of support systems and resources such as the Houston Technology Center, StationHouston, Houston Lean Startup Circle, and the Houston Angel Network to name a few, that offer guidance, workshops, advice and even networking opportunities to bring investors and startups together. Lots of mentors and volunteers are eager to help Houston’s entrepreneurs succeed, and most of these resources offer excellent how-to guides and templates for generating a business plan.
But if you are unable to take advantage of these opportunities or just want to get familiar with what a business plan is and how to create one, there is a terrific app developed by Problemio that offers a step-by-step guide and tutorials available right from your mobile device. It provides helpful tips and instructional support to guide entrepreneurs through the business plan process in a way designed to help you avoid costly mistakes like inconsistency, over-hyping your business with superlatives or poor research.
Problemio Business Plan Tool
The app provides lessons on each part of the business plan that are easy to digest in about 20 minutes. You won’t find a lot of visual elements, in fact it’s very text heavy, but the overviews are a simple introduction to the concepts and building blocks necessary for a business plan, and will set you in the right direction to conduct further research.
One thing I like about this app is that it includes summaries on three areas that many entrepreneurs simply aren’t familiar with:
- Product Strategy
- Target Market
- Market Validation.
The app does a great job of describing these topics and explaining their importance, and also gives some ideas of ‘what not to do’ so your plan is more likely to succeed.
Along with the tutorials, the app offers the ability for users to create a free account so you can capture your thoughts by creating notes or summaries for each section of the business plan. This enables you to document your findings categorically in a way that makes sense for compiling a business plan. It also gives you some indication of gaps in your plan because you can reference the dashboard to see which areas lack supporting evidence.
While I wouldn’t count on this app to generate your final business plan, I think it’s a great tool for storing the important details and notes associated with your idea in real-time as they occur. Or you can use this as a reference for learning and understanding more about the components of a good business plan while you are on-the-go.
Problemio Business Plan is a free app available in the Google Play and Apple App stores.