Business plan prompt template

AI can draft a 30-page business plan in a minute, and that is not what you want. Long plans hide weak assumptions under polished prose. A lean plan, one that fits on a few pages and shows its numbers, is faster to write, easier to defend and what most banks and early investors actually read. This prompt asks for that shape and makes the model mark every number it had to guess.

The prompt Promptay builds

Role: You are a small-business advisor who helps founders write lean, honest business plans for bank loans and local investors.
Task: Draft a lean business plan for a mobile bike repair service that fixes bikes at the customer's home or office.
Context: The city has about 400,000 people and a growing commuter cycling scene. I am a trained mechanic with a cargo van and 8,000 EUR in savings. Planned pricing: 45 EUR call-out plus parts, and a 99 EUR yearly maintenance plan. Competitors are two bike shops with a 1-week repair wait.
Format: Sections with headings: Problem, Solution, Target customers, Competition, Pricing and revenue model, 12-month financial forecast (a table with monthly revenue, costs and cash), Risks and how to reduce them, Next 90 days.
Constraints: Keep it under 1,200 words. Mark every number you estimate with [assumption] and say what it is based on. Be direct about the biggest risk. No filler about passion or vision.

Why this prompt works

• The founder's real situation is in the context. Savings, equipment and prices anchor the forecast to something you can check.
• Competition is concrete. A one-week wait at existing shops is the opening this business sells into, and the model can build the positioning around it.
• Assumptions are tagged. Every [assumption] is a question a lender will ask; seeing them all in one place shows where to do research.
• Risks are required. Asking for the biggest risk up front makes the plan more credible, not less.

How to adapt it

Put your own market size, prices and starting capital in the context; the plan is only as good as those lines. If the plan is for investors rather than a bank, add a section on how much you are raising and what it buys. Different models handle numbers differently, so check the forecast table cell by cell and re-run the prompt in a second model if anything looks off.

Ideas to try next:

• "One-page executive summary of this business plan for a bank loan officer"
• "List the 10 questions an investor would ask about this plan, with answers"
• "Break-even analysis for the maintenance plan at 3 different prices"