This is, of course, just a partial list of risks.
Even though you may feel that the risks are negligible, potential investors will feel otherwise unless you demonstrate that you have given a lot of thought to what can go wrong and have taken prudent steps to mitigate these risks.
Poorly organized
Your idea should flow in a nice, organized fashion. Each section should build logically on the previous section, without requiring the reader to know something that is presented later in the plan.
Although there is no single "correct" business plan structure, one successful structure is as follows:
Executive Summary: This is a brief, 1 to 3 page summary of everything that follows in the plan. It should be a stand-alone document, as many readers will make their initial decision based on the executive summary alone. This should usually be written last; otherwise, you have nothing to summarize!
Background: If you are in a highly specialized field, you should provide some background in layman terms since most investors will not have advanced degrees in your field.
Market Opportunity: Describe how businesses and consumers are suffering, and how much they are willing to pay for a solution.
Products or Services: Describe what you do, and how your solution fits into the market opportunity.
Market Traction: Describe how you have succeeded in attracting customers, marketing and distribution partnerships, and other alliances that demonstrate that experts in your market are betting on your solution.
Competitive Analysis: Identify your direct and indirect competitors, and describe how your solution is better.
Distribution and Marketing Strategy: Describe how you will go to market, how you will price your products, etc.
Risk Analysis: Identify major sources of risks, and describe how you are mitigating them.
Milestones: Showcase a strong past track record, and describe key checkpoints for the future.
Company and Management: Provide the basic facts about your company - where and when you incorporated, where you are located, and brief biographies of your core team.
Financials: Provide summaries of your P&L and cash flows, and the assumptions used to come up with these. Also describe your funding needs, how you will use the proceeds, and possible exit strategies for investors.
As stated earlier, there is no "right" structure - you will need to experiment to find the one that best suits your business.
Your business plan is very often the first impression potential investors get about your venture. But even if you have a great product, team, and customers, it could also be the last impression the investor gets if you make any of these avoidable mistakes.
Financial Model Mistakes
Forgetting Cash
Revenues are not cash. Gross margins are not cash. Profits are not cash. Only cash is cash.
For example, suppose you sell something this month for $100, and it cost you $60 to make it. But you have to pay your suppliers within 30 days, while the buyer probably won't pay you for at least 60 days.
In this case, your revenue for the month was $100, your profit for the month was $40, and your cash flow for the month was zero. Your cash flow for the transaction will be negative $60 next month when you pay your suppliers.
Although this example may seem trivial, very slight changes in the timing difference between cash receipt and disbursement - just a couple of weeks - can bankrupt your business.
When you build your financial model, make sure that your assumptions are realistic so that you raise sufficient capital.
Lack of Detail
Your financials should be constructed from the bottom-up, and then validated from the top-down.
A bottom-up model starts with details such as when you expect to make certain sales, or when you expect to hire specific employees.
Top-down validation means that you examine your overall market potential and compare that to the bottom-up revenue projections.
Round numbers - like one million in R&D expenses in Year 2, and two million in Year 3 - are a sure sign that you do not have a bottom-up model.
Unrealistic financials
Only a very small handfull of companies achieve $100 million or more in sales only five years after founding.
Projecting much more than that will not be credible, and will get your business plan canned faster than almost anything else.
On the other hand, a business with only $25 million in revenues after five years will be too small to interest serious investors.
Financial forecasts are a litmus test of your understanding of how venture capitalists think.
If you have a realistic basis for projecting $50-100 million in Year 5, you are probably a good candidate for venture financing. Otherwise, you should probably look elsewhere.
Insufficient financial projections
Basic financial projections consist of three fundamental elements: Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and Cash Flow Statements. All of these must conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP.
Investors generally expect to see five years of projections. Of course, nobody can see five years into the future. Investors primarily want to see the thought process you employ to create long-term projections.
A good financial model will also include sensitivity analyses, showing how your projected results will change if your assumptions turn out to be incorrect. This allows both you and the investor to identify the assumptions that can have a material effect on your future performance, so that you can focus your energies on validating those assumptions.
They should also include benchmark comparisons to other companies in your industry - things like revenues per employee, gross margin per employee, gross margin as a percentage of revenues, and various expense ratios (general and administrative, sales and marketing, research and development, and operations as a percentage of total operating expenses).