Bottom-up, not top-down
Ask two models to size the market independently from your assumptions. When their numbers differ by ten times, you have found the assumption to check with real data before anyone else does.
Create a business plan with AI
Create a business plan with AI that you would actually follow.
Most business plans are written once, for a bank or a form, and never opened again. The useful kind is short, honest about what you do not know yet, and updated as you learn. AI makes that kind cheap to write and cheap to keep current. This page shows what goes in it, how several AIs make each section sharper than one would, and how to keep the plan alive in a Project instead of in a forgotten PDF.
Free to start. The latest models matter most for the financial and market sections.
The structure
The ten sections, and what "done" looks like for each
Write them in this order. Each is one conversation in the Project. If a section takes more than a page, it is hiding a decision you have not made.
| Section | The question it answers | Done looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | What is this, for whom, and why now? | Three sentences a stranger understands. |
| Problem | What do customers do today and what does it cost them? | Evidence from real conversations, not assumptions. |
| Customer | Who exactly buys, and who decides? | A named type of person with a job and a budget. |
| Offer and business model | What do they get, and how do you get paid? | One offer, one price, one reason it is worth it. |
| Market | How many of these customers exist and how many can you reach? | A bottom-up number with each assumption on its own line. |
| Competition | What do they use instead, and why would they switch? | A table with real prices and real complaints. |
| Product and delivery | What will you build or deliver first? | A version-one scope you can finish in weeks. |
| Marketing and sales | Where do the first fifty customers come from? | Two channels you can name, and the first message. |
| Financials | What does it cost, what comes in, when does it break even? | A twelve-month spreadsheet at three prices. |
| Risks and milestones | What would make you stop, and what are the next three milestones? | A stop rule and dated milestones. |
Where AI helps most
Three sections where a second opinion changes the plan
Any AI can draft a business plan. The value is in the sections where a single confident answer is most likely to be wrong.
Costs you forgot
One model builds the twelve-month sheet; another lists what is missing. Payment fees, taxes, refunds, the month you will need to pay for help. The second pass is where plans become honest.
What customers actually complain about
Upload competitors' pricing pages and their worst reviews to the Project. Ask for the pattern. That pattern is your positioning, and it belongs in the plan in the customers' own words.
Keep the plan in the Project, not in a file
A plan in a Project can be asked questions: "Given this plan, what should I do this week?" A plan in a PDF cannot. Update the sections as you learn, and every later conversation starts from the current version.
If the plan is for someone else
Banks, grants and partners: what changes
If a bank or grant body needs a plan, they usually have a template. Paste it into the Project and ask for the plan in that structure, drawn from the sections above. Do not let the template make you invent numbers; write "not yet known, will be tested by [date]" where that is the truth. Reviewers trust a plan that admits gaps more than one that fills them with guesses.
For a partner or first hire, the summary, the customer, the offer and the milestones are enough. Generate a one-page version and a short deck from the Project; they will read the same facts as the long plan because they come from the same place.
Free is the start. The latest models are the difference.
The market and financial sections need the strongest reasoning you can get.
Drafting a summary is easy for any model. Sizing a market bottom-up from real assumptions, finding the cost lines a first-time founder forgets, and arguing whether a price is too low: these are reasoning tasks, and the latest models do them noticeably better than older or smaller ones. If the plan is going to a bank or into your own savings, that is where to spend.
Newer models hold your whole Project in view instead of the last few messages, reason through trade-offs instead of picking the first plausible answer, and are wrong less often and with less confidence. For the questions on this page, that is the difference between advice that sounds right and advice you can act on.
Pro from $20 a month, cancel any time. The free plan stays free.
- Your first Project and file uploads
- The major AI families to try the workflow
- A small daily message allowance
- The latest ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity models, all on the same Project
- Far more messages a day, so a working session does not stop halfway
- Modes where several models draft, challenge and verify each other's answers
- Spreadsheets and documents generated directly from the Project
- Sourced web research for market and competitor facts
Start here
First messages for a business-plan Project
Add the idea and anything you already know: customer notes, competitor pages, a rough budget.
OutlineDraft the ten sections of a business plan for this idea, one paragraph each. Mark every sentence that is an assumption rather than a fact.
MarketSize the market bottom-up. Show every assumption on its own line and tell me which one you are least sure about.
FinancialsBuild a twelve-month budget as a spreadsheet at three prices, then list the costs I have forgotten.
CompetitionFrom the competitor material in this Project, build the comparison table and tell me what customers complain about most.
RisksList the ten ways this business fails, ranked by likelihood. For each, what early sign would I see and what is the stop rule?
Bank versionHere is the template my bank requires. Produce the plan in that structure from this Project, writing "to be tested" wherever we do not have evidence.
Honest answers
What people ask
Can AI write my whole business plan?
It can draft every section, and with your notes in the Project the draft will be specific to you. What it cannot do is know your customer. The plan is only as good as the conversations and evidence you feed it.
How long should a business plan be?
Ten sections of a page or less. Longer plans hide decisions. If someone needs a longer document, generate it from the short one.
Do I need a business plan before I start?
You need the customer, the offer, the first channel and the stop rule. The rest can be filled in as you learn. Writing those four down is the plan.
Will a bank accept an AI-written plan?
Banks care about the numbers and whether you understand them. A plan whose assumptions are visible and whose financials are bottom-up does well. A plan full of invented figures does not, whoever wrote it.
How is this different from a template?
A template gives you headings. This gives you the questions, the evidence standard for each section, and several AIs checking the answers. Then it keeps the plan alive in a Project.
What is free?
Your first Project, file uploads and the major model families. The latest models, generated spreadsheets and documents, and sourced research are on paid plans. See plans.
Write the four sentences that matter, then the rest.
Customer, offer, first channel, stop rule. Put them in a Project and let several models build the plan around them. Free to start.
Also: validate the idea · start a business with AI · create a marketing plan