Last January when we were establishing On The Fly Entertainment we decided we’d need a business plan. We wanted to hash out on paper if a small social game studio would be able to employ a handful of people, and really research our market. This also was a big help when approaching funding agencies.
This was hugely time consuming for me as I didn’t have the first clue about writing a business plan. I cut down on industry jargon considering the folks reading the business plan may not have a Facebook account, so the first third of the business plan eases them into the concepts of free to play games on a social network and all that jazz. The rest is market research with comparisons to our own plans. Although this is geared towards a social network game studio, the format would work just as well for a Flash or XBLA/PSN focused business plan.
If you’re in internet explorer, download the doc
It seems like a waste to let this while away on my desktop, and it’s a pain to find business plan resources for very small indie studios. So if you don’t have a “Business” guy hopefully this is a help to you. Only thing left out of this is our cashflow projections, which in hindsight, were a bit… off. If there are any improvements you want to suggest feel free to leave a comment!