Terry Drayton and Adina Mangubat on business planning and risk

Buerk Center Resource Nights: Business Planning and Risk

Startups are hard—identifying opportunity, developing a business plan, understanding legal issues, marketing your product. Luckily, you can learn a lot about navigating the startup world from entrepreneurs who’ve been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale.

Resource Nights, presented during winter quarter by the Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, feature experts from the local entrepreneur community sharing their knowledge on various aspects of starting a business.

This week’s class, “Business Planning and Risk,” featured Terry Drayton, founder of Storrage and Adina Mangubat, founder of Spiral Genetics. The two entrepreneurs shared their thoughts on startup relationships, managing risk, and entrepreneurial game plans.

Read some of our favorite advice and insights below, watch the entire class video here, and check back weekly for more Resource Nights coverage.

Business Plans

“The business plan should be a living document because the market is constantly shifting underneath you. You’ll work hard on a business plan, bring it out into the real world, and realize it’s not going to work. Starting a business is basically a never-ending game of pivoting,” says Mangubat, whose startup made three substantial pivots before landing where it is today.

“I’m a believer in the one-page business plan, says Drayton. “When I got my MBA back in the early 80’s, business plans were graded by the pound—100s of pages of crap.” But now, well into his entrepreneurial career, Drayton likes the idea of having to fit everything down on one page. “It forces you to be brutal with editing and only include the things that really matter,” he says.

Finding the Right Startup Partner(s)

“Finding the right startup partner is like choosing your significant other,” says Mangubat. “You don’t want just anybody. Just like in love, you have to be picky and patient, and wait until you find someone who resonates with what you’re trying to do—someone who you can trust and communicate with.”

Measuring Risk

“You can come up with 500 reasons not to do something, and by the time you’re done meeting with a list of venture capitalists and angel investors, they’ll have given you 500 more,” says Drayton. “Your job is to pay attention to the ones that keep you up at night.”

“Hundreds of people will tell you no,” says Mangubat. “They will tell you you’re too young, not qualified, or crazy. But if you are passionate about what you are doing and really believe you can do it, don’t listen to them, and just go for it.”

The Startup Game

“Think of how bad some [NFL] teams are,” says Drayton, while speaking on the importance of having a game plan. “They have the same amount of money as other teams, they can hire the same people, have the same amount of draft picks, but they’re just awful. It’s because they need a game plan. Imagine the Seahawks without a game plan. It would be inconceivable!”