Business Plan Examples (From Six Real Founders)
Most "business plan examples" online are 30-page Word documents that nobody finishes reading and nobody finishes writing. They were built for someone applying for a $250,000 bank loan. They weren't built for someone starting with $28, a domain name, and a willingness to begin.
The six examples below are different. Each one is reconstructed from a real founder in The $100 Startup's 1,500-person study — different industries, different price points, different startup costs — but all filled into the same one-page format the book teaches. The point isn't to copy them. It's to see what each section sounds like when it's filled in honestly by someone who actually launched.
The five sections — Overview, Ka-Ching, Hustling, Success, Obstacles — come directly from The $100 Startup and the companion PDF. They cover the same ground as a traditional business plan, in a fraction of the words. The full walkthrough of the template explains why each section is there and how to fill it in for your own business.
What follows is six worked examples, one per category. Read the one closest to your business first. Then read one that isn't, because the pattern often shows up where you weren't looking.
Example 1 — Niche product business
Ecommerce · Maps & prints
These Are Things — Jen Adrion & Omar Noory
We design and sell hand-drawn art prints of cities and regions for design-minded travelers who want a beautiful reminder of the places they care about. We sell directly to consumers and through a small handful of design retailers. We're filling the gap between mass-market posters and custom-commissioned art.
Prints sell for $25–$60 depending on size. Customers pay through a PayPal button on a one-page website. Future revenue: limited-edition releases, framed prints, and wholesale relationships with independent shops.
Initial outreach to two design forums (Design*Sponge and Apartment Therapy) we already followed. Email signup on the homepage to collect interested visitors. Word-of-mouth referrals after the first run sold out — buyers shared photos on their own design blogs.
Sell through the first print run of 50 prints. Reach 1,000 email subscribers in six months. Replace one of our freelance design incomes within 12 months.
Concern: we don't know whether anyone outside our friends will buy. Solution: print only the minimum order (50 units) and use forum posts to gauge interest before printing more. Deadline: we will launch this project into the world no later than the end of this month.
Outcome: sold out in ten minutes after a design forum picked them up. Both Jen and Omar were doing it full-time within nine months.
Example 2 — Local services and experiences
Local · Food tours
Local Table Tours — Chelly Vitry
I run small-group walking food tours of Denver neighborhoods for tourists and locals who want to discover the city's food scene through someone who actually knows it. Each tour visits 5–7 restaurants and is led by me personally.
$60 per ticket. Customers book and pay through the website. Restaurants pay a small per-guest fee to be on the route. Future revenue: private tours, gift cards, corporate team events.
Direct outreach to Denver food bloggers and the city's tourism office. Partnerships with two hotels to feature the tour to their guests. A Yelp listing and a simple website that ranks for "Denver food tour."
Run three tours per week within six months. Reach $30,000 in year one. Replace consulting income within 18 months.
Concern: restaurants may not want to participate without a track record. Solution: lead with restaurants where I'm already a regular and offer the first round of guests for free in exchange for a placement. Deadline: first tour runs within 30 days of finalizing the route.
Outcome: scaled to roughly $60,000 a year. The startup cost was a few permits and a website — about $28 total.
Example 3 — Information product
Digital · Info product
Evernote Essentials — Brett Kelly
I publish a comprehensive guide to Evernote for new users who want to get past the "I downloaded it but don't know what to do with it" stage. The product is a downloadable PDF with worked examples, screenshots, and workflows for the common use cases.
$25 for the guide. Customers download immediately after purchase. Future revenue: tiered version with screencasts, updated editions, and a small affiliate fee from Evernote referrals.
Guest posts on productivity blogs that already cover Evernote. Email outreach to Evernote power users on Twitter. A free sample chapter offered on the sales page. Long-tail SEO from people Googling "how to use Evernote."
$2,000 in sales in the first month. $10,000 in year one. A repeat-purchase rate when updated editions are released.
Concern: someone could write the same guide for free and post it on a blog. Solution: lead with the convenience of a single download with screenshots and worked examples; price it cheap enough that the buyer's time-savings beat the cost. Deadline: launch within 45 days of finishing the first draft.
Outcome: more than $120,000 in total revenue from a single PDF about a notes app. The whole business was built around one downloadable file.
Example 4 — Photography / creative product
Creative · Photography prints
Photography Print Business — Nick Gatens
I sell limited-edition prints of my photography to people who want distinctive wall art they can't find on a stock-print site. Prints are signed, numbered, and printed on heavyweight paper.
Prints sell for $50–$200 depending on size and edition. Customers pay through Stripe on the website. Future revenue: commissioned location shoots and a yearly limited collection.
Share each new print on Instagram with a behind-the-scenes story. Email list signup on the site with a free print download as the magnet. Cross-promotions with two local interior designers.
Make the first sale (signed it the day the site goes up). Reach $1,000 in print sales in the first 90 days. $5,000 by the end of year one.
Concern: the site design isn't perfect yet. Solution: ship the site anyway and iterate after the first sale teaches me what the buyer actually cares about. Deadline: site goes up this weekend, full stop.
Outcome: a stranger followed a link from somewhere on the internet and paid $50 for a print within days of the site going live. Nick told me the first sale changed how seriously he took the whole project.
Example 5 — Niche software
Software · Niche SaaS
Music Teacher's Helper — Brandon Pearce
I build scheduling, billing, and student-management software for independent music teachers — people who run their own studios and need an end-to-end tool that fits their workflow. I'm building this for the exact category I belong to.
Monthly subscription, $15–$30 depending on plan. Customers sign up on the website and are billed automatically. Future revenue: higher-tier plans for music schools, payment processing fees, and add-on integrations.
Guest posts and ads in publications music teachers already read. A referral program that rewards teachers for inviting other teachers. Direct outreach to music-school owners. Word-of-mouth in teaching forums where I'm already active.
100 paying users in the first 12 months. $5,000 monthly recurring revenue by month 18. Eventually replace my full piano-teaching income.
Concern: I'm not a full-time software developer and the build will take a long time. Solution: ship a minimum version with only scheduling first, validate that teachers will pay, then add billing and student management based on real usage. Deadline: paid beta within 6 months.
Outcome: scaled past $30,000 a month in recurring revenue. Brandon lives in Costa Rica now, still running the business he started for a niche he already belonged to.
Example 6 — Service business / freelance
Service · Freelance design
Freelance Store Design — Charlie Pabst
I design retail store interiors for small chains and independent shops who want the polish of a corporate-built store without hiring a big agency. I do the same work I did at Starbucks, just for clients who couldn't afford Starbucks before.
Project-based pricing, $8,000–$25,000 per store depending on scope. 50% deposit on signing. Future revenue: ongoing retainers for chains opening multiple locations and a one-page consultation product for very small clients.
Direct outreach to small chain owners I've spotted in my travels. LinkedIn presence focused on retail-design case studies. A portfolio site that leads with finished spaces, not credentials. Referrals from architects and contractors I've worked with.
Three paid projects in year one. $60,000 in revenue. One returning client by the end of year two.
Concern: most of my portfolio is owned by Starbucks. Solution: build a small pro-bono project with a local coffee shop in exchange for full creative rights and photography. Deadline: portfolio site live within 60 days of leaving the corporate job.
Outcome: Charlie now earns around $100,000 a year doing the same kind of work he used to do for a corporation — just for himself, and for clients of his choosing.
What every example has in common
Read the six plans side by side and the same patterns show up. The product is named, not abstract. The customer is a specific human, not a demographic. The price is a real number. The channel is concrete — not "social media," but Design*Sponge and Apartment Therapy. The success metric is a number with a date on it. The obstacle is admitted, not hidden.
Notice what's not in any of them: a competitive matrix, a SWOT analysis, a three-year financial projection, an org chart, a pitch deck. None of these founders needed any of that to launch. None of them needed it to grow either.
Notice also the deadlines. Every example has one. "I will launch this project into the world no later than _________." That single line is the most important sentence on the page, and it's the one most people leave blank.
Ready to write your own? The one-page business plan guide walks through each of the five sections with the questions to answer and the common traps to avoid. You can have your version filled in by the end of the day.
Frequently asked questions
Are these business plan examples real?
Yes. Each one is built from a founder profiled in The $100 Startup's 1,500-person study — Jen Adrion and Omar Noory, Chelly Vitry, Brett Kelly, Nick Gatens, Brandon Pearce, and Charlie Pabst. The plans are reconstructed in the one-page format the book teaches, using each founder's actual product, audience, pricing, channels, and startup cost.
Why one-page business plan examples instead of full-length ones?
Because that's what these founders actually used. None of them wrote a 30-page plan before launching. The traditional template was built for someone borrowing $250,000 from a bank, not someone starting with $28 and a domain name. One-page plans are what micro-businesses run on.
Can I copy one of these examples for my business?
Copy the structure, not the content. The five-section template — Overview, Ka-Ching, Hustling, Success, Obstacles — is meant to be reused. The specifics in each example should serve as patterns for how each section sounds when filled in, not as fill-in-the-blank text for your business.
Where does the template come from?
From The $100 Startup. It's the same template covered in the book and in the free companion PDF. The full walkthrough of how to fill it in is on the one-page business plan guide on this site.
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