Business Plans Versus Business Models

Blank credits the line to The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2005), the book that introduced his Customer Development methodology: writing in 2013, he counted “no business plan survives first contact with customers” among the book’s concepts that “have become part of the entrepreneurial lexicon.” The line is his adaptation of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder’s military maxim “No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy,” which Blank cites by name at the top of his April 2010 essay contrasting business plans with business models. He and Bob Dorf later expanded the method into The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company (K&S Ranch, 2012).

The argument underneath: a business plan is built on customer-side assumptions about who will buy, at what price, through what channel, and why. Until those assumptions have met a real customer, they’re guesses, however many quarterly reviews have signed off on the slides. Blank’s prescription is to leave the office and test them, in interviews and prototypes rather than another round of refinement. He pairs the line with another mantra: “get out of the building.”