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How to Write a Business Plan

· 113 min read

How to Write a Business Plan

Part 11 of 15  ·  AI for business planning

Part 11: The AI Toolkit — Prompts That Actually Improve a Plan

AI will not write a fundable business plan for you. It will make you roughly three times faster at the parts that are drudgery, and — used adversarially — it will find the holes a credit analyst would find, while you still have time to fix them.

One principle governs everything in this part: AI drafts and challenges; you verify and decide. Any number that enters your plan must come from a source you can name, not from a model that sounds confident.

Chapter 59A working AI process for business planning

The seven-step AI-assisted workflow

  1. 1Structure. Have AI build your section outline and a question list per section. Ten minutes, saves hours.
  2. 2Research design. Generate interview guides, survey instruments and a competitor factor list. Then do the fieldwork yourself.
  3. 3Synthesis. Feed it your raw interview notes, IDP extracts and quotes; ask for patterns and contradictions.
  4. 4Drafting. Write your own rough version first, then ask AI to tighten it. Drafting from nothing produces generic text.
  5. 5Modelling support. Ask it to explain formulas, check logic, and build sensitivity structures — never to invent inputs.
  6. 6Adversarial review. Have it attack the plan as a credit analyst, an investor and a competitor, in three separate passes.
  7. 7Polish. Consistency check across numbers, terminology, tense and tone; then a plain-language pass.

Prompt library

What AI is good at, and what it is dangerous at

Reliability by task
Task Reliability Verification required
Structuring and outlining High Light — check against funder requirements
Rewriting and tightening prose High Read it; make sure it still says what you meant
Explaining a financial concept or formula High Test the formula on a known example
Generating risk registers and checklists High Edit down to what is real for you
Adversarial critique High — the best use case None; it is meant to be uncomfortable
Industry benchmark ranges Medium Verify against an industry body or your own data
Named competitors, prices, market share Low Verify every single item independently
Statistics, market size, growth rates Low Never use without a primary source
Regulatory limits, incentive criteria, programme rules Low Always confirm with the institution directly
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