Nearly every business plan format — SBA, bank, investor or immigration — is built from the same ten elements. What changes between formats is the depth each one gets, not whether it appears.
The executive summary is one to two pages summarising the business, the market, the ask and the headline numbers. Written last, read first, and often the only page read in full.
The market analysis carries industry size and growth, the target segment, buying behaviour and the trends that make the timing work. Every figure should be attributed — an unattributed market size is the most common reason a plan reads as unserious.
The marketing plan must reconcile with the revenue build: if the model assumes 1,200 customers, the marketing plan has to plausibly produce 1,200 customers at the stated cost per acquisition. The funding request breaks the use of funds into line items tied to milestones.
Financial projections cover three to five years of profit and loss, cash flow and balance sheet, with monthly detail for the first 12 to 18 months, a break-even analysis, and the assumptions behind every revenue line.