10 best business plan templates for startups in 2023
Being an entrepreneur isn’t always as glamorous as it sounds. While the startup world is rich with opportunity, it’s also fraught with high-risk stakes. But with the right business plan templates and tools, you will increase your chances of success.
According to Harvard Business Review, entrepreneurs who write a business plan are more likely to achieve viability than non-planning entrepreneurs. Even if you’ve made it past your first year, you should think about planning if you want to thrive long-term.
In the current economic climate, businesses are struggling with higher costs as soaring energy bills and high inflation threaten to plunge the economy into recession. Startups face particular challenges such as a lack of growth funding, harsher terms from investors, and tighter budgets for their products.
With things changing quickly, a robust business plan is crucial to the success of your new venture. Not only will it help you lay out your goals and track your progress as you grow, but it’s an important tool to help you win the necessary investment and support for your idea.
- Product roadmap template
- User feedback template
- Growth experiments template
- Lightweight CRM business template
- Remote team hub template
- Employee directory template
- Business expenses template
- Applicant tracker template
- Project tracker template
- Email marketing campaigns template
What business templates do I need?
While static plans are okay, you’ll get far more value from a dynamic business plan that lets you connect all of your data, workflows, and teams. With Baserow’s no-code database, you can build a powerful business plan quickly and easily, uniting every stream of work and creating one central hub that’s tailored to your needs.
This relational database lets you easily capture, organize and manage your data at all stages of your startup’s lifecycle, with lots of tools and features for better flexibility, efficiency, and collaboration. Baserow’s premade business plan templates are designed to help you tackle even the most complex of projects right away, so you can start planning from the get-go.
As your business grows, your database can grow with you without any issues along the way. You don’t need to worry about inputting the wrong data, wasting money, or getting bogged down in boring tasks. Baserow integrates easily with many other (no-code) tools and automates your data and processes so your business can run smoothly and seamlessly.
All of our business plan templates are available on our free pricing plan. We also offer premium and advanced plans as your business grows and you need more sophisticated features. The software is easy to use for teams, even without any technical experience. And because it’s open source, there’s no vendor lock-in.
10 best startup business plan templates
Here’s a look at the 10 best business plan templates for all of your startup needs. They’ll help you with everything, from creating an overall business database to managing all of the different elements such as product development, user feedback, growth experiments, and much more.
These pre-built templates include everything you need to build your database quickly and easily, leaving you free to invest your time in what matters most – building a great startup!
Product roadmap template
Baserow’s product roadmap template lets you track and align your product development all the way from ideation to completion. Regardless of your industry, it’s an invaluable tool for communicating the vision and progress of your products, making it easier to set tasks, allocate resources, create timelines, and stay on top of development.
Build a product roadmap in a few hours with an array of rows, columns, and fields that ensure nothing slips through the net. This table displays everything you need, including product details and descriptions, dates and deadlines, assigned teams, and feature releases. You’ll find simple features for sorting, filtering, sharing, and collaborating. And you can view your data easily in a traditional table or kanban view.
Multiple teams and stakeholders can access your product roadmap via the cloud, with various views for different roles. With this product roadmap template, you can simplify the entire process of managing your products with one centralized hub for your product strategy. Using a relational database like Baserow makes it flexible and scalable, so your product roadmap can grow with your business.
User feedback template
In the initial stages of any product launch, it’s vital to listen to your customers. You’ve spent a significant amount of time and resources on developing a great product, but now you need to get that all-important market feedback. You might not like everything they say, but it’s the best way to identify any issues your customers have and make any necessary changes.
Did your users experience any bugs or glitches? Did they love some features but not others? Would they recommend it to others? Gathering this information is critical to your success. Baserow’s user feedback template comes with ready-made survey forms so you can capture data in real-time, along with helpful fields for organizing and displaying certain types of information.
Connect all your user feedback data in one workflow, including comments, satisfaction scores, survey results, complaints, and more. And easily import data from other sources such as Google Sheets and Excel. Capture, interpret, and filter any user feedback right in the template. And invite collaborators, setting permissions for what they can view and edit.
Growth experiments template
The goal of any startup is to grow into a fully-fledged business. But in today’s uncertain economic climate, more and more businesses need to experiment before committing to a single path for growth. This is where growth experiments, also known as growth hacking, can help you figure out where your new experiment will land you in the market.
With Baserow’s growth experiment template, you can keep track of key metrics such as experiment details, costs, revenues, and new users. The template organizes all experiment data into clear, easy-to-use tables that fuel strategic decisions when determining which direction to go in. With various views for statuses and outcomes, it’s easy to see what worked, and what to do more of.
Log all previous and new experiments for a quick overview of successes and failures. And keep track of all new and existing customers and their engagement with growth experiments – this is especially useful when considering the cost of acquiring new customers. Display your growth experiments by quarters. And easily see a list of all partners used for various campaigns and experiments.
Lightweight CRM business template
You’ve developed a great product, so now you’ll need a way to track your sales and manage customer relationships. No business plan would be complete without a CRM tool to help you close more and more deals.
Our lightweight CRM template is perfect for startups who want a simple solution to manage their clients and track opportunities. It acts as a great starting point that you can set up quickly and customize to fit your workflow.
Because it’s not overly complicated, you won’t get bogged down with countless features that you don’t need. It gets straight to the point, allowing you to manage contacts, companies, opportunities, and activities, with only the necessary fields for you to get started. What’s more, it can be used by any number of people so that as your team grows, your CRM can grow with you.
Remote team hub template
In the post-pandemic world, more and more companies are shifting to a remote workforce. If you haven’t already, you might shift to a remote workstyle as your startup grows and you open offices in new locations. When you’re on a remote team, a central hub provides an all-in-one source of truth for your organization, combining and organizing your projects, tasks, meetings, events, team details, and more.
Baserow’s remote team hub template includes an overview of key information that can significantly improve your business outcomes, encouraging interaction and collaboration across different departments and time zones. With this template, you can communicate effectively, coordinate projects and keep your whole team informed and engaged.
Employee directory template
Whether you’re a startup or a big corporation, an employee directory should be part of your overall database. With Baserow’s employee directory template, you can write everything down, creating a central hub of employee data to keep track of things like contact details, job titles, departments, office locations, birthdays, and more.
Built on a relational database, structured information in tables, rows and columns can be linked, making it easier to gain insights about various data points. You can use the template to keep track of where your offices are located, collaborate with different departments, check job roles and descriptions, and more. It’s easy to add new employees, filter information and list any number of employees, whether it’s just a few, or thousands.
Business expenses template
As a startup, you need to be capital efficient and watch your expenses. . Office supplies, travel expenses, SaaS subscriptions, accountants, freelancers, and client entertainment all add up when you start tallying what you really spend. If you’re looking for a dynamic tool to help with this, Baserow’s business expense template is what you need.
Replace your Google Sheets or Excel spreadsheets, and stay on track of all of your expenses both large and small. Not only can you keep track of your own expenses, but you can track all of your team’s expenses and attach any documentation, all in one place.
Sort expenses by types, suppliers, teams, departments, and office locations. Our tool records and monitors everything, with formulas to calculate expenses, columns to specify details, and rows to record each expense item.
You can make better decisions around budget planning, compare budget estimates to actuals, create different views of your expenses, and save time by making the most of the many built-in formulas and tools. That way you can spend less time crunching the numbers and more time on building an amazing startup.
Applicant tracker template
Manage the entire hiring process in one place with Baserow’s applicant tracker template. With so many applicants applying for different jobs, the hiring process can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. Fortunately, this application tracker can handle everything, from candidates and contact details, to job descriptions, interview dates, interview scores and notes, references, and more.
With this easy-to-use tool, you can focus on the most important components of the hiring process, so you’ll be able to hire the best candidates in no time at all. And because it’s built on Baserow’s no-code relational database, it’s flexible and scalable, so it can grow with your business.
Project tracker template
Startup founders often juggle a long list of projects, tasks, and chores. And while Google Sheets and Excel spreadsheets provide a way to list them all, Baserow’s database lets you connect integrations, automation, and people for seamless and streamlined project management.
Our project tracker template lets you manage projects, tasks, clients, and teams from one central database. Easily categorize and organize each task using rows, columns, filters, and other tools. Flexible enough for small and big businesses alike, it’s easy to prioritize due dates for each deliverable and view the progress of each project in real-time with custom-tailored views.
Email marketing campaigns template
Baserow’s email marketing campaigns template can handle every stage of your email marketing process, all in one place. List, organize, and manage everything, from campaign names and subject lines to deadlines, email lists, collaborators, and more. This template allows you to keep on top of each and every email marketing campaign from start to finish, with a clear description of all elements involved in the process.
The campaign table displays a total of 15 fields, to collect the most important details such as descriptions, images, draft links, team members, and more. Sort and filter easily, and view campaigns in table or kanban views. There’s also a shareable form for new campaign suggestions.
Specific email lists can help you hone in on the right audience for each campaign, increasing the chances of positive engagement. When it comes to your teams, it’s easy to identify who is working on which campaign, along with metrics to help you identify which team member is best suited for what.
Get started with our business templates and database
If you’re interested in creating a bespoke database for your business then check out our pre-made business plan templates or sign up for Baserow and make a bespoke database that’s tailored to your exact requirements.
All of our business plan templates are available for free on our basic plan, while our premium and advanced plans are perfect for larger startups and businesses with big data volumes.
Other useful resources
Baserow version 1.20 comes with email notifications, workspace level audit log, search for calendar view, new shortcuts, context menu improvements, and more.