Do Indie Hackers write business plans?

A typical business plan probably is not that useful.
A set of expectations, core beliefs and related facts, however, is probably a good thing.

For startups, people often recommend creating a Lean canvas (google it, there is a template and saas created around it Ash Maurya).

I usually fill the Lean canvas and then add a set of values, that can help me when making decisions later on.

That being said, I'm a believer of: do what works for you to get you to the next stage.

Personally I'm a believer in small sustainable businesses. Within this mindset I have a core philosophy around which I build my product. This philosophy contains several core values. Some of these for me are:

• Prioritize user privacy over profits
• Focus on user experience
• Treat all users with equal respect and attention, however small they may be

Besides this I have a vision which would take myself over 5 years to realize, and then I'm not even talking about all the inspiration I get from talking with customers.

While the vision is big, the core values I follow allow me to fill in the blanks, and also allow me to make consistent decisions.

Now the funny thing is that I try to think about stuff to the point where it just makes sense for me. The pricing model for my product, for example, is based of some simple calculations I made on a piece of scrap paper, at a moment when I finally had a 'eureka' moment about that.

Now this will certainly not work well for everyone, but since I'm small, and have a vision, this is the way I work. It will not allow me to get a loan from a bank, but that's not what I need right now.

Ps. it definitely helps that I'm my own customer and I'm building the things I want to have myself.

A business plan is often useless. Planning is super helpful.

Make a plan but don't do the "Total Addressable market is 7 billion people, if just 1% use our product etc..." thing.

Yes.

Tons of people waste time and resources on failed startups because they never made a business plan. Survivors will tell you that they made it without one, but they often don't realize how many things they would've figured one from the beginning just by writing one.

A good business plan tells you if you even should "start up", or if you should just find a better idea.

I'm currently working through the "will it fly?" book by Pat Flynn, so far so good. It's not a canvas or a business plan or a product plan per se, but a way to test your idea from multiple angles before really committing to it. The very first task is a kind of a "founder-product fit" test which I found helpful in making sure I'm not rushing into anything that I won't be passionate about 5 years from now (made that mistake a couple of times before, living through consequences right now, pretty painful).

I've written about 3 business plans and I can say that it makes everything clear before you get too deep. You'll be able to determine what you operating costs are, and what you need to charge to turn a profit. You will also set goals that will get your product delivered.

IMHO, this is the only business plan you'll need (unless you're looking for VC/Angel funding, and even then proof of concept and revenue is much more important).

https://medium.com/@steve_mullen/an-introduction-to-lean-canvas-5c17c469d3e0

The issue with fully fledged business plans is they make a whack load of assumptions, and more often than not the market take you in wildly different directions.

I think a lean canvas and a SWOT analysis, will get you 80% of the way there. Talking to your potential customers, creating an MVP, launching and iterating quickly is the key to success.

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm

I recently attended a new business workshop. They said the time to write a business plan is when you are preparing to go to a bank to get a business loan. If that does not apply to you, a business plan is not necessary as they tend to be very long and overly detailed. Having a general idea of your mission and vision will probably be sufficient for a while.

I do mostly product planning /strategizing. Having our product prioritized around larger features are key for me to make time for everything. Also from an engineering point of view, the longer the roadmap of what needs to get built, the better I can be at planning to get it done.

Writing/strategizing does help me think through problems. For example, let's say there is a new vertical of business that we could go into, I like to write up an analysis / strategy doc and work through the pros and cons.

I think everyone does their own version of "planning" in some form or another.