Business plans were meant to be broken or tweaked a countless times until they run right – not look great on paper. As a start-up takes, what is essential a good idea on paper and tries to make it operate in the real world they will run up against several roadblocks. These could come from faulty assumptions, not targeting the right market, not having the right product, or a countless other gremlins that are conspicuously absent in the pristine land of business plans created for academic review. 

The process of analyzing what part of your business plan fits the real world and constantly changing what doesn’t fit to work without breaking everything else is a daunting process, but also one that gives any entrepreneur the most bang-for-your buck in terms of learning and understanding your market, product, and business. Many successful start-ups (hotmail.com to name just one) grew not out of their primary business plan, but a realization by the founders during this iterative process of a more sustainable opportunity. 

From a legal perspective, it’s important for a start-up to make sure than any new technical developments by founders in the area or related areas of the original business plan are assigned to the company during their time with the start-up (in some cases including related developments by key-founders shortly after they leave the company might also reasonable). The presence of a sensible and balanced non-competition clause in existing founder agreements will also help the founders have more confidence in their start-up team and could help keep the team together during this rather trying process by discouraging defection by a team member who thinks he/she can do it alone without his/her co-founders.