Entrepreneur: The business plan

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 (UPI) -- The document's almost done and has begun to shape up nicely. Over the past several hours we worked out some bugs in the math, created adjustable formulas in the appropriate Excel spreadsheets and made the overall product look worlds better than it did before.

The business plan is almost complete.

I'm 28 years old, just finished business school as of May and have been running a small tech consulting business to pay living expenses for grad school. I've been actively using computers for the past 21 years and writing about technology for the past five.

If there's something about computers that grips me, it's the fact that they're essentially organic in nature. True, they follow certain rules and guidelines given that there are some ground rules as to how hardware and software behave and interact. Remember the ground rules and the rest is easy.

When computers change, that's where things become interesting. Every so often, someone finds a way for a computer to do something completely new, and the technology changes overnight. In years past, a college dropout popularized the idea that computers could be used to listen to music through a shareware program called Napster. Google, born in a dorm room with the notion of getting faster and more accurate Internet search results, has since become a critical staple of the Internet, and as eBay folds Skype into its array of online trading tools, a new use has been found for voice communication in online auctions.

It's this energy, this surge from finding a new way to do something with the technology at hand, that I've followed since I first became interested in computers. It's also this energy that I want to bring to the business plan and hopefully use to attract an audience with a similar ideal that can help make my idea a success.

Not the most conventional idea in the world -- and that may be the problem. As much as I believe in what I'm doing and what I've written in the proposal, there comes the fact that I'm not what a venture capitalist might generally see.

When I finished undergrad in 2000, I had a bachelor's in English and minors in Journalism and Creative Writing under my belt. After 15 months with a local school system's IT department, I left for grad school at my former alma mater only to show up to my first economics class sporting blue hair and a Linux t-shirt, consulting for a living while most of my classmates had marriages, mortgages and homes in the suburbs to worry about.

And, a few years later, with an MBA and a marketing award in hand, I've ventured back into the real world, or as real as anyone in consulting can attest to. You make your own schedule in this realm, feasting one week and starving the next while kind of wondering what a conventional office job is like. You're selling what you know about computers, especially since your clients don't want to be bothered.

It's an interesting job, but not something to plan a future around. You're in the disaster business, the guy you call when your hard drive melts or you can't print or your toddler has fed oatmeal to the DVD drive. And while the money's fine (the industry mantra: "for so much money per hour, I can put up with anything"), the clientele varies. Like a performer after too many tours, there comes an urge to start something new and see if it sticks.

This is not a career.

I've been working on the plan for almost a year now, and during that time this document has changed dramatically. A revised version of a previous plan to acquire an Internet property that couldn't be attained and then develop it from there, this is a dot-com proposal in a time where few people want to hear these words and still flinch when they're spoken. And while I've attached a solid, material set of products to the plan to which there's been more than ample demand, I'm not sure if I really believe anyone's going to shell out over half a million dollars to make this happen.

Even if I don't believe, there are those that actually do. The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business runs a monthly pitch contest in which local students can come and present their ideas on a weekly basis as well as in their monthly contests. Following the advice of a friend, I pitched the idea to the board and walked out, assured that I'd been blown out of the water by everyone else. A week later, I was informed via e-mail that I'd tied for second place and had gained full access to the entrepreneurship program's resources.

Even if I didn't take the idea seriously, a room of faculty, grad students and local entrepreneurs had.

It was later that week that I flew home to Rhode Island for spring break and ran the current draft of the plan by my parents. As much filial affection as there may be among the three of us, there are also boundaries. They accept and fill supportive roles, but there's an inalienable pragmatism that can't be denied, especially if they feel their firstborn is about to invest a fair amount of time, money and attention in something that's doomed to fail. If there's a critical flaw in my logic, I'll hear about it.

After leaving them alone with the plan for a few hours, I came down the stairs and discussed the idea with them. While they asked how well I knew my market, how I would advertise and where I'd set up an office, they supported what I was doing, advised I follow it up and make sure I kept my day job until then. There'd be no fiscal support from their end, but the notion was solid enough to pass in their eyes.

I was free to pursue the plan with a clean conscience.

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Chris Barylick is a technical consultant in Washington. He will be filing a monthly column on his entrepreneurial journey to launch a tech company.