recommend MBA students to help with business plan?

[NeedCoffee]

I was told MBA students have to compose a full business plan as their business college project. I was thinking about posting flyers at the MBA department at a local university campus bartering my concept in exchange for their business skills to help me get my business plan together. Do you advise against this or is this common practice?

 

[Polo]

Actually, it depends on the requirements for each university.
When I did my MBA there was a capstone course requiring a giant case study on business strategy with a formal presentation and written paper. It was brutal. However, you might speak with the director of the MBA programs and see if any of the students are interested in an independent study opportunity. The catch here is what's in it for the student and the school. How do they benefit?
I think your idea is good.

As an alternative, you might contact SCORE. There are retired business executives who volunteer to help small business owners on things like this.

One big caution here. You can have someone write a general business plan for you or you can do it yourself with help from a variety of different resources. I would choose the latter.

 

[javahill]

When I got my MBA 15 years ago, there was an entrepreneurship course in which students had to write business plans for start ups. Even though there was an oversaturation of restaurants in Ithaca, the single largest category of business plans was restaurants.

There also was a consulting class where students could do projects with local businesses.

In both of these, there were also some students who turned these into real businesses, some before graduation. If you use B-school students you may get one that wants to go into business with you or independently. This could be a good recruiting tool for you.

For the entrepreneurship class, which was also open to students from the Hotel School, all the business plans were kept on file in the library for subsequent classes to use as references. You might want to check to see if there is a file of old business plans for you to peruse.