An Executive Summary in the context of a business model is a concise, comprehensive synopsis of the key elements of the business plan. Its purpose is to provide readers, often potential investors or stakeholders, with a quick and clear overview of the business’s goals, strategies, and expected outcomes. This summary distills the essential points of the business model into a format that can be easily understood and evaluated.
The Executive Summary is the one section guaranteed to be read by everyone who looks at your business plan. If they aren’t impressed by this one (or at most two) page summary, they won’t read any further and your “sales pitch” will be over.
How do you know what to put here? The easiest trick is to write this section last. Once you have most of your sections finished, it’s much easier to take a few of the most descriptive sentences from each section.
Then all you do is create a summary paragraph headlined by each section title.
In the Executive Summary, you’ll start to feel like you’re repeating yourself. Don’t be afraid of that. Many potential investors won’t have the time to read through the rest of your plan before they make a decision to talk details with you. The Executive Summary should reiterate the most crucial points from each section, even if it sounds like a repeat.
The final paragraph of an Executive Summary should be the Funds Sought paragraph. There you should clearly state how much money you need and what the return on investment will be.