MyDay

On my first day as a small-town newspaper editor, the publisher handed me a book of procedures. It explained my deadlines, the stories he liked and the ones he didn't want to see, how to deal with the columnists, how to operate the fax machine, how to answer the telephone, how to lay out the copy and how to get the storyboards to the printer every Tuesday by midnight.

World champion boxer Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the face."

Starting a business is like a prizefight, and the demand for a written plan as the de facto document in startup investment has always perplexed me.